The line in the morning is long in front of the theater's Chagall Hall.

And there are, in addition to the usual valiant supporters of culture-savvy urban society, also a number of young faces among them.

Because sometimes during the day not everyone can find a place in the crowded hall, some sit in front of the door.

And people listen with an attentiveness that is rarely found elsewhere.

Eva Maria Magel

Senior cultural editor of the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The fact that these 51st Römerberg Talks are about something elementary, directly affecting all of us, can be felt from the atmosphere alone.

It's dead quiet, sometimes there's heavy applause.

Among other things, when the journalist and Ukraine specialist Alice Bota, who spoke downright disarmingly about her many years of work there, says: "To believe that Ukraine and this border crossing would be the last is naïve against the background of the past few years".

Her horror, felt since 2014, at how Germans talk about Ukraine as a "buffer zone", "as if it weren't in the room", and her criticism of lectures is flanked by her clever Ukrainian conversation partner Jurko Prochasko, psychoanalyst and cultural scientist who is not in the Room is - but switched on from his Lemberg apartment.

"Never again peace?"

Prochasko dissects the situation in the mixture of his two professions: "The German post-war identity was founded on guilt.

I wonder if a large part of what traditionally appears as German guilt is actually not German fear.” The responsibility of the West, which did not want Ukraine in its European structures, is now “not to extradite us .”

Guilt, mistakes, and attitudes that need to be examined also play a major role in the introductory lecture and the explanations by the historian of Eastern Europe, Karl Schlögel.

The "Russian kitsch", the business and the nation building of Ukraine, a "small, vile dictator" who tries to bomb an aspiring country back "to the historical sidelines" hangs together with us, as Schlögel puts it in highlights.

"Never again peace?" is the question asked by the Römerberg Talks and moderator Alf Mentzer recalls the talks in 2014 entitled "War Again?", when understanding for Russia's "security needs" was expressed after the annexation of Crimea.

This time, since the role of the aggressive bully "Gopnik" appears in contributions such as that of the author Viktor Jerofejew, who recently emigrated from Moscow to Brandenburg, who acts as a scoundrel in the rogue state, the audience gets from the Frankfurt international law expert Stefan Kadelbach and the historian Adam Tooze, connected from New York, an overview of international law, the potential of sanctions and historical precedents.

How sanctions, war and law are related,

No talking to viewers

It is the conclusion of a full-day crash course in education, raising awareness, sharpening awareness of the war of images, of cultural-political spaces, of post-Soviet societies and migration to Germany.

However, not only this field, unrolled by Jannis Panagiotides, sometimes sails narrowly past commonplaces.

Like all the questions that visibly move the audience, they must remain undiscussed here.

Because apart from the lectures and follow-up discussions of the well-prepared moderators Hadija Haruna-Oelker and Mentzer with their guests, there is, contrary to what the title suggests, no discussion at the Römerberg Talks.

But the “participatory war”, the pictures and dilemmas of which the art historian Charlotte Klonk showed on social media, calls on everyone to do what they can in their place.

After the long, busy day of the Römerberg Talks, like a few days ago after the debates at the Go East film festival, you can also see this as an invitation to educate yourself further and to deal with it.

The fact that the organizers promise to publish the 51st Römerberg Talks on YouTube for viewing is also part of it.