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What is the Goethe-Institut for?

Naive could mean: To promote knowledge of the German language and culture abroad and to cultivate international cultural cooperation, as it is called in the self-portrayal of the association.

Not even close.

The institute has just announced the winning teams of its Europe-wide youth competition #oekoropa.

Young people should develop a concept for a sustainable journey through Europe.

As expected, they usually came up with ideas for bike tours;

the winners were rewarded accordingly: “The teams each receive a Goethe bicycle and prize money of 5,000 euros to start their trip next year or to use it for a sustainable project at their school,” the press release says.

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Now there is nothing wrong with young people cycling through Europe.

The fact that stressed double-job parents with small children in their tight vacation time, despite having a bad ecological conscience, are more likely to jet to the Mediterranean with the low-cost airline is another matter.

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But what does all of this have to do with Goethe, the teaching of the German language and cultural cooperation?

Right: nothing.

The competition could just as well, even better, have been advertised by the Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation, Greenpeace or the Greens.

The Goethe-Institut recently bid farewell to its long-time president Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, the “last cultural diplomat” (according to Deutsche Welle), and elected Carola Lentz, a 66-year-old ethnologist whose expertise for the job is based on an intimate knowledge of the Societies of West Africa and the participation in a research project that wants to prove the "contingency" of cultural attributions and the goal of "Undoing differences" ("Undoing differences" sounds - because German - just not cool) is committed.

Carola Lentz, the new president of the Goethe-Institut, is an ethnologist and researches the contingency of cultural attributions.

Source: dpa-infocom GmbH

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Now the fact that Luther and Gryphius, Goethe, Heine and Celan wrote in the German language may be “contingent”.

I do not believe it.

The point is, however, that it should be the task of the Goethe-Institut to convey this language and the culture it has helped to shape, and to organize competitions that are not zeitgeist-oriented in order to instill climate-friendly behavior in young people.

"Shoemaker, stick to your last."

Because, according to Johannes Ebert, Secretary General of the Goethe-Institut, that was all about it: “In view of the serious dimensions of climate change and the corona pandemic, the question of how we can still travel in the future arises.

The creative and clever ideas of the committed winners of #oekoropa show in an impressive way that there are indeed alternatives to air and car travel.

Such concepts are important because they raise our awareness of responsible mobility in Europe. "

A German saying goes: “Schuster, stick to your last.” It may be contingent, but it has seldom been as accurate as it is here.