News

** November 11 is St Martin's Day in Germany. This day celebrates the Roman soldier turned saint who was such a good guy that he gave half his coat to a beggar during a snowstorm. The most iconic tradition in Germany is a lantern procession, for which children make their own paper lanterns in school. After the sun sets, young and old come together to walk through town and sing songs carrying their colourful lanterns. It was my great honour and pleasure once again to represent the holy Saint Martin at the lantern procession organised by the German Saturday School Bristol. Martinstag...

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** After a stunning performance in the Rathaus in Hannover last summer with their Hannover partners, RISE Youth Dance welcomed their friends to Bristol this summer for another week of workshops, culminating in a series of dances on College Green as part of the Harbour Festival. Bristol-Hannover Council again funded an exploratory visit to Hannover in April by lead choreographers Helen Wilson and Luke Antysz, and RISE were subsequently successful in applications to both the UK-German Connection and this time also the Arts Council, in order to enable the visiting group to join them this year...

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After last year’s anniversary junketings at the Harbour Festival - gin boat and all - how could we follow that with our Hannover friends coming back to Bristol this year? In the event, our guests agreed in chair Robert Nicholls’s words: “There were no highlights – it was all fantastic!” This time arrivals and departures were varied in modes of transport, plane or car, and the airlines did not help with several cancellations disrupting travel plans but somehow everyone managed to reach their destinations eventually. The first day involved a trip to Cheddar Gorge, where everyone...

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** Thanks to our committee member Ian Turner, a variation on our Annual Dinner has taken place. Sunday lunch was arranged at No 5 The Beach in Clevedon for members of our association and also some of the members of the Clevedon Twinning group. Clevedon is twinned with four cities, one of which is Ettlingen in south Germany. In contrast to Bristol, the group all work together on events and visits.  The food was first class and of a varied selection.  We needed to walk it off afterwards. We had some lively discussions on various topics of interest to both our organisation, including...

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** A small number of members went to Oxford recently to see ‘Brecht on Love and War’, a multi-media set of musical performances, songs and presentations, with the Bauhaus Band and Singers, Marc Almond and young artistes from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.  The show, presented by Tom Kuhn and John Harle, took place in the Sheldonian Theatre of Oxford University, with its wonderful painted ceiling. John Harle The programme included songs from musicals by Brecht and Kurt Weill, as well as some readings of Brecht’s poems and songs, video art from Oxford art students, and Scenes...

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** Creative and professional writing students from the University of the West of England and members of the Bristol-Hannover exchange have taken part in a sharing memories event at City Hall, coordinated by Local Learning with the Bristol-Hannover Council. The stories spanned the many decades of the special relationship between the two cities. They were stories of long-lasting friendships, youthful exuberance and lives rebuilt after the devastation of war. What shone through all the memories – whatever decade they were from –  was the empathy and connection that the Bristol-Hannover...

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** The latest Bristol Hannover Council film projection was fascinating. It was shot in 1931 and produced in 1932 by Döring-Film-Werke. Although it was a silent film and in black and white it made an impressive impact. It was lost during the Second World War, eventually found in the GDR Film Archives and digitised in 2010-11. The film aimed to show how Hannover had developed and grown over time. The outline maps at the beginning were an effective way of showing how the small settlement on the banks of the Leine spread, gained and lost city walls as it grew and evolved into a thriving early...

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** After a gap of many years since the last rugby exchange between Hannover and Bristol, finally SV Odin made it – and how: with 75 players and partners, including 28 aged between 15 and 16 plus a few players from other clubs. The original exchange, 30 years ago, was organised between Horst Josch of Odin, present on this tour, and his old friend David Perkins of QEH, who sadly died in September 2022 and so did not see the resumption of the exchange which was so dear to him. The SV Odin tour bus Arriving overnight in a double-decker bus on Saturday, March 25 and led by Director of Rugby...

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** An impressive turnout of BHC members gathered at Stoke Lodge on March 29 to hear a fascinating talk by Neil Taylor on the German Democratic Republic. Neil is a well-known travel writer and tour guide. He visited the GDR and other Communist Bloc countries frequently in the 1970s and 1980s. His talk described how the GDR evolved from the Soviet Zone of Occupation in Germany and was led throughout much of its existence by a group of German Communists who had lived in exile in Moscow and were disciples of Stalin. Neil traced the main developments in GDR history starting with the 1953 uprising....

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** Life in the GDR was the common thread running through this short film season. Politics could have been a heavy and intrusive presence in the telling of these retrospective stories but their very humanity shines through in spite of the inevitable pressures. Good Bye Lenin! was about a woman who, having had a stroke and resulting coma, is allowed, when she wakes up after the Wall comes down, to believe that the ‘normal’ GDR life is still going on, in case the changes cause her to have a relapse. Goodbye Lenin - floating past the window . . . from the film To achieve this, her children...

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