Pedagogic concept of the youth meeting centre YMC Golm

The German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräber Fürsorge) built up the project youth meeting centre Golm (YMC Golm) to enlarge the range of peace pedagogical offers for schools classes with emphasis on German-Polish relations together with its partners. At the moment the Volksbund is the only wargraves service worldwide that runs and owns youth meeting centres. Currently there are four of them: Belgium (Lommel), France (Niederbronn-les-Bains), the Netherlands (Ysselsteyn) and Germany (Kamminke). Each year more than 8000 young people take part in youth projects in our YMCs.

The YMC Golm
• offers rooms for international and German-German meetings of different groups,
• inspires to deal with ones own history and the history of neighbouring countries and helps to attack prejudice and create common future visions,
• uses different aspects like regional, historical, political, cultural, geographical and ecological aspects as basis for projects,
• enables pupils to establish a close connection to individual fates by encountering the graveyards and working with reports of contemporary witnesses,
• encourages young people to take responsibility for peace, their own interaction with others and learn from history for today and the future,
• enables and supports meetings of European classes and youth groups, while specially enforcing the language improvement and the historical-political education.

This Project of the Volksbund is sponserd by:
• the Euroregion Pomerania,
• the Federal Republic of Germany, represented by the Federal Ministery for Families, the Elderly, Women and Youth,
• the Country Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,
• the foundation „Pamiec“, Warszawa, and
• the German-Polish Youth Office.


Reconciliation upon the graves — work for peace — foreigners become friends
The war cemetery Golm asks for a continuous active preoccupation with our history. Using the cemetery as a place for education and emphasising its function as a place of remembrance are two important aspects of the work of the YMC Golm

• School classes and youth groups use the war cemetery as a educational place: ’Learning outside school’

• Educating multiplicators first of all means offering seminars for German and foreign teachers. Topics, amongst others, are the multiple, not only verbal, barriers of communication between teachers from East and West Germany, that derive from different socialisations and educations. The different theoretical and practical concepts of mediation of history in memorial sites in the GDR and the old Federal Republic of Germany must be dealt with.

• Institutions of education for adolescents and adults (i.e. churches, labor unions, army, police and so on) use the YMC Golm for their educational events.

• The YMC Golm offers guided tours and support of visitor groups of the war graveyard by qualified personal.

• Relatives (of victims of the bomb war) will be taken care of an can be integrated in the pedagogical work as contemporary witnesses.

• The YMC Golm is being used for the qualification and further education of voluntary and full time employees of the German War Graves Commission.

Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V.

Basics of the work with young people and schools of the German War Graves Commission

The pedagogical work of the German War Graves Commission is structured in four columns:

• cultural experiencing
• contiousness for ethical values
• understanding history
• political action

Youth projects of the Volksbund support the general cultural education. Cultural education shall enable young people to use, understand and deal with art, culture and everyday life in a reasonable way.

Youth projects of the Volksbund suit the purpose of the coalescence of the young generation in Germany and Europe, advance understanding and tolerance over borders, improve the dialogue between the generations and the integration of immigrants.

A basic focus of our work lies in the improvement of a consciousness for the democratic values of our society. Young people are enabled to take an active part in the creation and development of society and politics. They are provided with the possibility to contribute their interests in formal and informal ways of participation in a democratic and social conscious way. The connection of learning and acting is used to enable children and teenagers to create their own future.

Competences of understanding and evaluating information, the ability to use the medial resources and the reasonable use of media are key qualifications in a society of media and knowledge. Teaching and strengthening media competences is a continuous job of the youth projects of the Volksbund.

Youth projects of the Volksbund contribute to the historical education. This shall give young people knowledge about society and state, european and international politics including important developments in culture, science and economy. Pupils shall be able to judge over processes and conflicts in politics and society. The projects intention is to apprehend of one’s own rights and interests as well as learning and dealing with responsibility and duties for fellow people, society and the environment. They shall encourage to take part in the creation of a liberal and democratic state and society.

The international youth meetings of the Volksbund support young people from different nations in their personal experience of war and tyranny at the graves of victims of violence and war.
Common learning and working in the context of historical and political education is the main emphasis of the youth projects.
The youth projects of the Volksbund help young people to get to know other cultures and societies. This way they learn more about international connections and how to deal with them as well as to recognize their own situation and to encounter foreigners with understanding and tolerance. Further the youth meetings create a consciousness for the responsibility of the youth for the maintenance of peace and the creation of a world that offers more freedom and social justice.

A special challenge for the international youth projects of the Volksbund derive from the process of European integration. The young people shall be encouraged to engage themselves in the development of a democratic and liberal Europe, involving the states of Middle and Eastern Europe, and learn how to act solidly.

Didaktical basic scheme:

• INFORMATION and KNOWLEDGE: local, biographic, concrete.
• REFLEXION and ADAPTION: question, previous knowledge, experience, what was it like, how would I have experienced it, multiple perspectives.
• REALISATION and UNDERSTANDING: statement, judge, sort in, reject dictatorship, emotion, intellect, cognitive, emotional.
• ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT: Step in for human rights, respect ethical standarts, action oriented learning.

Youth projects: researching — learning — remembering — acting

• There is no prefixed „ready“ pedagogical concept for the work in youth projects of the Volksbund because the historical political education process is learning and evolving constantly and thus in a constant change.

• This educational work neither wants to give pupils „absolute truths“ or „right“ and „wrong“ pictures of the past, nor does it support a rushed identification with victims. It rather aims for a critical and individual examination of the history of the World Wars, dictatorship and Nazism that necessarily leaves questions open and allows complexity and ambiguity – but never denies respect for any victim!
Educational work in this form offers a lot of different possibilities, meaning that modules have to be worked out and will be offered.

• The youth meeting centres either own or work on permanent exhibitions that will be supplemented by results of ongoing projects. Centre of the exhibition is the historical place. The collections are built up multiperspectively and research so far neglected topics of the local and regional history. Exhibitions are essential parts of the new caretaking concept for visitors.

• Project oriented work seems to bet the ideal method to enable research, learning and remembrance for example in artistic approaches, in youth meetings or in projects with "remembrance books".

• For sure those process oriented forms of learning require more historical knowledge and skills than „classical“ methods. The volunteer and full time employees of the Volksbund as well as leaders and tutors of youth camps use those methods to initiate self-depended processes.

• The key elements of our educational work are:
- work with historical evidence,
- local connection and
- self-dependend work with history.

• There will be no ready-made „didactics of remembering“.

• There will be active work concerning remembrance, education and encountering that supports the meeting of people of different inheritance, age and education.

• This educational work involves subjective memories as well as situations in life and everyday experiences. The approach is to meet contemporary witnesses (as long as it is still possible) or watch interviews with them on video, read their letters and descriptions, visit documentations and exhibitions.

• The pedagogical work of the Volksbund lives on its plurality and the many different ways of learning.

• We emphasise that project leders and/or teachers have a counselling interview before the youth project. Combined trains of thought of project leaders and YMC leaders can form a program that is individually made for the group and leaves enough space and time for discovering learning. Depending on the length of the stay a specific “didactical package” will be created.

• By means of special exercises young people can discover and understand exhibitions and traces of history all by themselves. There are different possibilities, reaching from singular exercises, working out guidelines or going on discovering trips (model “peace-path Niederbronn”). Those discoveries can be traded and explained to other pupils. Instead of a receptive and passive learning there will be active learning and research.

• Current issues will be part in each project. Those could be questions about the matter of radicalism and the consequences of war and tyranny or a visit of institutions and companies.

Young people often have a lot of undifferentiated knowledge and prejudice and simply repeat opinions of their parents or the media. Therefore it is important to give a long term program to enable them to see themselves as part of history and find their responsibility of gathering knowledge. The youth projects of the Volksbund are part of this.

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