Week of Fraternity

The Week of Brotherhood (WdB) is an event that has been held annually in March since 1952 for Christian-Jewish cooperation in Germany . It is organized by the German Coordination Council of Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation . She has the Jewish-Christian dialogue , cooperation between Christians and Jews as well as the processing of the Holocaust to the goal. The Buber Rosenzweig Medal has been awarded at the event since 1968 . The respective Federal President is the patron .

history

Exhibition on the occasion of the Week of Brotherhood 1974 in the Warleberger Hof in Kiel

Since the 1920s there have been initiatives for Christian-Jewish reconciliation in the USA , Great Britain , France and Switzerland . After the end of the Second World War , a number of bodies for Christian-Jewish cooperation emerged or were re-established in various countries. Build the first companies and the associated events in Germany was the US occupation forces as part of the re-education , the educational program for the Germans to democracy, committed and tried from the beginning to the German social elite integrate.

From February 18 to 25, 1951, the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation in Munich organized the first week of fraternity at the regional level. The first nationwide Week of Fraternity opened in 1952 with a speech by Federal President Theodor Heuss in Wiesbaden, which was broadcast on the radio . Domestically, it formed the counterpart to Konrad Adenauer's foreign policy efforts , which in 1952 led to an agreement with the Jewish Claims Conference in the Luxembourg Agreement . Hans Erler and Ansgar Koschel described the events with their cultural framework program as constitutive for the new German bourgeoisie.

At the same time, a number of those who had returned or emigrants who worked for the occupying powers, as well as survivors of the formerly important Jewish bourgeoisie, actively participated in establishing civil society structures in Germany. This included Hans Ornstein (1893–1952), a native of Vienna who fled to Switzerland in 1938. In April 1946 he founded the Christian-Jewish Working Group to Combat Anti-Semitism in Switzerland .

From 1952, the sponsorship of the events was transferred from the occupation authorities to German government agencies.

American predecessors

In the USA, a National Conference of Christians and Jews was founded as early as 1927, and from 1934 an annual National Brotherhood Week was held. The background was the endeavor to jointly fight anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic attitudes as Americans.

The first event was scheduled for George Washington's birthday on February 22nd. The German week also takes place in spring, usually beginning to mid-March. In 1977 the NCCJ participated in the establishment of memorials and educational institutions on the Holocaust and obtained a legislative initiative by the US Senate to establish the National Holocaust Remembrance Week . In the 1990s, the NCCJ was renamed the National Conference for Community and Justice , which thus represented a more civil-law and civil society-oriented commitment. This later content development ran largely parallel to the activities in Germany.

reception

The weeks of the 1950s avoided a daily political orientation and emphasized a timeless German cultural canon. In the early 1950s, Gertrud Luckner warned against a stronger politicization of the weeks and a possible instrumentalization as a propaganda weapon in the cold war. For the 1980s, Wolfgang Benz speaks of a rally of philosemitism with strong bipartisan political participation .

In 1976 Jean Améry dealt with the anti-Zionism of the left and the Middle East conflict under the title The Honorable Anti-Semitism . Améry called on the political left to redefine itself in dealing with anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

Améry also presented the opening verse of Tom Lehrer's sarcastic song, written as early as 1965, to the German audience for the American National Brotherhood Week under the motto Where are the brothers :

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everybody hates the Jews.
But during National Brotherhood Week,
Be nice to people who are inferior to you.
It's only for a week, so have no fear.
Be grateful that it doesn't last all year!

The mockery of whether the event would only be one week of fraternity a year had already arisen in the early 1950s.

Rudolf W. Sirsch described the now firmly institutionalized event as a prayer wheel in a positive sense. The associated pathos occasionally seems to be trying hard and tiring, the character of the state act did not change anything in 2001 with the singer Campino der Toten Hosen as the keynote speaker. A key element of the event is the statement on humanity and dialogue, which is demanded year after year by public figures in Germany.

In 2010 in Augsburg, Prime Minister Horst Seehofer stated in his welcoming address a success story for the Week of Fraternity. She has set standards for a culture of remembrance that does not dwell in yesterday, but focuses on today and tomorrow and provides an essential ethical basis in the Christian-Jewish-humanistic tradition.

Buber Rosenzweig Medal

As part of the Week of Brotherhood, the Buber-Rosenzweig Medal has been awarded by the German Coordination Council of Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation since 1968 to personalities, initiatives or institutions who have made a contribution to understanding and Christian-Jewish cooperation.

Locations of the opening events

1952: Wiesbaden
1953: Berlin
1954: Düsseldorf
1955: Munich, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin
1956: Bonn
1957: Frankfurt
1958: Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Düsseldorf
1960: Cologne
1961: Frankfurt
1962: Hamburg
1965: Berlin
1966: Düsseldorf
1967: Dortmund
1968: Minden
1969: Wiesbaden
1970: Cologne
1971: Hamburg
1972: Münster
1973: Saarbrücken
1974: Berlin
1975: Munich
1976: Düsseldorf
1977: Frankfurt am Main
1978: Würzburg
1979: Hanover
1980: Hamburg
1981: Dortmund
1982: Aachen
1983: Berlin
1984: Worms
1985: Augsburg
1986: Duisburg
1987: Berlin
1988: Fulda
1989: Bonn
1990: Nuremberg
1991: Mannheim
1992: Osnabrück
1993: Dresden
1994: Wiesbaden
1995: Oldenburg
1996: Freiburg
1997: Paderborn
1998: Munich
1999: Potsdam
2000: Cologne
2001: Bremen
2002: Karlsruhe
2003: Münster
2004: Bad Nauheim
2005: Erfurt
2006: Berlin
2007: Mannheim
2008: Düsseldorf
2009: Hamburg
2010: Augsburg
2011: Minden
2012: Leipzig , Gewandhaus
2013: Kassel
2014: Kiel
2015: Ludwigshafen am Rhein
2016: Hanover
2017: Frankfurt am Main
2018: Recklinghausen
2019: Nuremberg
2020: Dresden

Annual mottos

2013: Sachor (Remembrance): A memory for the future
2014: Freedom - Diversity - Europe
2015: The path is created by walking
2016: For God's sake
2017: Now go and learn
2018: Overcoming fear - building bridges
2019: Man, where are you? Together against hostility towards Jews
2020: Open your mouth for the others

Web links

Homepage of the German Coordination Council (DKR) of the societies for Christian-Jewish cooperation
German coordination council on Facebook
Video: Carlo Schmid - Thoughts on the “Week of Brotherhood”, Bonn 1960 . Institute for Scientific Film (IWF) 1961, made available by the Technical Information Library (TIB), doi : 10.3203 / IWF / G-68 .

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Hans Erler , Ansgar Koschel (ed.): The dialogue between Jews and Christians. Attempts to talk to Auschwitz. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1999, ISBN 3-593-36346-1 .
^ Zsolt Keller : Ornstein, Hans. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . October 27, 2009 , accessed January 14, 2019 . Not identical to the Hamburg entrepreneur Hans Ornstein (1892–1972), also from Vienna .
↑ Josef Foschepoth : In the shadow of the past. The beginnings of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation. With a foreword by Werner Jochmann . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1993, ISBN 3-525-01349-3 .
↑ Wolfgang Benz (ed.): Between anti-Semitism and philosemitism. Jews in the Federal Republic (= series of documents, texts, materials. Vol. 1). Metropol Verlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-926893-10-9 .
↑ Jean Améry : Living on - but how? Essays 1968–1978. Edited and with an afterword by Gisela Lindemann. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-608-95075-3 .
↑ Translation:

Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Muslims
And everyone hates the Jews.
But in the week of brotherhood,
be kind to the people who are inferior to you.
It's only for a week don't worry
Better be thankful that it doesn't last all year.
↑ Tom Lehrer : That Was the Year That Was . Recapitulation. R-6179. 1965.
↑ ^a ^b Christoph Münz, Rudolf W. Sirsch (Ed.): “If not me, who? If not now, when? ”On the socio-political significance of the German Coordination Council of Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation (DKR) (= Forum Christians and Jews. Volume 5). LIT-Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-8165-2 .
↑ Horst Seehofer : Speech. Week of Fraternity. (No longer available online.) In: bayern.de. Bavarian State Chancellery , March 7, 2010, archived from the original on December 24, 2011 ; Retrieved on January 14, 2019 (manuscript version: the spoken word counts).
↑ ^a ^b Presidium and Board of Directors of the German Coordination Council of Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation: Week of Brotherhood 2020. Chancellor Angela Merkel receives the Buber-Rosenzweig Medal 2020. In: deutscher-koordinierungsrat.de, May 19, 2019, accessed on 30 August 2019.

[dia-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Hans Erler , Ansgar Koschel (ed.): The dialogue between Jews and Christians. Attempts to talk to Auschwitz. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1999, ISBN 3-593-36346-1 .

[2] Zsolt Keller : Ornstein, Hans. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . October 27, 2009 , accessed January 14, 2019 . Not identical to the Hamburg entrepreneur Hans Ornstein (1892–1972), also from Vienna .

[3] Josef Foschepoth : In the shadow of the past. The beginnings of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation. With a foreword by Werner Jochmann . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1993, ISBN 3-525-01349-3 .

[4] Wolfgang Benz (ed.): Between anti-Semitism and philosemitism. Jews in the Federal Republic (= series of documents, texts, materials. Vol. 1). Metropol Verlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-926893-10-9 .

[5] Jean Améry : Living on - but how? Essays 1968–1978. Edited and with an afterword by Gisela Lindemann. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-608-95075-3 .

[6] Translation:

Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Muslims
And everyone hates the Jews.
But in the week of brotherhood,
be kind to the people who are inferior to you.
It's only for a week don't worry
Better be thankful that it doesn't last all year.

[7] Tom Lehrer : That Was the Year That Was . Recapitulation. R-6179. 1965.

[sirsch-8] Christoph Münz, Rudolf W. Sirsch (Ed.): “If not me, who? If not now, when? ”On the socio-political significance of the German Coordination Council of Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation (DKR) (= Forum Christians and Jews. Volume 5). LIT-Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-8165-2 .

[9] Horst Seehofer : Speech. Week of Fraternity. (No longer available online.) In: bayern.de. Bavarian State Chancellery , March 7, 2010, archived from the original on December 24, 2011 ; Retrieved on January 14, 2019 (manuscript version: the spoken word counts).

[BRM_2020-10] Presidium and Board of Directors of the German Coordination Council of Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation: Week of Brotherhood 2020. Chancellor Angela Merkel receives the Buber-Rosenzweig Medal 2020. In: deutscher-koordinierungsrat.de, May 19, 2019, accessed on 30 August 2019.