 All right, well hello everyone and thank you, Claudia, for inviting me to this important conference. I'm really happy to be here and it's amazing to see where people are tuning in from, places like Virginia, Montreal, the Philippines, but also very many interesting places in Europe. And I'm looking forward to discussing with you and entering a dialogue. It is a great honor to speak to such a distinguished audience and I'm looking forward to our discussion. Okay, here we go. So I called it Muse Museum Education, Political Awareness and Youth Empowerment and it's a work in progress at the Billion State Museums. So let's start. I work at the newly established Center for Cultural Education at the, at the Billion State Museums, the house Bastian, seen on the picture. And my job is to design, implement and evaluate museum educations program that are called political education. Now distinguishing between cultural education, which museums or the Billion State Museums define that they're doing, and political education is a very German thing to do. And in the interest of time, I would like to avoid delving into that, these two categorizations. Instead, I would like to describe my task as creating museum education programs that raise political awareness and empower young people. Here are the goals. I hope you can all see them. My colleagues and I have set three goals for these programs. One, that young people learn to see the museum as a space, as a political space, the political space that actually is, where people negotiate and contest power, meaning and representation. Two, that young people connect their own questions, interests, expertise, problems or needs with their human experience. They see on display in the museums and that they realize that they have their own agency to make their own world, just like the historical actors in different eras and cultural contexts. The actors made the objects so we can trace that back. And three, that young people feel empowered to develop ideas for making their own world, for their contribution to building the society they want. The central question my colleagues and I are raising is therefore, how can we use the objects in our collections to achieve these goals? What do we have to change in the museum in order to successfully run these programs? To whom in society do we have to reach out in order to build alliances and coalitions to make the necessary changes happen? Not only happen, but also worthwhile and sustainable. So let me give you an example of what taking these questions seriously actually means for us and what challenges we are facing. And before I start doing that, just a little caveat, this conference is a couple of weeks too early to actually talk about first results. We are just starting with our first workshops and education programs. I welcome questions later about how everything is going, but I can't really tell you how the students or the youth are reacting to what we are offering or how they're interacting with us and so on and so forth. But tomorrow, the exhibition, Germanic Tribes, Archaeological Perspectives is opening its doors to the public. It gives a state of the art account of what archaeology can tell us about the Germanic tribes and it seeks to deconstruct the existing prevalent image in society and in the public. In the second part, it puts on display how the Berlin Prehistoric Museum itself has dealt with a topic in its history. So it's like a meta exhibition too. Since the history of modern Germany shows how the history and archaeology of the Germanic tribes has been mystified and politically instrumentalized, most notably during national socialism, but also still today. And there's a new cultural war going on as the alt-right or the new right, as they call themselves, or like to call themselves, is challenging museums everywhere, but also in Germany, of course, with their own agendas and challenged the missions of the museums that I work for. So we designed a workshop that counters such movements. Students learn how history is a construct that produces an image and they learn how to analyze and deconstruct this image. They explore the reasons why the topic of the Germanic tribes, die Germanen in German, lends itself well to political instrumentalization and they analyze how the extreme and alt-right movements use this topic in their symbols and codes and their cultural politics today and how they are using the site of the museum as a stage to showcase and broadcast their right-wing ideologies. And also sometimes how they mask these ideologies in mainstream thought. All right, so to give you an example on the, I'm showing you three pictures and I just said that we're using the objects to learn about codes and symbols. So on the left side, you see a little bronze ornament from the late sixth or early seventh century of the common era, which is basically three to 400 years after the Germanic tribes could have produced this. So this thing is, this object is much younger and it is not Germanic at all. It is on display in the museum, in the prehistoric museum, which is housed in the Neuse Museum on the museum island in Berlin. It is not part of the Germanic tribes exhibit. It is in a different room that deals with the Middle Ages, as it should. It was, that's what the archeologists have found out and what they theorize. It was used as an ornament on women's belts and as an ornament basically. On the middle of central, central image shows how, or shows an ornament that is, that can still be seen today in the vivis book, which is a castle in Westphalia, in East Westphalia, that the national socialists refurbished in the 1930s and 40s as a special SS castle or SS leaders and gatherings. And this isn't one of the towers. It's a floor ornament. And you can see the, you can see the parallels. You can see how the ornament on the left served that was worn on the belt, served as an example or yeah, as a also pictorial visual example for the other symbol that the SS used. Just a little bit more background here. The national socialists had an own office for dealing with Germanic heritage. And then they also had sometimes even a little bit of a, well, conflictual situation with another office that the SS had, the also Germanic heritage, it's called Ahnenerbe and that office sponsored many archeological excavations that were made in order to trace back the so-called Aryans to the Germans and to find more historical and archeological facts to argue for white supremacy and a racist composition of society, of course. So this, as it came later to be known, Black Sun was put into the Davis book and which meaning the Nazis attributed to this ornament is unknown. It came, it had a second career or yeah, the Black Sun had a second career in neo-fascist and extreme right-wing movements and it still is going on because if you look on the right-hand picture, you can see a neo-fascist rally. You can see the NPD flag, the nationalist party of Germany, which is under surveillance, of course. You can see the young nationalists, its youth organization flag. You can see a German imperial flag with a Prussian eagle on it and then you can see that Black Sun flag which has had a remarkable career since the early 1990s. It is used worldwide as a symbol for neo-fascist organizations and it has come to serve as a stand-in for the Swastika because showing the Swastika in Germany is unconstitutional, it's illegal. You can get arrested for that. But this actually, this symbol is allowed. And we are tracing basically, are we showing that how the national socialists in their instrumentalization of archaeology and history didn't show away from making mistakes or accepting that something that clearly was not Germanic was Germanic. And then you can see that the neo-fascist movements who also like to put themselves in the traditions of the Germanic tribes can make two connections, one to fascism and one to the Germans as they call them and to use a romanticized image, which is easy to create because archaeology and both history leave us with a lot of void still, although we know quite a bit about the Germanic tribes, it leaves us with a lot of voice to be filled and that is why this whole topic is so vulnerable to instrumentalizations and political ideologies. So this is a workshop that we'll start next week and we also already have a couple of bookings and we are excited to see what will happen. Just one more thing to notice or to note the urgency and relevance of this. In my Twitter feed, I received a tweet about a young person who is very actively engaged in anti-fascist activism and he received a death threat, like five lines of racial slurs and we're gonna get you plus him hanging from a tree so he would be hanged and next to that was the same sign of the black sun. So it is being used in a dangerous manner. It is a threat to our democratic society and to our social fabric. So let me talk a bit more what putting together this education program for this exhibit means or meant for us and means for the program. For the purpose of designing this, we reached out to institutions who could consult with us, experts in anti-fascist activism, anti-fascist education and prevention of right wing violence and activism. We also recruited educators with experience in teaching how to deal with conspiracy theories, fake news and neo-fascism. And on the basis of our consultations with experts, we developed a plan to counter all efforts of right wing activists to disrupt the exhibition. All this was new to the museum and going forward with it now, we will observe and learn for our future programs. And with that, I come to another aspect. Speaking of observing and learning, the good thing about this project is that it features a built-in assessment component, a transdisciplinary working group consisting of education experts with whom I'm working on an agenda to establish political education in museum contexts. While it's one purpose is to evaluate our education programs, it's real potential lies in its function as an interest group or maybe even pressure group, in light of what we've heard before from Karen, who can set into motion the changes within the museum necessary to make political education an integral part of its mission, thereby expanding it to meet the new museum definition proposed, but unfortunately not accepted by ICOM. I don't know if you remember that, but let me put that into on display here or quote from it, museums are democratizing inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the past and the futures. Acknowledging and addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artifacts and specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people. They are participatory and transparent and work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collect, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit and enhance understandings of the world, aiming to contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary well-being. I find this a very good definition and I'm sad that it didn't come to pass, but maybe we can use this as an inspiration for our work. So the working group is thus the centerpiece of an outreach, in-reach process, both, that this project entails. Together we discuss politicizing museum education. We are thinking through the fact that museum, that the museum as such cannot be not political and that we have to act accordingly, not least because we carry a high social responsibility. So if that has sparked your interest and your curiosity and would like to exchange ideas or thoughts about this, in addition to your general questions in the Q&A, please get in touch with me. I am showing you my, so sorry, this is what I just read. This is my email address. I have another one that I left on Hopin or get in touch with me here. It will be in the speakers lounge. So I'm looking forward to discussing with you. I think we have another 10 minutes or maybe even a little bit more. Thank you. Okay, yeah, please feel free to ask questions. We can see them in the chat. Okay, so. You see it, there's Lawrence was asking what kind of workshops are you offering? For young people. So one of the workshops I described, that was the one for countering conspiracy theories and fake news, by the way of looking at the Germanic tribes exhibit. And well, trying to come up with ideas how to counter these. The other one that we have just put together and this, which is also starting in the fall is quite more open. So we invite young people, usually they're school groups who come. We invite them to the house bastion. There they gather and then they develop questions. Then they venture out to the museum island where they have a number of museums that can attend art museums, archeological museums and some ethnology stuff too. The home is not far, but that is to open later. And there they can explore with their own interests and their own questions, connections between their life worlds and what moves them and what has moved other people in the past and what they have produced in terms of objects and address the big questions that we find in the human experience. That sounds very abstract and I wish I could tell you a little bit more about it but they have not started yet. So I can't give you any examples but we have developed a couple of methodologies how to make these connections happen and to have the young people talk about how they find the museums, how they, if they perceive of them as, well, spaces of power, political spaces, if they can make connections and if not and if yes, how they, what that means and if not, what the museum could change. Thanks. Makarita wants to know, it's a written text or links that describes your work. Could be also in German, as she said. Yes, so right now we have a web page at the Hausbastian. You can access that via my profile here in Hop-In or you can just put in a search engine, Hausbastian and there you will find the two workshops as ads and then you will find the, you will find a project description, a brief one plus the fact that there will be a working group and I'm just putting together the working group and if you are interested in having a conversation about that we can do that one-on-one or in a digital format sometime in the future. And a really difficult question, but it's very important. Can you measure some impact? Impact is also. Yeah, I would love to measure impact. Yes, so yes, we are measuring impact. We have developed a couple of evaluation tools within the museum and with our colleagues so we can standardize this and not like compare apples with oranges because the Hausbastian is only one of many education instances. It's the center, right? But every museum has its own and there's even the lab border, the poster of which is behind you, Claudia. Yeah, exactly, that tries out new concepts and formats and we are learning from them too, but we will also get in touch with outsiders who can help us do that in the working group. Fine, and do you have a number, just amount of how many people? You're working with, is there a question? Oh, okay, oh, good question. So I'm in the phase now of reaching out to as many experts as I can and to see whether they're interested and then put together a working group that might consist of several parallel or working groups working in parallel and then having them meet in something like a conference once a quarter or once and a half year. No, how many young people they also want to know, your audience? Well, usually they come in with their schools and so, well, we'll have to see how many bookings we get. I can't, I have no numbers yet. You can ask me that in half a year. And again, the question, is there a website or a link people want to inform themselves? Yeah, go to my profile here or go to Locate Statliche Museen in Berlin or House Bastian, put that in. It's, you can find that on my Twitter, you can find that on my LinkedIn, you can find that on my profile here. Okay, but the last question that I want to ask because it sounds really interesting, what is your opinion on the critical discussions around the introduction of problematic ideologies or ideas in educational settings? Yeah, where's that idea? Last question from Julia Puna. Okay, I'll pull my idea or ideas in it. That may have a different effect. How can you rise political awareness? Okay, yeah. Well, we have a lot of memorial centers and also documentation centers in Germany dealing with the past of National Socialism or of the SED, like Communist dictatorship and we can learn from them. We are not displaying any Nazi artifacts. We're just showing how the artifacts that served as examples for the Nazis to be instrumentalized. So I know it's difficult. I mean, the Deutsches Historisches Museum, the German Historical Museum, they have things like that on display and it still works. But I know, so with school groups, it will be easier to monitor what the outcome is and we have our educators who are experienced in working with school groups and working in political education to take a stand and to explicitly discuss if something is okay or not okay. In the exhibit itself, we have devised a plan of how to counter that. So there will be no tolerance policy. If there's any proclamations of national socialists, racists, anti-Semitic nationalists, thought, verbalized or in symbols, these people will be extorted out of the museum, so. And are there also special tools that you're offering? Besides the content? Yeah, yes, but these tools are used in the workshop themselves. So I can't talk about them yet because we have to test them. Okay, fine. Yeah, I see there's so many questions. Okay, the last one, what is there? I have some questions for you. What are the participation levels of audiences? Audience, community in your education project. And what did you do? Well, to maintain the relationship with your audience after the project finished. Yeah, again, it was a long term. What are you doing? Well, very good. So it has not finished, it has just started and we are keeping that in mind. So one workshop I had with experts yesterday for the working group, not an education workshop but a professionalization workshop, was that we talked exactly about sustainability, long-term effects, evaluation, but also engaging young people. Also, and involving, and this is very much in term with what David Viome said, involving people as experts in our programs so that basically we will change perspectives and have, and this is my goal, have young people educate museum specialists. Yeah. Right? So, and this sounds a little bit lofty right now but you'll find a format for that. Thank you, Leonhard, so far for this interesting presentations and all the questions. I want to say again, you have time, you are available, no? To chat with the community in our speaker lounge. Please use this opportunity that we offer you from one to two o'clock and then you can chat or speak directly via video with Leonhard's meeting again and asking the questions that haven't been answered so far. Yes, and please do send me other messages. I'm here, I don't know what's on the program. And you will be there. Yeah, yeah. What's on the program now, Claudia? Now as a program, we have now a little break for 10 minutes. You can do the networking function again, meet people that you haven't seen before, take a coffee or take a rest and then we will meet again on the main stage with our panel to social impact. Right, can I have that chat history somehow? You want to have the chat history? Yes. Is that possible to get the chat history for Leonhard? I'm just asking. Yes, we are copying it. We are copying the questions so that you've got everything. Super. So Claudia, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to Sebastian Jabosch for tech support. This worked very well. And I'm looking forward to chatting with you later and seeing you again. Yes, we're doing the same. So see you later. See you later, bye-bye. Bye.