Message from the President

Dear members and friends of the German Maltese Circle, 

I am glad to have the opportunity to address you, through our Newsletter, which as from this issue will start to be published quarterly. The objective of this message is to outline the course our Organisation will be taking in the coming months. 

As you are surely aware, this year the Circle celebrates its 50^th Anniversary since its establishment, a very important milestone for our Association, which has the aim of promoting relations between Germany and Malta, especially though the promotion of the German Language and Culture here in Malta.  From humble beginnings, the Circle is today an established Institution which enjoys widespread recognition. The Committee has already undertaken the organisation of a number of events to commemorate this special Anniversary, and to celebrate in an appropriate manner the achievements registered over the past five decades.  The climax of our celebrations will be in October 2012. 

From this present vantage point, we have to look to the future, a future that presents its own challenges, and a future in which the Circle still has an important role to play. 

Through the various contacts that I have had the pleasure to make over the past weeks, it is evident that the prevailing impression of many people is that the Circle serves primarily to teach the German language. While tuition services are an element of our primary role, the Circle also aims to foster and  to promote relations between Malta and Germany through other varied fields of activity.  Within this context we will be strengthening our contacts with the Companies that support the Circle, and with other Associations sharing similar ideals.   

Germany has unquestionably a leading role in influencing the European economies in the years to come, and therefore it is both reasonable and logical to state, that the Circle should prepare its student members for this new reality. The teaching of the German language and culture should therefore be undertaken with the scope of equipping the students of today with the a language ability necessary to meet the challenges of tomorrow.  Learning German is after all a lifelong experience. 

It is with satisfaction to put on record the fact that in accordance with the Regulations agreed upon between the Goethe Institute and the Foreign Office, the responsibility for the German-Maltese Circle has been transferred to the Regional Office in Brussels.  The Goethe Institute in Brussels is in charge of all EU countries of the South-West European Region.  We look forward to enhanced cooperation and support.  This shift, I must admit has created concurrently a feeling of regret, since the relations between the Goethe Institute in Rome and the German-Maltese Circle were always very cordial.  

The times ahead will prove to be challenging and also exciting, and I am confident that together with the Committee, we will be able to meet these successfully to the benefit of our members, friends and also German Maltese relations. 

I would like to finally take this opportunity to thank all those who conveyed their kind wishes following my election as President.  I wish you all a Happy Easter.

Arthur Ciantar - President

Forthcoming Activities at Messina Palace

Wednesday, 4th April at 7.00p.m.
Liederabend: Rote Rosen für Hilde und Rilke

Ein besonderer Liederabend mit Liedern von Hildegard Knef sowie Gedichten von Rainer Maria Rilke.

Das Duo Holger Becker und Oliver Schöndube verspricht einen unterhaltsamen Abend mit Liedern und Chansons von Hildegard Knef. Neben weniger bekannten Stücken über ihre Stadt Berlin und die Melancholie des Lebens, dürfen natürlich die berühmten Roten Rosen nicht fehlen. Ergänzt wird das musikalische Porträt der Künstlerin mit besonders ausgewählten Gedichten von Rainer Maria Rilke.

Der Abend verbindet zwei ganz verschiedene Künstler: Frau und Mann, Sängerin und Schreiber, Roman verfasserin und Lyriker und die Generation vor- und nach dem 1. Weltkrieg. Was sie beide verbindet, ist die Liebe zur deutschen Sprache und, jeder in seinem Fach, ihre herausragende Bedeutung für unsere Kultur.

Holger Becker und Oliver Schöndube verneigen sich symbolisch vor den beiden großen deutschsprachigen Künstlern. Dabei werden sie weder Perücken aufsetzen, noch große Brillen oder Federboas tragen. Es geht vielmehr um eine verehrende, ganz eigene Interpretation der Werke von „Hilde und Rilke“.
 

Friday, 13th April at 6.30p.m.      German Film Evening:

Fassbinder's Classics  - "Lola" colour, 113 min., 1981

An honourable gentleman’s passion for a dishonourable woman provides the starting point for a wicked, provincial tale set during Germany’s “economic miracle”. An idealistic building commissioner falls in love with a young woman and only realizes later that a building contractor regularly employs her as his mistress.

With sub-titles in English.  Entrance free.

Thursday, 26th April at 7.00p.m.
Talk (in English) “Modern Tendencies in Autobiographical Writing” by Apl. Prof. Dr. Carola Hilmes from the Goethe Universität of Frankfurt
Organised in collaboration with the Department of German – University of Malta

The talk will start with an analysis of Gertrude Stein's book "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" (1933) to point out the problems (if not paradoxes) of the autobiographical mode, then referring to German writers such as Uwe Johnson and his autobiographical novel "Anniversaries" (1970pp) as an example of auto fictional writing, to conclude with Ilse Aichinger's "Film and Fatality" (2000) where we find an interesting montage of different elements.

Friday, 27th April at 6.30p.m.
Music Appreciation Evening led by Aldo Fenech:

"Franz Schubert: The Ninth Symphony"

An entertaining evening for classical music lovers dedicated to the life and works of Franz Schubert on the 215^th Anniversary of his birth.  The evening will evolve around a DVD of his “Opus Magnum” – the 9^th Symphony, a work very often compared to Beethoven’s 9^th, in scope and in vision.

An initiative of the German-Maltese Circle Classical Music Group

(This is a repeat of the evening held in February but interrupted due to unforeseen circumstances)

Friday, 11th May at 6.30p.m.         German Film Evening:

Fassbinder's Classics - "Satansbraten" colour, 112 min., 1975 – 1976

The crisis of identity, life and creativity of a poet who started out on the left wing, then lost his utopia and now believes he is Stefan George. Although Fassbinder calls it a comedy, this is one of his most bitter, aggressive and despairing works.  

With sub-titles in English.  Entrance free.

Friday, 25th May at 6.30p.m.
Music Appreciation Evening led by Martin Spiteri:

An initiative of the German-Maltese Circle Classical Music Group

From the Noticeboard

The German - Maltese Circle announces that applications for Goethe Institute Examinations (A1 to C1) have now closed.  Late applications will be accepted till latest 16^th April 2012.  An additional administrative fee of €20 will be charged for late applications.  All candidates will be receiving more information by mail.  The Examinations’ Timetable can be viewed on the Circle’s Noticeboard or by clicking here.

Easter Holidays:  Students attending our language classes are informed that no lessons will be held between Thursday, 5^th April till Tuesday, 10^th April – (both days inclusive).

The following Companies have to date registered as Corporate members of the German-Maltese Circle for the current year.  We thank these Companies for their financial support.

Adpro Instruments Ltd
Bavarian Technology Systems Ltd
Dold Industrial Automation Ltd
Hotset Malta Ltd 
Metallform Malta Ltd
MSC Malta Ltd

Eurocamp 2012 in Domstadt Zeitz – Opportunity for our young members

Germany's New President - Joachim Gauck

Joachim Gauck was elected as the new head of state of the Federal Republic of Germany on March 18, 2012 in Berlin with one of the best results in the history of the country’s federal presidential elections. Gauck received 991 of the 1,228 valid votes. An overwhelming majority of the electors in the 15th Federal Assembly chose Joachim Gauck for the highest office in the land during the first round of voting.  

The new head of state, who is 72-years old, is the eleventh federal president to move into Bellevue Palace, the official residence of the Federal President in Berlin. Germany’s new head of state has an interesting political biography: the theologian worked as a Protestant pastor in the former GDR and was active in both the church and the political protest movements that prepared the way for the peaceful revolution of 1989/1990. In reunited Germany, Jochim Gauck was made head of the archives of the former GDR’S secret police, the Stasi, in 1991. In 2010 he was a contestant in the federal presidential election, but lost to Christian Wulff in the third round of voting.                     

(Extract from www.magazin-deutschland.de)

Setting out for Ithaca: Travel in the ancient world - The different concepts of travel

Dr. Francis Jarman (University of Hildesheim, Germany)
A synopsis of a talk delivered at the German-Maltese Circle, Valletta, March 7, 2012

Dr. Francis Jarman is a Senior Lecturer in English, comparative cultural studies and intercultural communication at Hildesheim University in Germany. He has published more than forty books, and taught or lectured at twenty-two universities in seventeen countries around the world, from Portugal to India. In 2009, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize of the German Academic Exchange Service. He is also a playwright, novelist and classical numismatist.  In the context of a partnership with Hildesheim University, Dr. Jarman visited the University of Malta in 2002, 2004 and 2012, each time also giving a talk at the German-Maltese Circle.

Constantine Cavafy’s famous poem “Ithaca”, which suggests that it is not the destination of a journey that matters, but the journey itself, is a modern poem, expressing a modern attitude to travel – that travel is a pleasurable activity, something that broadens the mind, stimulates intellectual curiosity, and so on. For the ancients, however, travel was both dangerous and uncomfortable, and only undertaken when absolutely necessary. Governors, ambassadors, messengers, soldiers, traders and skilled craftsmen travelled for professional reasons; pilgrims, wealthy students and the sick for pressing personal reasons; and hostages, brides in arranged marriages, slaves and refugees because they had to. What we would today call “explorers” were usually merchants looking for new trading possibilities, or soldiers on a reconnaissance mission. As a general rule, no-one in Greek times apart from the great historian Herodotus is known to have travelled “for fun”, though there was a major exception – at regular intervals there were brief bursts of enthusiastic travel, as those who could afford it attended (either as participants or spectators) the major festivals and athletic games. For important events like the Olympics all hostilities were suspended during the “peace of the games”. 

Recreational travel as we know it today first developed in the Roman period, as the rich fled to their villas in the hills or on the coast to escape the summer heat. Baiae near Naples was the world’s first major seaside resort, and remained so for five hundred years (then followed more than a thousand years in which hardly any Europeans washed very often or willingly went anywhere near water). Some wealthy Romans took advantage of the Pax Romana to indulge in “cultural tourism”. What they wanted to visit were the sights of ancient Egypt, the Seven Wonders of the World, the ruins of Troy, scenes of mythological events (like the beach in Cyprus where Venus sprang from the waves) or places connected with great men (the birthplace of Homer, claimed by no fewer than seven Greek cities, or the tomb of Alexander the Great in Alexandria). Guidebooks were written for such Roman travellers, including Pausanias’s (still-surviving) Description of Greece, and provincial cities vied for attention by featuring on their coins images of famous temples or treasured local artworks that visitors might wish to see. 

Travel remained a slow, strenuous and uncomfortable business, even after the excellent Roman roads had been built. The commonest conveyances were mule-carts, with litters for the wealthy. Except for couriers, soldiers, and noble sportsmen, very few people rode horses (saddles were rudimentary, metal horseshoes rare, and the stirrup had not yet been invented); donkeys and mules were slower, but easier and safer to ride.  

Travel by sea was a more attractive option, though influenced by the weather conditions, the lack of regular passenger services, the poor facilities for passengers (who slept on deck, and cooked their own food), and the depredations of pirates. The ships of choice were not galleys, but the huge grain transporters (carrying up to a thousand tons of grain and a thousand passengers) that plied between Egypt and Italy. It was on a ship of this kind that Saint Paul was travelling, on his way to Rome, when he was shipwrecked off the coast of Malta.  

Arriving in a strange city was best done in daylight hours. Inns were usually dirty, noisy and full of thieves, with the maids doubling as prostitutes. Respectable travellers were better advised to seek their entertainment in the city’s bath-houses and wine-shops, and their accommodation (if possible) with a relative, friend or business colleague. Traditional laws of hospitality required even an enemy to be given food and shelter for one night, although by Roman times these rules were not always adhered to. That the instinct of hospitality was nevertheless still alive is shown by such stories as the account of how the arrogant millionaire Polemon of Smyrna returned home late one night to find that the Roman governor, Antoninus, aiming to do Polemon an honour, had quartered himself in his house. Polemon, a favourite of the reigning emperor Hadrian, ordered his servants to throw Antoninus and his entourage out into the street. A few years later Polemon, no doubt quaking with fear, was sent to Rome as a member of a civic delegation to the new emperor – Antoninus! – and must have been relieved when the good-natured ruler chose to treat the whole Smyrna affair as a joke. 

On our travels we encounter and communicate with people from other cultures. How good were the Greeks and Romans, then, at “intercultural communication”?  

The Greeks were not obviously prejudiced racially, but they were culturally and linguistically intolerant. For them, the world was divided into Greeks (i.e., speakers of Greek) and barbarians (literally, “ba-ba-ba” speakers). “Semi-Greeks” like the Macedonians were regarded with distrust, and so-called Greeks who failed to speak the language correctly – like the citizens of Soloi in Cilicia – viewed with contempt (this is where our word “solecism” comes from, incidentally). Completely non-Greek customs like circumcision were of course despised.  

The Romans, on the other hand, were aware that their empire contained many different peoples and cultures. After the first century A.D. emperors could come from almost anywhere – Spain, Syria, North Africa, Thrace, Arabia – and in 212 Caracalla extended Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire. If the Romans were at all prejudiced, it was not towards dark-skinned peoples but, it has been claimed, towards the clumsy blond barbarians from the north! 

See also:

“Going Places, Meeting People.” In: Francis Jarman, White Skin, Dark Skin, Power, Dream: Collected Essays on Literature & Culture. Holicong, PA: The Borgo Press, 2005, pp. 139-157.

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