Zeit-Fragen and Current Concerns are again represented at the Leipzig Book Fair this year. The stand is situated in Hall 4, booth A107. In addition, in the context of the reading festival “Leipzig reads”, Zeit-Fragen/Current Concerns invite the visitors of the fair to several events and to three evening lectures followed by a discussion.
It was the Swiss businessman Henry Dunant, born in 1828 in Geneva, grown up in a humanist family, who witnessed a terrible war in Solferino, in the vicinity of Lake Garda in Italy in 1859. In 1862 he wrote the world-shaking book “A Memory of Solferino”. In this book, he already formulated the thoughts and tasks of the Red Cross, which was to become a globally active movement. With the founding of the Red Cross in 1863 and the first Geneva Convention 1864, international humanitarian law evolved to become a mandatory standard. Geneva became headquarter of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Red Cross means the last hope of humanity for countless people in need and in war zones. Lisette Bors’ book about Henry Dunant has the great advantage that it contains valuable contributions to the discussion of fundamental ethical values with children and adolescents, in schools and at home.
Thursday, 12 March 2015,
10 – 10.30 am, Lesebude 1: hall 2,
stand E 307
The cooperative movement can look back on a successful history – auspicious also for the future. From the history of cooperatives we can draw very valuable conclusions for the present. It is the tradition of the cooperative movement to address current socio- and economic political challenges and to develop respectively implement constructive problem-solving approaches. The cooperative principle is characterised by a high degree of participation, involvement and codetermination; Therefore, the cooperative is often preferred to other forms of enterprise. In our modern times, the basic cooperative principle can demonstrate new solution approaches, especially when it comes to the areas of the provision with basic supplies. A stable supply of basic requirements for the population – catering to local/regional needs – is a prerequisite for the common good. Within the framework of a cooperative this can be set up and maintained in a very promising way.
Thursday, 12 March 2015,
1.30 – 2 pm, Sachbuchforum, hall 3, stand E 211
The family – father, mother and siblings – naturally form the first protective community into which a child is born and without which a child cannot become a person who is independent as well as capable of forming and maintaining successful and satisfactory relationships. A child experiences its parents as the “first people”, to whom it naturally relates and from whom it learns all the fundamental values necessary to the culture into which it is born. In this first “life partnership” the child learns through its experiences how and whether people can live together peacefully and what values, knowledge and modes of behaviour it will need for this. This learning process may take place more or less successfully. In the family, the adolescent girl can identify with her mother and the boy as a soon-to-be man can identify with his father. On an emotional level, they already both acquire the armoury they will be able to draw on later in life as a grown woman or man. In the years spent in the family the child absorbs the practiced values that characterise the coexistence of people of its cultural environment. After 1945, the family underwent a change in the FRG that was foreign to the citizens of the GDR. This historical aspect will also be considered.
Thursday, 12 March 2015,
at 7.30 pm, Location: Die Brücke –
Begegnungsstätte Leipzig,
Zollikofer Strasse 21, 04315 Leipzig,
am Volkmarsdorfer Markt
Every citizen has the option of directly influencing local politics in his municipality by means of a public petition and a subsequent referendum. Citizens can thus effect a direct democratic correction of decisions made by the elected representatives. In Rielasingen citizens exercised their democratic rights and conducted a referendum aiming at the preservation of their secondary schools. The Red-Green state government of Baden-Württemberg wanted to abolish these established, good schools and introduce the controversial community schools state wide instead. The initiators will report how they succeeded in realising the referendum and what were their experiences.
Friday, 13 March 2015,
10.30-11 am, Sachbuchforum,
hall 3, stand E 211
Reading fiction achieves something fundamental: By literary texts we experience the world through the eyes of another human being. We experience what the hero or heroine in our story experiences; we feel with her, with her fears, her threats but also with her pleasures and highlights of life. This participation on the life of the other person, this sharing his path, this sharing of the life perspective of another from one’s own inner experience – no other medium is able to perform, neither the comic strip nor the film, nor music. While reading we are ourselves forming pictures of life, given to us by the text (text actually means texture), depending on our experiences and our imagination. As long as we are reading meaningful texts, we are ourselves looking for meaning in life. This is something fundamental in a media world which is trying to substitute life’s meaning by superficial adventures, thrill and the deceptive image of a world that is one continuous party or an adventure trip.
Friday, 13 March 2015, 1 – 1.30 pm,
Literaturcafe, hall 4, stand B 600.
Pressed by the ongoing globalisation, economic structures changed along with the economic policies and the employment situation. The process of concentration at the economic level leads to migration out of the less densely-populated regions and leaves its traces also in the deficient provision of the region with public goods. The school, the post-office, the doctor disappear from the village, because everything is oriented towards the law of “increase in sales and earnings by augmenting quantities”. Merging schools, closing businesses because of lacking competitiveness, etc. are the order of the day.
This clear-cutting is propagated and accepted as irrefutable as well as the following loss of life quality, security of provision and jobs and is legitimated by the costs that might be saved. The social-political and social consequences of centralisation and concentration are recklessly ignored. However, we may ask the question: Is this economic doctrine of low costs at all sustainable and viable for the future from the perspective of national economy? What would be the consequences if one replaced the principle “Efficiency through size” by the principle “Quality of life through decentralised structures”?
In the context of this event we will answer questions dealing with the basic supply of the rural regions and how the still existing structures might be used and promoted in a better way, in order to meet the tasks of securing livelihoods.
Friday, 13 March 2015, at 7 pm,
lawyers Vieweger, Hartmann and partners, Chopinstrasse 9, 04103 Leipzig (center)
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