News

Following the Bristol team’s successful visit to Hannover, the return match or "bout" as it is called between Hannover’s roller derby team the Demolition Dolls (http:?//dolls.?rollerderby-hannover.?de/?) and Bristol's B team (http:?//www.?bristolrollerderby.?com/) will take place on Saturday 29th July at the Centre for Sport at the University of the West of England. This will be an afternoon event, the exact time is yet to be confirmed. More details in May but pencil it in your diaries!

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Dr Ann Kennard has been awarded the Lord Mayor’s International Medal for her many years work to strengthen the twinning with Hannover. Ann has been the chairperson of the Bristol Hannover Council (BHC) for over fifteen years and her dedicated and tireless efforts have played a vital role in developing the relationship. The ceremony took place at the Mansion House hosted by Lord Mayor Jeff Lovell and was part of a larger event where over 30 local people received Lord Mayor’s Medals for their outstanding contributions to their community and the city itself. Ann was accompanied by her husband...

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Christian Heppner, an archivist from the City of Hannover, gave us a fascinating insight into how the Hannover’s precious historical documents were preserved during the Second World War. Christian told us that proper cataloguing of Hannover’s history started with the first full-time archivist in 1889, when the archives were kept in the Kestner Museum. In 1940 when the first bombs fell near the museum, the archives were moved to Marienburg Castle, where they were kept for 2 years in a wine cellar and the kitchen, where they suffered from mould and mice! They were then moved to Soeder Castle,...

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BHC member Colin Evans gave a second talk in his series on art in the early 20th century, this time concentrating on the infamous exhibition put on by Hitler on ‘Degenerate Art’ (Entartete Kunst) in Munich in 1937. Hitler had rounded up and confiscated much of the Expressionist art in Germany’s museums, considered by the Nazi party to be degenerate and likely to insult and corrupt society, and exhibited it as a warning. In fact a million people saw the exhibition in the first 6 weeks, and overall 2 million in the four months of the exhibition. This was art which was avant-garde, whereas the Great...

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A lovely afternoon was spent recently with many Bristol-Hannover twinning participants sharing their memories, stories and first impressions of Hannover (and something about Bristol’s history as well) with students from Fairfield High School. Building on the original Music for Shoes initiative of 1947, students from Bristol and Hannover secondary schools will use the memories and stories collected to inform their work when composing music and swapping decorated shoes for a final performance in Colston Hall in December 2017. A big Danke Schoen to Ruth at Myers-Insole, Sharon at Fairfield, Debbie...

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Congratulations to the Bristol Hannover team – this year’s winners of the coveted Paul Garland Trophy The quiz was a close fought affair with the six rounds of questions covering anything from Europe to Chickens! – four teams (BBP, BHC, BOA, BLB) took part while BCP volunteers ran the event very well. Thanks to Eric for being the quizmaster, Chris for the scoreboard and John for the questions as well as Trish for moral support. Emergency salads were rushed in to save the vegetarians while Hannover cruised to victory after early leaders Beira started worrying they might have to organise...

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Later this year it is hoped that 2 exhibitions will be held as part of the 70th anniversary celebrations – the first is to bring the ‘Honouring Esther’ Holocaust exhib ition from Bath – BHC supported this project, which concerned the re-creation of a Death march of women from Hannover to Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in February 1945. The second is to bring an exhibition first shown in Hannover in 2012, compiled by our good friend Helga Wawra of the Hannover-Bristol Gesellschaft, to show the history of the link between the two cities. The first showing was to celebrate the 65th anniversary,...

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Bristol-Hannover members have been busy both giving and attending lectures on a variety of topics: First came Colin Evans, with a talk at Stoke Lodge, on The Art of the Weimar Republic, which was lively and colourful, and greatly appreciated by the 20 or so members and friends who attended. Mark Allinson gave a talk, also at Stoke Lodge to about 20 people on ‘Christmas in the GDR’ which turned out to be very revealing, often comical, of the attempts by the GDR regime to find a non-religious thematic explanation, for the festival of Christmas! They also made a doubtless impressive film...

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On Sunday December 11th, a record number of 36 members and friends joined us for our annual Christmas lunch in Broadmead at the Christmas market. The new company treated us superbly, we were very comfortable and warm, and after some Spekulatius biscuits to start us off, enjoyed a goodly portion of Wurst (or veggie equivalent), Sauerkraut and Kartoffelsalat, washed down with 2 very welcome beakers of Glühwein – we drank a toast to John Veale, our old friend who had recently died. We look forward to a great celebration at the end of the 70th anniversary celebrations this year!

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Friday 20th January sees the launch of our celebrations of 70 years of friendship between Bristol and Hannover (also Bordeaux) at M-Shed (below).  The Lord Mayor, Cllr. Jeff Lovell, will open the proceedings, and the programme includes performances in German and French from Bristol schoolchildren, stories of long-term friendships with both cities and contributions by the French and German Honorary Consuls, as well as the Chairs of Bristol-Hannover Council and the Association Bordeaux-Bristol.  Later in the year there will be other events: a concert of French and German music at Colston Hall,...

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