The Latest at Goethe

The Goethe-Institut has been in Warsaw since 1990. At the beginning, passersby would still ask for woollen blankets and cooking pots; in the meantime, the institute has become firmly established in Warsaw’s cultural landscape. And the German language is also experiencing a surge in interest. By Gabriele Lesser

Yellow. Gaudy yellow lights up everything at the Goethe-Institut Warsaw: The Promised City the logo says. “That was the biggest cultural project we’ve ever realized,” says Martin Wälde. Three years ago the doctor of philosophy returned to Europe from Kolkata, India to take over direction of the Goethe-Institut in Poland’s capital city.

“We invited artists and curators from Berlin to Warsaw and from Warsaw to Berlin,” Wälde continues. “We prepared an investigative programme for them and let them each discover the new city.” This led to the ideas and projects about cities that make millions of dreams come true or come to ruin. The Indian mega-city of Mumbai was added later. “We wanted to enhance and also to confront the European perspective with an Asian one,” explains Wälde. Artists, curators, writers and intellectuals from four cities were involved in the art project The Promised City: Berlin, Warsaw, Bucharest and Mumbai. The Goethe-Institut Warsaw and the Polnisches Institut Berlin, working together for the first time in years, were in charge.

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Renata Prokurat sets a whole stack of colourful booklets on the table. “Promised City may have been our biggest project,” she says, “but alongside it, our regular cultural work went on, of course.” The specialist in German studies has been part of the staff since the founding of the Goethe-Institut in Warsaw. As an officer for cultural programmes, she chiefly organizes film evenings, dance workshops and guest performances or seminars with historical and socio-political themes. Dorota Swiniarska, also an officer for cultural programmes, focuses on the visual arts, theatre, literature and music.

Old habits and new beginnings

“The beginnings for the Goethe-Institut in Poland were difficult,” Prokurat recalls. After Germany’s reunification, the former Kulturzentrum of the GDR in Warsaw was dissolved. In the age of socialism, Poles could purchase not only the collected works of Marx and Lenin and classics of German literature. It also offered scarce goods of all kinds: woollen blankets, dictionaries and cooking pots. “We moved into the former DDR Kulturzentrum and into the empty shop in 1990. Although “Goethe-Institut” was now on the front door, out of habit the visitors would ask for blankets and pots.” In 1991 the institute moved into the Palace of Culture, where it was able to spread out over two floors of the building and use a lecture hall with rising rows of seats and operate an art gallery and library, but the rising prices of real estate in Poland made accommodation there too expensive. In 2004 the institute moved yet again, this time into a modern office building in a quiet back courtyard on Chmielna Street. Over the years, the number of employees grew from four to today’s 28 plus approximately 30 freelance teachers for German courses.

Thirty percent of all learners of German worldwide live in Eastern Europe. The numbers are the highest in Poland at 2.35 million, followed closely by Russia with 2.31 million learners. But, even in Poland German was losing ground for years, in particular as the first foreign language, and the trend to a uniform world language of English prevailed here as well. In the meantime, Poland has avowed itself to multilingualism and has anchored this by introducing the first foreign language from grade one and the second from grade seven in the school system. This opens up new opportunities for German. The Goethe-Institut is contributing to these opportunities by advertising for German, through teacher training and attractive teaching materials. One example of this is the Deutsch-Wagen-Tour. In April 2009 five colourfully painted Deutsch-Wagens left Warsaw on their tour through Poland. They leave Lublin, Kielce, Olsztyn, Poznan and Wroclaw for a different destination almost daily, where the Deutsch-Wagen and the fun language games and contests are the daily attraction.

The library of the Goethe-Institut Warsaw has over 16,000 books, CDs, games and documentary films as well as media packages for German lessons. “We have three major focal points,” explains Kerstin Wesendorf, head of the library. “Modern German literature, many also as audio books, then German as a foreign language as well as media on current trends in art, business and politics in Germany not to mention on the historical and remembrance debates.” The library not only organizes book readings and advanced training courses for librarians, but also collaborates on the German-Polish website Books People are Talking About. Frequently, Polish publishers discover the books here and license them for the Polish market. The Goethe-Institut also provides grants for translations from German into Polish.

“Art is a great mediator,” Wälde pronounces enthusiastically. He spreads out a large poster from the exhibition Building Memory on the table. “Art works nonverbally, we think. But then we have the need the talk, talk and talk about it.” The poster shows the armoured luxury limousine of Pope Benedict XVI rolling slowly through the former concentration camp of Auschwitz, past the prisoners’ barracks and escorted by almost a dozen bodyguards. It also shows images of a kibbutz that came into being in the centre of Warsaw in 2009. “These are the pictures that today’s Poles have on their minds. They shape their memories as well as their awareness. We must be familiar with these images in order to understand our neighbours. And vice versa, of course,” says Wälde before rushing off to his next appointment.