Sustainability by Education: How Latvian Heritage was Kept Alive in German Exile

Abstract

Sustainability is one of the core challenges for education in modern times, particularly concerning cultural heritage. The study evaluates, from a German point of view, how Latvians outside of Latvia after World War II kept their cultural heritage alive by educational concepts, which can be characterized as early roots of modern sustainable education. The evaluation focus concerns a group of Latvians in Germany associated with the Latvian high school in Muenster (MLG). The study concerns the 25 years from 1957 (school relocation to Muenster) until 1982 (founding of the organization “Latvian Center of Muenster e.V.” (LCM), and combines interviews and literature research. It underlines that environmental, social and heritage education can be seen as core elements of Latvian education abroad. Therefore, the study will not present a concise history of the Latvian high school in Muenster (MLG), which has already been done (Sprogis, 2009), but will concisely evaluate the educational concepts of this particular period as a model, how Latvians maintained their heritage in a sustainable way.

Scenarios of a Sustainable E-leadership for Thai Higher Educational Institution Leaders in 2027

“…E-leadership in educational organization needs individuals to possess technological skills and knowledge to make quality decisions for the institutions. The academic e-leaders therefore must recognize and notice the significance of technology in sustainable education, which depends on changing educational approaches towards challenges in the present (Franzenburg, 2016;Ghorbani, Jafari, & Sharifian, 2018). Kearsley (1991) stated that the lack of informed leadership is one of the main barriers of integration of technology in education.…”

“…It is recommended that relevant leaders concern themselves about using education to sustainably equip students and develop all the necessary skills for themselves specific to a sustainable future. It would be ideal if leaders have the capability to accomplish sustainable institutional improvement since it could result in strong collaborative teams, collective capacity, knowledge sharing, shared authority, and continuous learning in the organization in this century (Jones & Harris, 2014;Franzenburg, 2016).…”

Embracing the Culture of Resilience and Remembrance in Teaching Contested Historical Narratives

“…The participants underlined that people, who are interested in the past ñ either concerning particular historical events or family events ñ prefer human experiences instead of neutral facts: Therefore, the young students suggest inviting eye-witnesses into schools, and to make excursions to remembrance places (Franzenburg, 2015). In an analogue way, people of advanced age, remembering their childhood and school life emphasize the value of persons and situations, which influenced their later life in a positive or negative way as their individual and cultural identity (Franzenburg, 2012b;2016d). These results exemplify that ñ as a crucial part of a ìsyntaxî of remembrance ñ cultural identity depends on memory, fantasy, narrative and myth, which particularly is demonstrated by migrants from Latvia and other countries, particularly after 1945.…”

Learning from the Past for the Future: How to Make Adult Education Sustainable

“…Because such ñ often hidden ñ experiences of German family and national memories not only concern the Nazi cruelties, but also the totalitarian system of Stalinism, also experiences concerning Gulag victims and eyewitnesses, or considering the life in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) with Stasi and demonstrations, belong to the programs of Protestant adult education and facilitate awareness of the different kinds of totalitarism, as well as awareness of the particular situation in totalitarian systems which seem to develop in current times worldwide. Another core example for such analogies is the situation of (Latvian) Displaced Persons in Germany after 1945 (Franzenburg, 2016b), which can be compared with modern experiences of forced migration, displacement and integration. Therefore, learning about coping strategies within conflicts of any kind facilitates sustainability of such concepts by encouraging discussions about coping with oppression and suffering from different perspectives, and with different examples and contexts.…”