FEBRUARY TO NOVEMBER 2022
2022-02-11 08:00 - 2023-04-26 17:00 UTC
FEBRUARY
12th – Bedminster Winter Lantern Parade – Bordeaux inspired giant lantern.
February onwards – launch of Digital Learning pack in Bristol schools. Pack covers a range of historical, cultural and engineering information comparing Bordeaux and Bristol.
APRIL
7th – Celebrating 75 years with Bordeaux – awards and party hosted by UWE students at the Unitarian Meeting Hall, Brunswick Square, St Pauls. (do you have pics of this?)
23-24th – Ariel Rowing Club meet Hannover’s Linden Ruderverein in Lingen for a training camp ready for championships in Bordeaux in September.
April – Hannover Gin barrel (gin to be sold for charitable purposes) left Hannover for London and Bristol.
MAY
9th – 21st – Bordeaux Mini-Assistants Scheme 6 Masters students from Bordeaux working in 6 Bristol primary schools
Mid-May-October – Planters with posters of parks in partner city placed in key locations in Bristol and Hannover
9-12th- – Bristol “City of Honour” at Bordeaux Remembrance Week – participation of Bristol group, led by Deputy Mayor Asher Craig, in sharing experiences around slavery memorialisation.
28-29th – Upfest in Bristol – Artists from Bordeaux and Hannover participated.
JUNE
Throughout June – Festival of Voice, St George’s, Bristol – including a day of ‘Singing City’ with podcasts of choirs singing in all seven of Bristol’s twin cities
5th (Queen’s Jubilee weekend) – Händel’s Messiah with massed choirs
16th – Wine tasting at Averys, featuring French, German and English wines.
JULY
5th July – 13th November – Exhibition at Historical Museum in Hannover, ‘About golden carriages and colonial history’.
6th to 9th – Bristol to Bordeaux Cycle Challenge. Organised by PROPS, entry cost to cover hotels, food, medical, luggage transport etc. Four days riding, choice between Extreme route of 500 miles and Classic route of 300 miles. Entrants also commit to raising sponsorship for PROPS.
14-19th – Civic visit of Hannoverians to Bristol for Harbour Festival, during which, inter alia:
Civic ceremony with Council officials of both cities; Dance event with RISE Youth Dance group
Gathering of members of Bristol, Hannover and Bordeaux associations at City Hall
Gin barrel and boat, also carrying tree for planting, arrived from Hannover via London
Planting of tree by Hannover Councillor Lars Kelich (the Oberbürgermeister unfortunately unable to attend having contracted Covid) and the gin boat crew in University of Bristol Botanical Gardens
Visit of associations to the Herschel Museum in Bath (William Herschel came from Hannover, discovered Uranus, played in concerts in Bath with his sister Caroline)
Bristol School of Gymnastics – hope to arrange an event online with their Hannover partners
AUGUST
4-7th – Week for Peace in Hannover, to include choir (MitSING World Choir for Peace 2022) of 1500 from Hannover’s twin cities, singing the Rutter Requiem in the Kuppelsaal in the Congress Centre, with John Rutter conducting. A choir group from Bristol to participate. This event was sadly postponed due to rise in Coronavirus cases, but 2 choir members joined the Canta Nova choir for a smaller event at the Rathaus.
15-19th – Dance workshop in Hannover on the theme of Human Rights, with participation of young people from Bristol and Hannover
18-23rd – Civic visit of Bristolians to Hannover, during which, inter alia:
Ceremony at the Rathaus to celebrate 75th anniversary; Dance event at ceremony, including dance groups from Bristol and Hannover
Visit to the exhibition of the Golden Carriage of Hannover at the Historical Museum, with its links to slavery. Bristol’s Deputy Mayor, Cllr Asher Craig, took part in a round table discussion.
International Fireworks display at Herrenhausen Gardens
21-22nd – Urban Nature Festival – with round table discussion on street art, with participation of Cllr Craig and two Bristol street artists
Planting of Peace tree by Cllr Craig and Oberbürgermeister Onay in Georgengarten at Herrenhausen Gardens
Visit of the Hannover and Bristol associations to Bad Harzburg
18-22nd Hannover Police Youth Sports Club Football team visited Bristol – visit included reception with the Lord Mayor; BHC was represented by the Hon. German Consul, Kai von Pahlen.
SEPTEMBER
7-11th – Ariel/Linden clubs participated in World Rowing Masters Regatta in Bordeaux (Libourne), Ariel/Linden then returned to Hannover 16-19th September.
22-26th – Return visit of Young Bristol to Hannover – 10 young people travelled with lead worker from Bristol, Hannover contact Marco Leitschuh. Included visit to Berlin.
Bristol badminton group has now decided to postpone their visit to Hannover to 2023.
OCTOBER
8-9th – Hannoverscher Oratorienchor and Bristol Choral Society sang Brahms’ ‘German Requiem’ in concerts at the Marktkirche, Hannover, also celebrating 70th anniversary of its reconstruction in 1952.
19-20th – Sharing Memories event in Bristol, with meetings between today’s school pupils and past generations of Bordeaux exchange students, and meetings between UWE students with past generations of Bristol-Hannover friendships
NOVEMBER
9-14th – Circomedia visited Hannover for Circus Festival
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Wednesday, April 19, at 7pm at Stoke Lodge:
2023-04-19 19:00 - 21:00
A fascinating black and white film from 1932 about Hannover: Das Gesicht einer Stadt, billed as the most important film about Hannover of the pre-war period. If you are interested in joining us for this or any other event, please get in touch via this contact link: https://bristolhannovercouncil.org.uk/contact/
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Sunday, June 11 - Annual Lunch on Clevedon Pier
2023-06-11 12:30
More details later, but we hope to also invite members of the Clevedon-Ettlingen twinning also, with whom we were in contact some years ago. If you are interested in joining us for this or any other event, please get in touch via this contact link: https://bristolhannovercouncil.org.uk/contact/
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July 6-11: Hannover group visit
2023-07-06 08:00 - 2023-07-11 17:00
Visit of our friends in the Hannover-Bristol Gesellschaft, programme to include a visit to Thatchers Cider Distillery, Bristol Old Vic backstage and the Underfall Yard. If you are interested in joining us for this or any other event, please get in touch via this contact link: https://bristolhannovercouncil.org.uk/contact/
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DECEMBER 8: Tales of Hoffmann (Clevedon)
2023-12-08 18:30 - 21:30

DECEMBER 17: CHRISTMAS MEAL
2023-12-17 18:00 - 20:00
** Wurst and Kartoffelsalat or chips, possibly with Sauerkraut, and with two beakers of Gluehwein. Cost: £14 to include service.

Talk: German Expressionists
2024-04-17 19:00 - 21:00
** Preparatory illustrated talk by member Colin Evans on the German Expressionists, in advance of a members’ trip to London. The talk will take place at Stoke Lodge Adult Education Centre, Shirehampton Road, BS9 1BN. All welcome
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Tate Modern exhibition
2024-05-09 23:00
** Members’ trip to the Tate Modern exhibition: ‘Expressionists – Kandinsky, Muenter and the Blue Rider’. Most of us are going by coach from Bristol, please use the email contact elsewhere on the website to ask for details.
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Bristol Choral Society / Oratorienchor
2024-06-29 19:30 - 21:30
** Concert of Hannover’s Oratorienchor with Bristol Choral Society at the Bristol Beacon – details on the Beacon website, or use our website contact to find out more about the Hannoverians’ stay in Bristol. Also see: https://www.bristolchoral.co.uk/Howells-Hymnus-Paradisi
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Harbour Festival twinning activities
2024-07-20 10:00 - 2024-07-21 18:00
** Twinning activities on College Green as part of the Harbour Festival.
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Michael Bloom: The Duty Was Joy. The Life of My Great Uncle Dr. Horst Berkowitz
2025-01-28 08:00 - 21:00
Please click on this link to join
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89886032172?pwd=[REDACTED]
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February is History Month at Bristol-Hannover!
2025-02-18 08:00 - 2025-02-27 21:00
** For those of you who do not like to travel too far during the winter months when the days are short, the Bristol-Hannover Council has just the thing. During February, we are curating three on-line talks from leading academics on topics which I know will appeal to our members.
The talks are hosted by our friends at the German Historical Institute in London and the Leo Baeck Institute. You can attend as many as you like. They are all free of charge, but in some cases require you to register in advance on-line. Don’t worry, the process is very simple?.
If you have never been in a Zoom conference before, it’s pretty straightforward-the main thing is to mute your device when the lecturer is talking. There is a good primer here: https://www.ageuk.org.uk/bp-assets/globalassets/trafford/how-to-use-zoom-for-the-first-time.pdf.
Looking forward to seeing you at the sessions and hearing your reflections afterwards.
The Programme
FEBRUARY 18 – Winner and Losers, Britain and Germany after WW2 — GHIL online lecture 5.30pm
https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures#c6501
How do historical narratives and memories shape our understanding of national identity and collective memory?
Lucy Noakes (University of Essex) and Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck) reflect on how the Second World War has shaped Germany and Britain after 1945. The conversation will offer insights into the ways in which the two nations navigated the aftermath of the war and redefined their identities and roles in the contemporary world.
About the speakers:
Lucy Noakes, Professor of History at the University of Essex, specialises in the social and cultural history of early to mid-twentieth-century Britain, with a particular focus on people’s experiences and memories of the world wars. Her recent publication, Dying for the Nation, focuses on the history of death, grief and bereavement in Second World War Britain. This research places the experience and memory of death at the forefront of understanding the British war experience, exploring how death was managed and remembered during this period. From November 2024 she will be President of the Royal Historical Society.
Frank Trentmann, Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, is a historian of modern Britain, Germany and the world. His research explores the interplay between material, political and moral change. His latest book, Out of the Darkness: The Germans 1942–2022, follows the German people’s journey from the horrors of the Nazi era to their moral and social reinvention, and its limits. Trentmann’s work captures the dramatic changes during and after the Cold War, the division and reunification of Germany, and the nation’s evolving and ambivalent role on the world stage.
FEBRUARY 20 – ‘Before the Holocaust’ : Leo Baeck Institute online book talk 7.00pm
https://www.lbilondon.ac.uk/
Historians have traditionally argued that antisemitic violence in Nazi Germany rose gradually, from low levels during the first years of Hitler’s rule to a high point in the Reich-wide pogrom of November 1938. ?Before the Holocaust, based on research in more than ?2?0 German archives, demonstrates that this long-held assumption is wrong. During the months-long Nazi takeover of power, beginning a mere five weeks after Hitler became Chancellor, waves of antisemitic violence engulfed large parts of Germany. ?Before the Holocaust? examines the multitude of these hitherto unrecognized antisemitic attacks in the late winter and spring of 1933, as well as the reaction of German elites and institutions to this violence.
?Hermann Beck is Professor of History at the University of Miami. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles after studying History and Literature at German universities (Mannheim, Freiburg, and Berlin), the London School of Economics, and the Sorbonne. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. His publications include books on nineteenth-century Germany, The Origins of the Authoritarian Welfare State in Prussia and the late Weimar and Nazi periods.
FEBRUARY 27 – ‘Cold War Games’ GHIL on line lecture 5.30 pm https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures
Maren Röger (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe)
(Cold) War Games: Scenarios on Both Sides of the Iron Curtain
In co-operation with the Modern History Research Seminar, University of Oxford
“During the Cold War, millions of people on both sides of the Iron Curtain played board and digital games in living rooms, barracks, and schools. They played classics such as Memory in the FRG and Merk-Fix in the GDR, but also games with names like Fulda Gap and Class Struggle. In this lecture, I will present games–for a long time neglected by Cold War Studies–as a relevant part of popular culture in the 1970s and 1980s. First, I will show how they played a significant role in conveying to a popular audience the fundamental characteristics of the East-West conflict. Second, I will focus on GDR board games and analyse their territorial and ideological worlds and boundaries.”
Maren Röger has been Director of the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe and Senior Professor of Central and Eastern European History at the University of Leipzig since ?2021. Her numerous publications include monographs on the gender history of German-occupied Poland, the visual history of Habsburg Bucovina, and entangled memories of post-war expulsions, and articles on board and computer games in the Cold War.
IAN TURNER/ Chair, BHC
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Rosenmontag
2025-03-03 19:00 - 21:00
Annual celebration – at the Black Swan, Westbury-on-Trym
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MAY 20
2025-05-20 19:00 - 22:00
First in a new series of German films (at Stoke Lodge): Phoenix – directed by Christian Petzold.
Petzold writes his own scripts, but the films all have a link to either periods or real events in history, so this gives them a strong feeling of authenticity. He is also a political activist and social campaigner. Many of his films have featured the actor Nina Hoss has won many awards for her performances but she also campaigns for social justice. The most successful film from the partnership between Petzold and Hoss is the multi award winning ‘Barbara,’ which we showed last year in our series on East Germany.
In this film Hoss plays Auschwitz survivor Nelly who is heavily bandaged after facial surgery. On returning home she finds that her husband has remarried. He does not recognise her but sees a faint resemblance so asks her to take on the identity of his former wife to access her inherited fortune. She agrees so becomes her own imposter.
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JUNE 03
2025-06-03 19:00 - 22:00
The latest of our popular darts evenings at the Post Office Tavern, Westbury-on-Trym, at 7pm
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JUNE 10
2025-06-10 19:00 - 22:00
Second in a new series of German films (at Stoke Lodge): Transit – directed by Christian Petzold.
Petzold writes his own scripts, but the films all have a link to either periods or real events in history, so this gives them a strong feeling of authenticity. He is also a political activist and social campaigner. In this second film of the series Georg, fleeing Paris after the German invasion, escapes to Marseille and assumes the identity of a dead author. He settles to life as a drifter but falls in love with Marie who is searching for her missing husband.
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JULY 01
2025-07-01 19:00 - 22:00
Third in a series of German films (at Stoke Lodge): Yella – directed by Christian Petzold.
Petzold writes his own scripts, but the films all have a link to either periods or real events in history, so this gives them a strong feeling of authenticity. He is also a political activist and social campaigner. In this third film of the series Yella flees her unsuccessful life in East Germany to settle in Hannover where she becomes entangled in the ruthless world of big business. She does well but her past eventually catches up with her.’
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2025 Exchange: August 6-11 - including the Balloon Fiesta
2025-08-06 08:00 - 2025-08-11 21:00

SEPTEMBER 7
2025-09-07 19:30 - 21:30
Film: ‘ Riefenstahl’, Documentary about the controversial German filmmaker, Curzon Cinema Clevedon, 7.30pm
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SEPTEMBER 10
2025-09-10 19:30 - 21:30
BAGS talk ‘Summer on the Habsburg Trail!’ Speaker – Dr Mark Allinson. Mark will report back on the ways in which the Habsburgs’ subjects built new identities after the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed, and how some of these places look now, more than a century on. Venue: St Peter’s Church Henleaze, Meeting Room. 7.45pm
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SEPTEMBER 11
2025-09-11 12:30 - 16:30
BHC visit to the Anselm Kiefer/VanGogh exhibition in the Royal Academy London, 12.40. More details to follow.
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OCTOBER 1
2025-10-01 12:00 - 21:00
BHC will be hosting a meal for the multiplier group visiting Bristol from Hannover.Venue: Trinity Centre Bristol. Volunteers welcome. More details to follow.
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OCTOBER 2
2025-10-02 12:30 - 21:00
October 2 – Joint event with BAGS and Bristol University German Department, on the eve of German Unification Day. Evening. Venue: Bristol University (details to follow)
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OCTOBER 11
2025-10-11 12:30 - 17:00
Excursion to Hauser and Wirth, Bruton, Somerset to view the Nana sculptures. Arrive around 12.30 (details to follow)
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OCTOBER 15
2025-10-15 19:00 - 21:30
Language change: ‘Is German under threat?’ Dr Anna Havinga, Senior Lecturer in Sociolinguistics, University of Bristol: German could become a language increasingly used only for social purposes, rather than for culture, economy and science. But is German really under threat? Anna will look at the use of anglicisms and the introduction of gender-inclusive language in German. She will explore their impact on language and society and critically evaluate reactions to both features. Venue: St Peter’s Church Henleaze, Meeting Room. 7.15pm (time tbc)
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OCTOBER 16 - agm
2025-10-16 18:30 - 21:00
BHC AGM, City Hall 6.30 pm. Come along and hear what we have been busy doing this year
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NOVEMBER 12
2025-11-12 19:30 - 21:30
The future of remembrance in united Germany: Illustrated Talk with refreshments. Speaker – Dr Debbie Pinfold; University of Bristol. When Germany reunited in 1990 East and West Germany had very distinct memory cultures of the National Socialism and World War II. The years following unification were marked by efforts to create a unified culture of remembrance which would also support a sense of cohesive national identity. Yet as these events pass from lived memory and the past becomes contested again, Germany’s culture of remembrance is at a transitional moment. Venue: St Peter’s Church Henleaze, Meeting Room. 7.45pm
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March 7: Werner Bischoff exhibition (Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock Abbey, NT)
2026-03-07 08:00 - 17:00

April 18: Ken Stradling Collection visit
2026-04-18 08:00 - 17:00

MAY 13-18 BHC EXCHANGE VISIT TO HANNOVER
2026-05-13 08:00 - 2026-05-18 17:00
