Europe and the Mediterranean. Talking, Learning, Working, and Living Together 7

Europe Bottom-Up Nr. 22 | 19.06.2018 I Dr. Udo Steinbach I HERITAGE AND SOCIETY IN THE EURO-MEDITERRANEAN COMMUNITY. A Conference in Berlin 19th June, 2018, Conference Papers (Part 2)

Europe and the Mediterranean Sphere – a shared Heritage? Transcultural and intercultural Heritage in the Euro-Mediterranean Sphere.

By Verena Metze-Mangold

“I speak to you, my heart – So you may answer me.”¹ What this is about With her simple statement that there is knowledge that does not connect but instead separates, Bénédicte Savoy succinctly describes what is at the core of political strife today. It is the renewed fears of a “finis germaniae”, “finis europae” that paralyse us. We forget what power lies in encountering each other as strangers. Richard Sennett wonderfully described it in “The Fall of Public Man”. He reminds us how greatly this trait enriched European culture and fed into the rise and dominance of Europe. And, as if it required further proof, Joshua Cohen writes at the beginning of the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 with the motto ‘Sharing Heritage’: “Toledo in transit. The translation of this into the real world can be witnessed in the example of the Spanish city, which in the Middle Ages ensured that divergent cultures inspired each other. No modern Europe without this heritage.”² […]

1. A quote from a poem by the Egyptian Khakheperreseneb from around 1800 BC, titled “About Things in the Country”, translated from Jan Assmann’s German translation which was displayed at the award of the German Book Trade Peace Prize in 2018.
2. Joshua Cohen, Toledo in Transit. FAZ, 10 February 2018, S. 12.

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