REPORT RIC MEETING 2017
Report RIC Meeting 2017 Leipzig
We met in bright sunshine on Friday afternoon. Frd. Frank Emmrich, President of RC Leipzig, welcomed the participants to the RIC-Meeting 2017 in Leipzig. For many hours the friends from Belgium, France, Great Britain from Sweden and from Poland had been on the road, and we were very happy to be back together.
New times – that was the motto of this year’s meeting. Again and again our program and the many good talks reflected upon: Not everything that is new, is also good; not everything that is old is automatically bad. How can we reconcile the power of change and the desire to preserve? This thought passed through our meeting like a “cantus firmus”.
Our first program point, the motet in the Thomaskirche, was devoted to the music tradition of Leipzig. The wonderful organ sounds from both large organs led us from the foundation of the Leipzig church music, Johann Sebastian Bach, to modern sounds – new times, so to say.
Outside in front of the church, the guests scattered to the “Homestay”, a cozy evening with Leipzig Rotarians. There some old friendship was refreshed, but also new contacts were made. Until late in the evening, the intensive, personal exchange was maintained at Rotarian tables all over Leipzig.
On Saturday morning, Rotarian buses rolled into the “Villa am Bernsteinsee” at the Goitzsche, the “Bitterfelder Meer” also called the “Amber Lake”. Where a desert had left its mark after the closure of a lignite coal mine, today a popular recreational area has been built, on the banks of which the villa shines.
While the partners broke off for with a real pirate for a trip on the boat MS Reudnitz, the AGM Annual General Meeting, on the first floor of the villa, was more peaceful. Short reports from club presidents once again impressively showed how diverse the activities within our RIC network are. The “camel race” of the friends from Suffolk remained just as much in mind as the efforts of the Lublin Rotarian friends to keep cross-border contacts with Rotarians from
Belarus and Ukraine despite the formal dissolution of the common district. Also impressive were the “Festival of Illusions” from Paris and the many activities of friends from Leuven-Rotselaar under a new name and a new banner.
The new joint RIC projects of RC Leipzig, the further support of needy young people with a holiday camp, as well as the better care of pregnant women in rural areas of Madagascar, were unanimously adopted. The idea of launching a RIC prize for particularly successful projects was positively received and will be discussed further.
Chris Sharpe and the other friends received a lot of applause for their presentation of the planning for the next RIC meeting in Suffolk from the 18th to the 20th of May 2018, from Folk music in the pub to Crazy Golf.
After a short lunch on the terrace, we continued on the trail of history to the source of the Reformation, Wittenberg. It was not only the life of Martin Luther and his path to become a reformer that was shown; but also the whole historical situation, in which he showed inconceivable courage, which was portrayed to us vividly and entertainingly. Luther, too, was thinking almost 500 years ago: What is to be preserved? What has to be changed and what must be generated from the scratch? A nice parallel to our RIC-motto.
With great attention to detail, we also got deep insights into Lucas Cranach’s art and his business sense. He was not only the painter of reformation or its “art director” but a close friend of Martin Luther and his family. In the market square, we witnessed the end of a great worship that opened the world exhibition on the Reformation. We knew that before, but then suddenly the Federal President Frank Walter Steinmeier and the Prime Minister of Saxony-
Anhalt Reiner Haseloff came within touching distance to one of our groups, an unexpected encounter!
At the Schlosskirche, we were looking at the famous 95 theses, which, as is well known, have changed the course of the world. They opened the horizon for new times when clear changes were required.
Through the early summer fields the buses safely took us back to Leipzig, and after a short break and a short walk we assembled for a group photo on the Augustusplatz, the self-appointed assistant of the photographer providing for natural cheerfulness in our photo.
The gala evening led us into one of the most unusual buildings in the centre of the city, the “Ring-Café”, an imposing house on the Ring which was built in the Stalinist style of the “Workers’ Palace”. It is classified as a historic monument, so we met inside in a true-to-original atmosphere that many guests felt was simply “cool”. In his opening speech Frd. Emmrich, the president of RC Leipzig, once again referred to the relationship between the desire for something new, the revolutionary departure spirit of this architecture and its failure: nobody could afford the costs for building this type of apartment for all workers, only a few party members and officials were satisfied and the idea of palaces for the working class did not prevail until the end of socialism.
With wonderful keyboard sounds the Russian pianist Oleg Grichin at the piano tuned us for the evening, before Frd. Markus Denzel, governor of our district, invoked the spirit of friendship in a powerful speech, the core of our Rotary idea.
When a jazz trio started, even the Rotary dance legs were swinging. Just before midnight, the ice bomb with fireworks provided a real highlight. It was not until early in the morning that this gala evening ended.
Only a few hours of sleep later, on Sunday morning, Frd. Löffler presented “his” highly interesting “Kunstkraftwerk” (Art Power Plant) in a once abandoned industrial building. Here, too, new times have dawned in the ruins of a shattered industry. Video installations together with emotional music (immersive art), using the work of the famous painter Friedensreich
Hundertwasser and reflecting the industrial revolution, showed this impressively. Many Rotarian friends were so taken with it that it had to be repeated. A place of art and meeting, Kunstkraftwerk shows how Leipzig is constantly reinventing itself.
We then moved to a different place and to a completely different temple of the (post-)modern where our meeting came to a successful conclusion. In the middle of the grounds of one of the most modern car factories in Europe, the company Porsche showed us its unusual visitor center. With a view of a test track worthy of a Formula 1 racing circuit, we were spoiled with culinary delights – once again this weekend – before we could visit parts of the factory.
We learned that more than 650 vehicles leave this plant per day, and it was felt that the visitors’ supervisors are also proud to work around the chic status symbols, together with more than 5,000 employees who came here from East and West Germany to find jobs (another 6,000 work for BMW a few kilometres away, mostly on electric cars).
In the early afternoon, two and a half days of adventures and good talks came to an end and all participants began heading to their home destinations by car, by plane or by train.
All Rotarians from RC Leipzig would like to thank their guests and friends for coming and participating. We look forward to seeing you again healthy and adventurous next year in Suffolk.
Leipzig, June 13, 2017
