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| March 2005 Newsletter | |
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Forthcoming
Event at Messina Palace The
2005 Conference on Music Education in Malta Organised
by the Music Education National Convention (Malta) Members
interested in attending |
Important
notice to students: |
The German-Maltese Circle invites members aged between 28 and 35 years who are interested to be nominated to attend the Fifth European Young Leaders’ Conference which will be held in Turkey (near Istanbul) between the 29th June and the 3rd July 2005 to contact the office by not later than Wednesday, 9th March. The Conference is designed to give participants from all over Europe the opportunity to exchange their ideas through informal and frank discussions about current issues of European interest. The working language will be English. Topics which will be covered are foreign affairs, domestic, economic and social policies. Leadership potential together with academic and professional achievement will be considered when choosing the representative from Malta. Atlantik-Brücke e.V. (Berlin) the organisers of this Conference will be covering all expenses including travel expenses.  |
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| Schiller Year 2005 | |
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Between
1787 and 1798, Schiller wrote no plays, instead devoting himself to
historical studies--The Revolt of the Netherlands and A
History of the
Thirty Years War--which
won him fame as a historian. In 1794, however, Schiller established
a close friendship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Under Goethe's
influence, Schiller soon returned his attentions to the craft of
playwriting and, during the period
that followed, composed his most mature dramas including Wallenstein's
Camp (1798), The Piccolomini (1799), Wallenstein's
Death (1799), Mary
Stuart (1800), The
Maid of Orleans (1801), and William Tell (1804.) In 1799,
he took up residence in Weimar where he and Goethe collaborated to
make the Weimar Theatre one of the most prestigious theatrical
houses in Germany. On
May 9, 1805, 200 years ago, Friedrich Schiller died of tuberculosis.
He was only forty-six years old. |
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LITTLE
RED RIDING HOOD |
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Walter
Sauer (ed.), 20 Rotkäppchen europäisch-polyglott. Hardcover, 104 pages, 20 illustrations. |
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Jacob
and Wilhelm Grimm were encouraged to collect the fairy tales by two
of the leading German Romantic poets of the group of the
Heidelberg-based authors (Heidelberger Romantiker), Achim von
Arnim and Clemens Brentano.
Albert Friggieri, our President, himself a graduate of
Heidelberg University, was asked by the publishers to translate the
German Rotkäppchen original into the Maltese Barnuza
Hamra. The
book, which conveys an impressive picture of the linguistic
diversity and richness of the European Union, is a feast for
language enthusiasts and lends itself particularly well to a
comparative reading of the different versions. It includes a short
introduction by Peter Straub, president of the Committee of Regions
of the EU and speaker of the Baden-Württemberg Landtag, a
preface by Walter Sauer, as well as twenty illustrations by
different artists from various countries. |
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Joe
Borg Camilleri
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Many
students of the German-Maltese Circle will know Joe, who attended
classes at the Circle from 1998 to 2002 and stopped - ‘paused’
as he put it - after having passed the Zentrale
Mittelstufen-Prüfung (ZMP). During this period he had also
studied German in Nürtingen, Baden-Württemberg, and worked there
for three months as an Au Pair. During his stay in Germany, Joe also
managed to obtain his Zertifikat Deutsch (ZD) in Pforzheim. His idea is to continue with
German, possibly also French, after completion of his studies. He
graduated in Diplomatic Studies in 2004, and as a student at the
European Development and Research Centre (EDRC) of the University of
Malta, he now follows a B.Euro (Hons) course in European Studies
with International Relations as secondary area; his preferred
subjects are International Relations and Comparative Politics. His
dream is to assist in improving relations in the Mediterranean
Region as a professional, perhaps in politics, or to join the
Diplomatic Service. Joe
grew up in the village of Zurrieq, where he enjoyed SCUBA diving in
the clear waters around the Blue Grotto near his home village. After
finishing his post secondary schooling in 1992, he
worked for eight years in the Electoral Office, during which
period his duties included the highly
demanding preparation for five nation-wide elections. He counted:
the General Elections of 1996, 1998, and 2003, as well as the
Referendum for the EU Membership in 2003; and the nation-wide
election of the members of the European Parliament in 2004.
It was during
the first years working for the Electoral
Office that Joe’s interest in German language and Germany awoke.
The Staff Development Organisation of the Civil Service was offering
a programme promoting further education including also German as a
subject. “And I chose German because I liked the German way of
living, the culture, their care for the environment, and their
gentle way of saying things”, were the words with which Joe
explained his choice. With
his first Government- sponsored course at the German-Maltese Circle
he obtained his O-Levels in German. But he did not stop there. As
shown above, he continued diligently studying the language and by
now he has reached a level allowing him to accept an internship of
six weeks in summer in Germany. This was made possible after the
Maltese Embassy in Berlin and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in
Valletta requested the German-Maltese Circle to directly nominate a
suitable candidate, speaking German and studying Diplomacy and
International Affairs in Malta to go to Germany in summer. Following
consultations with Herr Dieter Grasediek, MdB, Joe Borg Camilleri
was nominated by the German-Maltese Circle’s Executive Committee,
and will spend the summer studying federalism and related subjects
while, so he added, “watching how a German politician works”. Today, Joe and Laura and their little baby son Kristoff enjoy the friendship of quite a few Germans living here in Malta as well as abroad, some of whom are equally enthusiastic motorcyclists. These motorcyclists - all over the world - are a special crowd; some may even be quite wild, I am told. The Maltese riders have formed the Motorcycle and Scooter Association (Malta) in 2004, and Joe has been its president since its foundation. The aims of this Association are to promote safety on the roads, to promote sharing of skill information among its members in order to increase safety in the motor cyclist community and to pursue more appropriate driving and theoretical tests for motorcyclists. He adds: “Such aims should result in better quality of motorcycle driving, thus reducing the probabilities of traffic accidents where motorcyclists are involved.” And
some of his time Joe still spends in the Library of the
German-Maltese Circle, he finds it
“really very well equipped and organized”. Every now and
then he meets there with former co-students of his first courses,
and they might even go out for dinner together. – One of the many
examples of friendships formed at the German-Maltese Circle and
lasting for a long time. |
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The Goethe-Medaille 2005 |
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This year, Prof.Dr. Jutta Limbach, President of the Goethe Institute will award the Goethe-Medaille in the Residenzschloss in Weimar to the following personalities:
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Professor
Dr. Samuel Assefa
(Ethiopia - b. 1956) studied and taught Philosophy in the USA with
emphasis on German idealism. He is Vice-President of the Addis Abeba
University and a close advisor of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. In
this position he has promoted bilateral relations between Germany
and Ethiopia especially through the re-establishment of the German
language lectorship at the Addis Abeba University, the procurement
of new accommodation for the Goethe Institute within the University
and the assumption of the organizational responsibility for the
Philosophical Forum of the Goethe Institute in Addis Abeba - today
one of the few intellectual meeting places of Ethiopia. |
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 Professor
Dr. Ruth Krüger
(U.S.A. - b. 1931) was born in Vienna, the daughter of Jewish
parents. At the age of twelve years she was deported together with
her mother to the concentration camp in Theresienstadt, one year
later to Auschwitz Birkenau and then into the labour camp in
Christianstadt. She managed to escape from the labour camp towards
the end of the war. Ruth Krüger emigrated to the USA in 1947 and
studied Library Sciences in New York and later Germanistik at the
University of California in Berkeley. Specialising on German author
Lessing and German playwright and poet Kleist, she taught from 1980
to 1986 at the Princeton University. Today Ruth Krüger holds the
chair of Germanistik in Irvine, California.
Following an accident which left Ruth Krüger for weeks in
bed, she published a book in 1988, which describes and reflects her
childhood and youth in the Third Reich as well as the first postwar
years in Germany and her emigration to the USA. These memoirs have
been translated into German in 1992 under the title "weiter
leben".
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 Yoko
Tawada
(Japan - b. 1960) is regarded both in Japan and in Germany as one of
the most renowned authoresses of her generation. She studied
literatary science with emphasis on Russian literature in Tokyo and
Germanistik in Hamburg. Since 1982 she has lived in Hamburg and
regularly publishes poems, novels and stories in the German and
Japanese languages for which she received among others the highest
Japanese literary award (the Akutagawa Prize) and the German
Adalbert von Chamisso Prize. Mrs.
Tawada takes part in literary events in Goethe Institutes and in
other cultural institutes world-wide presenting a cosmopolitan
picture of Germany.
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 Professor
Dr. Dmytro Volodymyrovych Satonsky
(Ukraine - b. 1922) is the son of a former high state and party
official of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, murdered under
the Stalin regime. Satonsky studied foreign languages and literature
science in Kiev and worked after the war as an interpreter in the
Soviet military administration in Germany. After Stalin’s death
Satonsky taught German at the University of Kiev and between 1960
and 1961 was Dean of the Faculty for Philology at the same
University. Since 1961 he has worked at the Shevchenko-Institute for
Literature of the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. There he established
the Department for Foreign Literature, which he headed in the years
1962 to 1974 and which he has been managing since 1986. Since 1967
Satonsky has been a member of the International Association of
Literary Critics and since 1974 a member of the board of the Goethe
Gesellschaft in Weimar. Since the beginning of his scientific
career, Satonsky has lobbied for the spreading of German culture in
the Ukraine, in Russia and in other Slavic countries.
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 Simone
Young
(Australia - b. 1961) had her debut as orchestra conductor in 1985
at the Sydney Opera House and in 1986 at the Opera House of Cologne.
In 1986 the Federal Government of Australia awarded her the
"Young Australian of the Year" title. She worked for four
years as assistant to Daniel Barenboim in Bayreuth and in Berlin
after which she was engaged at the State Opera of Berlin, at the
Viennese State Opera and at the Bastille in Paris. In the nineties -
up to her appointment as the Music Director of the Opera House of
Australia in the year 2001 - she directed in nearly all the capitals
of Europe and in the USA. In Austria she directed the Viennese Philharmonic as
the first woman conductor. Also
in Berlin, she was the first woman conductor to direct the complete
“Ring” of Richard Wagner. In
close cooperation with the Goethe Institute in Sydney, she promoted
performances of German opera and also initiated contacts between
young artists from Australia and German-speaking countries. Simone
Young will be the General Music Director
and Artistic Director of the Hamburg State Opera and of the
Philharmonic State Orchestra of Hamburg as from the start of the
season 2005-2006. |
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© 2006 German-Maltese Circle. All rights
reserved. Terms of Use - Disclaimer
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For
ten years, from 1812 until 1822, the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm
Grimm collaborated to collect and publish their famous Kinder-
und Hausmärchen. Last year, the well-known fairy tales of the
Grimm Brothers were nominated for inclusion in the UNESCO programme Memory
of the World. The stories have been translated into over one
hundred languages spoken on five continents and certainly must be
considered as part of the common heritage of mankind. 
Once
a year, on the 22nd March, the anniversary of the death of Goethe,
the Goethe Institute awards the Goethe Medal, which since 1975 has
been recognized also as an official decoration of the Federal
Republic of Germany.