Goethe-Institut marks three decades since it set up operations in China with a 30-hour event
The Goethe-Institut is celebrating its 30th anniversary in China this year. And one of the highlights was a 30-hour celebration, with concerts, performances, art installations, film screenings, lectures and events for children in November at its base in Beijing’s 798 art zone.
Meanwhile, in 30 events held from September through early December, the organization held discussions addressing 30 essential questions about the future covering human and social development, art, technology, language and gender studies.
“The celebration is a condensed version of our work,” says Clemens Treter, director of Goethe-Institut China.
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Visitors learn simple dialog in German during an open course at the 30-hour celebration of the Goethe-Institut’s 30th anniversary in China. Photos by Li Yinjun / For China Daily |
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German artist Axel Malik creates “unreadable signs” on the windows of the venue of the Goethe-Institut China in Beijing’s 798 art zone. He also lectures, providing his answer to the question: “Can we think without language?”. |
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A jazz performance during the 30th anniversary celebration in Beijing. |
The venue at the 798 art zone, decorated in green, is considered a cultural space where free talks, artistic productions and creative activities using new technologies are frequently offered.
Visiting German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said, “Among the many branches of the Goethe-Institut I’ve been to around the world, this is one of the coolest spaces. Congratulations for having such a place filled with creativity.”
Steinmeier made the comments on Dec 9 in the course of a discussion with scholars from a variety of fields on the challenges brought by the digital revolution.
As the cultural arm of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Goethe-Institut, which is dedicated to promoting knowledge of the German language and fostering international cultural cooperation, founded its China chapter in Beijing in 1988 after talks by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and then-German chancellor Helmut Kohl.
Sinologist Michael Kahn-Ackermann, the founding director of the institute, says the founding was a complicated and difficult process that took more than four years of negotiation. Ackermann was among the earliest overseas students who came to China in 1975.
In the 1980s, he translated books into German, including those of Nobel laureate Mo Yan; two-time winner of China’s prestigious Maodun Literature Prize Zhang Jie; and author Wang Shuo.
Ackermann attributes the founding of the Goethe-Institut partly to China’s reform and opening-up and says the branch in Beijing was the only independent foreign cultural institution on the Chinese mainland for 16 years after it was set up.
Currently, the organization also has libraries and language centers in Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shenyang, Qingdao, Nanjing, Chongqing, Xi’an and Wuhan.
At the opening ceremony of the 30-hour celebration, a number of Chinese scholars and artists shared their experiences of learning and working with Goethe-Institut China.
Jia Guoping, a composer and a professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, attended a German language course there 25 years ago, shortly before going to Germany for further studies with a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service.
In 2007, Jia started working with the institute as part of a three-year chamber music program, during which orchestra and piano students from the Central Conservatory of Music had the opportunity to receive instruction from principal musicians in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
Meanwhile, Jia launched a corresponding chamber music composition competition called Con Tempo – which is still running – in which the winners’ works are performed by students attending the program.
Later, in 2011, the Central Conservatory of Music set up the Ensemble ConTempo Beijing. The ensemble later made its debut in Europe, sponsored by Goethe-Institut China.
According to Jia, his team is now working with the institute on a “digital concert hall” program that screens recordings of some of the Berlin Philharmonic’s concerts.
“Our cooperation with the Goethe-Institut China has promoted the development of contemporary music in China,” says Jia, adding that the younger generation of Chinese musicians are open-minded, and that the institute is responsible for the change.
A growing number of music students at the Central Conservatory of Music are seeking to do further studies in Germany, a frontier of modern music, and many of them are studying at the Goethe-Institut China.
Clemens von Goetze, Germany’s ambassador to China, says that China and Germany recognize the differences between the two countries and both want further cooperation.
Even though there are collisions and setbacks in cultural exchanges, Goetze hopes more people from both countries will master each others’ languages, something the Goethe-Institut China has helped with over the past 30 years.
Treter said the institute also attaches great importance to training German teachers in China.
Marla Stukenberg, the regional director of the Goethe-Institut in East Asia, said: “We firmly believe that the various problems and challenges humanity is facing can be resolved with dialogue and that the talks should not be limited to bilateral exchanges. The cultural and educational programs promoted by the institute around the world are an example of this.”
(China Daily European Weekly 12/21/2018 page21)