From the tranquil city of Bavaria to the bustling streets of Berlin, History teacher Paul Hoelscher had the rare opportunity to travel across well-known cities of Germany during the summer through the Goethe Institut.
“It is a public and private organization that supports scholarship and travel in Germany,” Hoelscher said. “In addition to funding my entire trip, Goethe opened opportunities to meet government officials and visit important places that I never could have accessed on my own as a US citizen.”
Hoelscher was one of about a dozen teachers who also were selected across around the country to go on this trip.
“I applied for the fellowship,” Hoelscher said. “There is a long application process that considers your previous leadership as a teacher, the potential impact that the fellowship can have on your teaching practice and several recommendation letters.”
Being a fellow of the Institut now, he now works for them to present at conferences to teach other teachers about Germany.
Throughout the trip, Hoelscher traveled with the group for some parts of the trip, and also individually researched.
“We were provided time and financial support to study topics that we wanted to research on our own,” Hoelscher said.
Through the trip, Hoelscher was able to visit cities in Germany such as Munich, Stuttgart, Dresden, and Berlin. During this trip, he saw the diversity of Germany.
“I really got a good feel for the regional flavors,” Hoelscher said. “In the Southern region Bavaria, there is a much slower, wealthier and relaxed atmosphere. The city of Munich is large, but it feels like a small town and the pace of life is different from a Northern city like Berlin. Berlin was widely international, massive in size and scale and much more like New York or Tokyo than the Southern German countryside.”
For Hoelscher, this experience of diversity and the trip itself was a great way to learn new things.
“History comes alive as I explore locations that I have read about, but never visited,” he said. “Germany, like so many other countries in the world, has many things to teach Americans – environmental substantiality, architectural value, respect for history and tradition.”
One thing that really stuck with Hoelscher was how much the idea of the holocaust still remains in Germany.
“It remains a complex and incredibly difficult balancing act for the German schools,” Hoelscher said. “On one hand, they want their students and the world to move on and consider the fact that Germany is so much more than that period of Nazi atrocities. However, at the very same time, the government, the schools and the culture spend a lot of time and money making sure that everyone who visits Germany is forced to consider what happened. Many of the memorials are in very public locations where people walk past them everyday. There are signs and symbols all around the country of what happened.”
Even in seeing these memorials and symbols, Hoelscher saw it as an incredible trip.
“I think every trip makes me more open to new ideas and ways of thinking,” he said. “Away from tourist locations, an American can still get a feel for life in different countries.”