Leila Gonzalez, Hanna Miles and Caitlin Roper in the Holocaust Memorial

Sussex students with Juergen Hardt MP (far-right) in the German Bundestag

Week 9 of the Spring Term saw 25 undergraduates and 2 Sussex faculty members spend a week in Berlin, talking to German politicians and analysing the wide and varied challenges that contemporary Germany faces. 

The 8^th annual undergraduate trip to Berlin was both bigger (in terms of numbers) and better than any that had preceded it.  Generous financial support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) enabled Professor Dan Hough to lead a merry band of 25 predominantly second year students, all of whom were taking the ‘Political Governance; Modern Germany’ module, to the German capital.  Rather than spend three days – as had been the case in previous years – racing around Berlin at breakneck speed, the 2013 trip spanned seven days, allowing just a little more time for both discussion and reflection.  The programme was nonetheless packed with meetings with German MPs, visits to places of political interest and, for the first time, a day trip to the Heldenstadt (‘City of Heroes’), Leipzig. 

The week began with a trip to Hohenschönhausen in East Berlin, the home of the East German secret police’s (the ‘Stasi’) most (in)famous remand prison.  Even though half of the Sussex group were led round by a tour guide who seemed to be teetering on the edge of sanity herself, the impression that everyone was left with was that (i) the Stasi were certainly not to be messed with and (ii) if you did find yourself in the unfortunate position of being inside Hohenschönhausen then you had little chance of coming out unscathed.  It was an eye-opening start to the trip.

Things thankfully got a little lighter in the afternoon, when the group spoke to four MPs; Eva Högl (SPD), Daniel Volk (FDP), Jürgen Hardt (CDU) and Herrmann Ott (Greens).  Between them they gave an entertaining take on both German-UK relations, as well as a wide variety of domestic issues.  Hermann Ott, for example, gave an illuminating defence of deeper EU integration, openly campaigning for amongst other things a United States of Europe – the merits of this policy to one side, one feels he’d nevertheless have to moderate that particular narrative if he were to ever campaign alongside British Greens in the UK!  The Sussex group was also not slow in coming forward and asking questions; Jon Green said it as he saw it, grilling Volk on whether the FDP had a future after the forthcoming September election, whilst Eva Högl found herself agreeing with James Butcher that the EU shouldn’t be regulating bankers’ bonuses (this was something, so they concurred, for nation-states to adjudicate on).

Wednesday saw more talks with MPs, this time Dagmar Enkelmann (the chief whip of the Left Party) and Jan Mücke, a junior minister in the CDU/CSU-FDP government.  Enkelmann offered a biting critique of Angela Merkel’s Eurocrisis management, whilst Mücke talked more broadly about life as a junior minister.  And, of course, the questions kept coming thick and fast; Caitlin Roper and Becky Steventon, for example, both probed in to the Left Party’s attitude to coalition government, whilst Bobby Wiafe challenged Mücke on the current administration’s integration polices. 

Alongside trips to the remnants of the Berlin Wall, the Holocaust Memorial and an entertaining hour with the UK’s Deputy Ambassador, Andrew Noble, in the UK Embassy, the trip also ventured out of Berlin for the first time by taking in Leipzig.  It is hard to understand the history of modern Germany without touching on the impact of the ‘Monday Demonstrations’ that swept through Leipzig in Autumn 1989.  They, after all, were the straw that broke the camel’s back and ultimately enabled the dictatorial GDR to be swept away.  The group subsequently spent time in the Museum of Contemporary History, before visiting the Nikolaikirche, the hub of the 1989 movement. 

It was not, of course, all work, work, work, and in the evenings everyone managed to find time to relax and enjoy some down-time.  The group’s very own version of Ant and Dec, Jake Flynn and Ben Halton, kept everyone entertained on the Wednesday night with the first ever ‘Berlin Trip Quiz’.  A tightly fought contest ultimately saw the ‘Shrewsbabes’ – Rianni Gargiulo, Imogen Adie, Becky Steventon and Hanna Miles – emerge victorious, largely on the back of their superior knowledge of the Eurovision Song Contest.  You just never know where knowing that the UK jury gave ABBA ‘null points’ in the 1974 contest in Brighton will come in handy …

Dan Hough

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