Europe and the Mediterranean Talking, Learning, Working, and Living Together 6

Europe Bottom-Up Nr. 21 | Dr. Udo Steinbach I HERITAGE AND SOCIETY IN THE EURO-MEDITERRANEAN COMMUNITY. A Conference in Berlin 19th June, 2018, Conference Papers (Part 1)

Editor’s preface

By Udo Steinbach

The papers published in the two volumes have been presented to the forum on „ONE Heritage – Heritage and Society in the Euro-Mediterranean Community“ as a side event to the European Cultural Heritage Summit, Berlin, 19 June, 2018.
The event has been coorganized as before with the MENA Governance Centre of the Humboldt Viadrina Governance Platform, and cochaired by Eleftherios Ikonomou, Udo Steinbach, and Rupert Graf Strachwitz.
Cultural heritage in its numerous facets is the most basic foundation of the complex relationship between people in the Mediterranean since the Phoenicians and ancient Greeks. It has turned out to be stronger than diversities and even destructions throughout many eras in history. Its vitality makes one optimistic that the notion of mare nostrum may still provide orientation for shaping common future.
The forum has built on the experiences of three conferences on the topic of Europe and the Mediterranean: Speaking, Learning, Working and Living Together, held in 2013, 2015 and 2017. The purpose of the forum was to call attention to Europe’s responsibility for the common cultural heritage around the Mediterranean Sea. Having this in mind the organizers of the Berlin forum wanted the discussion to focus on three dimensions:

Our Common Heritage
Repeatedly in the past, attempts at destroying the testimonies of past cultures and civilisations have been undertaken to manifest political and/or ideological superiority. They failed: Mediterranean culture has survived as synthesis of numerous inputs from the East to the West and the North to the South. To think Mediterranean means remembering that the presence cannot be thought without the past; and one‘s own not without the other‘s culture.

Udo Steinbach

Prof. Dr. Udo Steinbach

Direktor des MENA Study Centre

Projekt Europe and the Mediterranean
us@maecenata.eu

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