Europa – Heimat bedeutender Reformer Erasmus Project

Project Title

Europa – Heimat bedeutender Reformer

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 : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Research and innovation; Creativity and culture; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Without its reformers, the Europe we know today would not exist. Many students are not aware of the fact that a lot of these reformers come from their hometown areas. The aim of this project was twofold: to newly familiarise students with the innovative ideas of local reformers on the one hand and on the other to use the impetus of continuing globalisation as a starting point to get an insight into the multidisciplinary achievements of reformers abroad. The essential result of the project is an overview of the underlying principles that pushed forward the development of a European mentality. Exchanges for both students and teachers from the schools participating helped to attain this result by forming an individual opinion about how and where the reformers worked and lived. As this was a multinational cooperation, all different works on local reformers were combined and now build a more integral picture of the scientific and cultural history and development in Europe.
The Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gymnasium in Betzdorf (Germany), for instance, has dealt with reformers such as Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, the inventor of credit cooperatives in the countryside, the composer Ludwig van Beethoven, the photographer August Sander and Heinrich Friedrich Karl Reichsfreiherr vom und zum Stein, the reformer of administration after whom the school was named in the 1960s.
The students from Poland focussed on two reformers in the field of natural sciences: Nikolaus Kopernikus, who was born in Torun and who has changed the people’s view on astronomy during Renaissance with long-lasting effects for our modern times, and Ludwig Anton Rydgier von Rüdiger, who was born in Graudenz near Torun and who became a pioneer in treatment for cancer. The important theologian Karol Wojtyla, who became most famous as Pope John Paul II, furthered the liberation movement in the Communist countries in the East through his intercultural dialogue.
These are only a few examples of the many areas in which people worked as reformers and have influenced our modern life in Europe ever since.
All of the reformers dealt with in the project are intended to serve as role models for the young generation today. The four organisations participating were all secondary schools from Budapest (Hungary), Torun (Poland), Vratsa (Bulgaria) and Betzdorf (Germany). The main activities of each group in this project were informing themselves about the reformers’ lives and works, designing posters illustrating the most important facts, writing more detailed texts for a brochure and developing learning materials. The posters were publicly presented in three different exhibitions in various places, were summed up in the brochure mentioned and in addition to this, the comprehensive multimedia learning materials were evaluated during the international meetings. Thus, every participating school now benefits from a wide range of teaching materials, accompanied by illustrative posters and an informative brochure, which all have helped this project to reach and target a broad audience in the exhibitions, whose utterly positive response also the press did not miss to echo in adequate detail.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 77415 Eur

Project Coordinator

Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gymnasium & Country: DE

Project Partners

• IX Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. Kazimierza Jagiellonczyka w Toruniu
• Sredno uchilishte Hristo Botev
• Patrona Hungariae Ovoda, Altalanos Iskola Gimnazium, Kollegium es Alapfoku Muveszeti Iskola