The Second Seminar of Remember&Reimagine: Feminist Policy in Practice & German Experience
In July, we hosted the second seminar of our educational project Remember&Reimagine: Never Again Together – A Feminist Approach. This time, we welcomed our group of 10 Czech and German students in Berlin as we dove deeper into topics related to feminist foreign policy: What does it look like in practice? And what does Germany’s experience with the policy tell us?
After an introduction session, where we reminded ourselves of key takeaways from the first seminar and set our intentions for this one, we welcomed the first speaker. Dr. Karoline Färber, a postdoctoral researcher at University of Erfurt, talked about Germany’s historical responsibility and how it was reflected in the German FFP. We explored the limits of German historical responsibility, notably its selectivity and tendency to ignore German atrocities during colonialism. This selectivity not only shapes Germany’s foreign policy towards its former colonies, but also creates a hierarchy in remembrance culture which prioritizes remembrance of certain groups over others.
We began the second day with an input from Shila Block, a project manager at medica mondiale, who gave us an insight into how feminist values are implemented in practice. She explained medica mondiale’s work and provided key principles of feminist development cooperation. This session was followed by a workshop facilitated by Niklas Balbon, a research fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute. We explored the topic of feminist peacebuilding by developing a fictional feminist peacebuilding mission.
We continued with inputs after lunch. Barbara Mittelhammer, an independent policy analyst, evaluated German feminist foreign policy. She noted its successes, such as focus and investment into development cooperation and humanitarian aid, and also highlighted its shortcomings, such as the continuation of German support to Israel despite the genocide it is commiting in Gaza.
We wrapped up the day by a feminist tour of Berlin. We visited places that were shaped by feminist thinkers and activists from the 20th century and reflected on the impact they had on the city, historical events such as WW2 as well as feminist thinking.
The third day was all about reflection. During a group discussion, we discussed which historical stories are being forgotten these days. We compared Czech and German perspectives and shared our personal experiences and relationships with historical events. We also brainstormed how we can uphold the “Never Again” amidst rising far-right extremism. The seminar ended with an evaluation – not only of this seminar, but also of the whole project.
We would like to thank our partner European Academy Berlin for co-organizing the seminar and the Czech-German Fund for the Future and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Prague for supporting the seminar.