News

This year’s AGM opened with a reminder from Councillor Peter Main, Bristol Lord Mayor (2012-13) that 2012 marks the 65th anniversary of the Twinning Agreement between Bristol and Hannover. The Lord Mayor expressed his admiration for Bristol's joint-oldest Twinning and said it was tremendous foresight for two countries, which had been at war only two years previously to sign a Twinning agreement. He also asked to put on record his thanks to Councillor Colin Smith (Lord Mayor, 2010-2011 and Second Vice-Chair of the Bristol Hannover Council) for his work and concluded that it was wonderful to see such...

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This year’s Bristol Harbour Festival (20th-22nd July  2012) was hugely successful as over 300,000 people headed down to the historic harbour-side over three days of beautiful weather. The Bristol Hannover Council was there too along with Bristol's other twinning societies. Outside the Arnolfini, visitors were able to enjoy traditional Chinese songs, test their German and enter a raffle for a bottle of Nicaraguan rum - all at the same time! The Bristol Hannover stall offered a warm German welcome (pretzels included) and fun German-related activities to all. The “How’s Your German..?”...

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This year (2012) marks the 65th anniversary of the Bristol-Hannover twinning and saw the Bristol Hannover Council visit their counterpart society - the Hannover Bristol Gesellschaft - in Germany. The Council was accompanied by Bristol choir the Westbury Singers who, with Hannover-based choir Canta Nova, would sing at a special service at Hannover’s famous Marktkirche. In addition to a wonderful tour of Hannover, the Hannover Bristol Gesellschaft took us on excursions to the historic town of Hildesheim and Cloppenburg Museum Village. Like Bristol, Hildesheim is home to the mother churches of both...

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The Ashton Boys Under-16s football team were planning to visit Hannoverin July this year to play Eintracht Hannover, as well as visiting Hannover 96 stadium and Olympic Centre, Herrenhausen Gardens etc.  Unfortunately this is not possible this year, but they plan to invite Eintracht to visit Bristol in 2013.  It is hoped that this will become a regular fixture in the Bristol-Hannover youth and sport calendar. Bristol-Hannover Council will give financial support for this project.

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Bristol City Council had proposed to cut the Twinning budget by half the coming year and in full by 2013. This would have meant that BITA (Bristol International Twinning Association) which oversees all twinning activities would have ceased to exist. However, there followed a massive campaign across the city, supporting all seven of our city partnerships, with attendance by representatives of all twinnings present at three Council meetings. At the final one on January 26th, the leader, Councillor Barbara Janke announced that it had been decided to withdraw the plan for the coming year, and to revisit...

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We were invited to attend a delightful Advent celebration on December 4th organised by the German congregation in Bristol at St Matthews Church, Kingsdown.  The congregation organised an exhibition of nativity scenes, collected from members of the church, but including scenes not only from Germany and Austria, but also Africa and India, and the cribs were made of all sorts of materials: wood, porcelain, stone, paper.  The celebration started with a short service at 15:00, after which the cribs could be visited and admired; there was then plentiful coffee and cake (Kaffee und Kuchen) and the celebration...

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There was this year both a civic visit, led by the Oberbürgermeister of Hannover, Herr Stephan Weil, and also a visit from the Hannover-Bristol Gesellschaft (see special items on these visits).Cotham School and the Goethe Schule in Hannover had their annual exchanges, and the Lord Mayor welcomed the students at a reception at the  Mansion House. The '39 Club', a group of ex-Junior Chamber of Commerce members, also had a visit from their partners from Hannover and were welcomed by the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House.

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Florian Seitz, Deputy Head of Culture at the German Embassy in London, was the guest speaker at this year’s Neville Osborne memorial lecture on November 7th.  His inspiring talk was entitled: "Why learn German today?"  Over 120 students and staff from Bristol Grammar School (BGS) attended and the event was introduced by Dr Ann Kennard, Chair of Bristol Hannover Council (BHC).  Neville, who died in 2002 aged 92, had been Head of Languages at BGS, and was a founder member of Bristol-Hannover Council.  He first went to Germany in 1929 and retained his love of Germany in spite of the dreadful...

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We are currently discussing a possible visit to Hannover of a Radio Bristol presenter, to present a major event there live for the citizens of Bristol.   Watch this space!

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