Seeking Traces – A fresh view towards German-Polish relations Erasmus Project

Project Title

Seeking Traces – A fresh view towards German-Polish relations

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Migrants’ issues; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Young people often know general things about the political system in the EU and about European history, but little about the neighboring country Poland or Germany, whose partly distanced relationship is based on the difficult history and current political differences and manifests itself in prejudices. As part of the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018, the students were to overcome prejudices through our project “In search of traces – The young look at the German-Polish relationship”, especially by creating personal points of contact.

During the project, participants were confronted with their stereotypical prejudices or clichés, for example.
Furthermore, the participants encountered their own past, culture and identity by going in search of historical traces of their city and their ancestors. Through this intensive search for traces of their own and the “foreign”, not only did the German-Polish friendship grow among the young people, but also and the European awareness of all participants.
Two schools were involved in the project: Robert-Schuman-Berufskolleg in Dortmund (Germany) and Technikum Transportowe in Gdynia (Poland). For each school, 18 students aged 16-19 were actively involved in the project, i.e. they dealt with the German-Polish relationship as a project group. Those directly involved in the project jointly designed a Twinspace page and posted their pictures and reports there. In addition to the project groups, the respective classes or courses of education from which the students came were involved in the development of the topics in teaching sequences, whereby the focus here was on both, other European countries, but also on non-European countries of origin of our students. In this way, the personal and social development of the students was promoted.

The project was divided into four main topics:

1. Typical German – typical Polish: dealing with stereotypes”.
First, the students examined some stereotypes and their knowledge about their own and the other country. The participants tested certain stereotypes for accuracy with the help of statistics and interviews.

2 “In search of traces: influences of border shifts and migration on language, literature, architecture and culture”.
Due to migration in the past and present, it happens that cultures influence each other. The students dealt with this by finding these traces in language, architecture and culture and explaining them in a historical context.

3.“ Youth in Gdynia and Dortmund today”.
This topic focused on the present: the students compared how young people (with and without a migration background) live in Dortmund and Gdynia. During the mobility in Weimar, the young people from both countries spent a lot of time together. Among other things, they expressed their impressions after their visit of the concentration camp Buchenwald and had an intensive exchange about the political situation today. Among other things, they recognized a clear shift to the extreme right within Europe and discussed possible causes and consequences, but also how to act against it. This discussion seemed to be particularly inspiring for all participants.

4 “Our Future in Europe“
The last thematic block was dedicated to the future of Europe or the EU, in particular the education and social system. The topic of Euro orphans was also worked on.

In addition to the project activities, all project participants met once each in Gdynia (topic 1 and 2) and in Weimar (topic 2, topic3) to get to know each other, to experience the German-Polish friendship and to work together on the topics. The meeting in Dortmund, which was supposed to be about the 4th topic and where various internships at Dortmund companies were planned, unfortunately had to be cancelled due to the pandemic.

At the end of the project, a joint product was to be created: All meetings and mobilities were documented in the form of photos, reports, minutes, etc. All this was published on the respective homepages of both schools as well as on Twinspace. In addition, reports and photos appeared regularly in the school newspaper of the Robert-Schuman-Berufskolleg (RobbieNews). For the last topic, a short documentary film was planned, which was to include interviews with Euro orphans and their parents. Unfortunately, this part also could not take place because of the pandemic.

The contact to the participants will be continued after the end of the project (e-mail, website, private contacts and possibly student exchanges).
Furthermore, we are planning a permanent school partnership. As soon as this becomes official, the Robert-Schuman-Berufskolleg Dortmund wants to put up the “city mascot”, the Winged Rhino, in the schoolyard.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 51918,12 Eur

Project Coordinator

Robert-Schuman-Berufskolleg & Country: DE

Project Partners

• ZESPOL SZKOL EKOLOGICZNO TRANSPORTOWYCH