News

** Kai von Pahlen, the the German Honorary Consul in Bristol and a BHC committee member, has launched a German Club at Castle Primary School in Keynsham. The club offers each pupil the chance to develop a pen friendship with a German child and to pick up the basic language skills needed to draft a letter to their new pen friends. The letters include information about the pupils, such as hobbies, favourite foods and the jobs they want to do some day. Shared history between England and Germany is also included - ranging from the first arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain to the royal houses...

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** Hannover Quay is now formally marked and signposted once more. The Quay on Harbourside, an area originally known as Canons Marsh, was named after our twin city back in the mid-1990s along with the Bordeaux and Porto Quays. Bristol City Council policy officers Stephen Hewitt and Dammy Legrand worked with the planning and Legible City teams to make it happen. The original signs were unveiled during the 50th anniversary of the twinning by the Lord Mayor and the Oberbürgermeister. The sign was damaged more than a year ago but has now been replaced by a more robust replacement - looking...

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** Jill Gallard CMG, HE Ambassador to Germany, commented positively on the significance of twinning in the post-Brexit situation during a webinar organised by the British Chambers of Commerce in Germany. The first British female ambassador to Germany considered the twinning movement as now more important than ever without the input of the Brussels EU structures. She said no new support funds were yet available but new candidates were in the pipeline. She felt that personal connections, such as those in the spheres of education and business, were very important, and hoped that a new two-way...

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** BHC member Colin Evans delivered another in his long-running series of talks on German art, taking as his subject City of Women: Female Artists in Vienna 1900-1938. Some 25 members and friends were fascinated this time to hear about and see the work of artists of whom most of us had not heard before. We looked at some outstanding art produced by women in Vienna in the first half of the 20th Century. Although facing the usual obstacles for women at this time, they chose to not to fight but to work their way around them. Denied entry to the Academy, many took private lessons from the teachers...

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** Hannover’s Oberburgermeister Belit Onay sent Marvin Rees a letter of congratulations after his recent re-election for a further three-year term as Bristol Mayor. They agreed to meet online in the near future to discuss a range of possible collaborations on issues such as young people, smart cities, migration, sustainable development and inclusive growth. # # # #  

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To all EU citizens living in the UK: the deadline to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme to stay living in the UK is 30th June 2021.  Please share with your contacts, family and friends. Bristol City Council auf Twitter: "The deadline to apply to the #EUSettlementScheme is 30 June. Please apply so you can stay living here. All #Bristol citizens are valued. Find out how to apply & where to get help: https://t.co/pG3K8Q0dSR #WeAreBristol @MarvinJRees @CllrAsherCraig @91Ways @upourstreet @ambitionlw https://t.co/GDLbNKfPK4" / Twitter

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Having had to abandon the plans for our Hannover friends to visit us in 2020, we had pencilled in a postponed visit at the end of August this year.  However, as things are still very uncertain, not least in terms of vaccine distribution, your committee has proposed to the Gesellschaft in Hannover that we cancel any further group visits this year, and plan to make up for it next year.  So in 2022, our 75th anniversary! We hope to manage to organise visits in both directions, as we did for both the 60th and the 70th anniversaries.  This will give us more time to organise really exciting visits...

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Bristol-Hannover Council played a leading role in organising an online regional twinning conference on behalf of Bristol International Twinnings Association on February 25th, a belated follow-up to the conference held in City Hall in September 2019. 49 delegates attended from a wide region encompassing Portsmouth, Devon, Worcestershire and Reading, and there was both great enthusiasm in the discussions on the day, and a lively response afterwards. People were stimulated by the ideas which came up in discussion groups after a year of exclusively online activity. Going forward as the lockdown eases,...

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Socialist realism is unmistakable. The stark political messaging, most notably developed in the two decades after the Russian Revolution in 1917, is simultaneously impressive and intimidating. The style was also intended as inspirational for the purpose of political propaganda amid the social, industrial and economic turmoil within the Soviet Union under Stalin. Posters with spacemen, soldiers, workers, women and children, doves of peace showed Stalin’s desire to portray the Soviet Union as a forward-looking workers’ state. BHC member Colin Evans, in the latest of his German art talks,...

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This year, Germany’s National Day of Mourning or Volkstrauertag was held on Sunday November 15th, to commemorate the bombing of Coventry on that date in 1940. The remembrance ceremony was held in the Bundestag in Berlin, and there was a photograph of Coventry’s bombed-out cathedral in the background. We were alerted to this by our friend Thomas Hermann, mayor of Hannover, telling us that it would be broadcast on ZDF, so it was possible to watch it via satellite TV. Prince Charles was the guest of honour and gave a full and heartfelt speech on British-German friendship, alternating between German...

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