“How is it for you that there is war in Europe again?” A BR reporter asked us this pretty good question in the first lesson after the outbreak of war in Ukraine. We had only just heard about it on the radio on the way to school – and now, as young people who had never experienced anything like it before, we were being asked what we thought of it. With cameras behind us and a map of Europe on the blackboard, to be told where the Russian military invaded Ukraine a few hours ago and what the supposed reasons were for that was threatening for us in a completely different, unknown way. We realized something must have broken the previous night. Something you can’t easily fix with super glue.
February 24, 2022 was a Thursday. On the following Wednesday there was another editorial meeting in our Blickkontakt editorial office. We were actually in the final sprint with the current issue, we wanted to go to press in a week. That also meant that the title topic “Humanity” had been decided for a long time, the articles had already been written and the layout was working at full speed on the final print version. And now, all of a sudden, this catastrophe of the century that was screaming for space on our pages. What to do?
So we discussed. How should we deal with a brutal war of aggression in a newspaper about humanity in a way that is appropriate for children and young people? We had chosen the topic in the hope – after spending on death, fear and powerlessness as well as a pandemic time that finally demanded positive input – to be able to illuminate our world a little more optimistically. And yet the mood in the editorial room on the third floor of the Von Müller High School in Regensburg was clear: we had to write something about the war. On the one hand, because everyone would be surprised if we had forgotten a page when printing, we would simply ignore such a drastic injustice. On the other hand, because our readers in particular – children and young people – often find it very difficult to get a neutral picture of social problems.
How should we do this? A summary of the events that explain the reasons or an interview with those affected? What do young people want to know and what should they hear? We quickly agreed: we needed a fact check to inform our classmates about the most important key data, also with the ulterior motive that they might not have heard anything about the war at home. To show what help even we young people have, we planned a report on our school’s fundraiser. Because helplessness was written all over our faces. And last but not least, we wanted to set an example, position ourselves very clearly and follow up our words, which called for humanity, with deeds. For every issue sold, we donated one euro to the Space-Eye organization’s Ukraine aid organization.
Dealing with such a topic in a few days was not child’s play and required capacities that were simply not available just before the editorial deadline, especially not among the high school graduates. It is all the more gratifying that in the last few days before going to press, two editors, full of energy and almost overnight, set out to write two articles, without which we could no longer imagine the newspaper.
When we then tried to trace the difficult path to this newspaper while updating the foreword, we noticed that some articles had become all the more relevant due to the new circumstances. It was frightening how seamlessly the Putin reference fitted into the editorial, a plea for humanity. The interview with a classmate about his traumatic escape from Iraq was more relevant and necessary than ever. And the story of a political prisoner who had been tortured in Turkey tens of years ago drew parallels to imprisoned opponents of the war in Russia, which were simply saddening. So in the end we were happy not in spite of but because of the Ukraine war that we had placed our newspaper under the theme of humanity.
Problems that had never disappeared from the scene, but which affected very few of us personally, have suddenly become even more real and closer – and we’re a little bit more disillusioned. If you don’t go in search of humanity in this situation, when will you?
Annika Nopper and Marie Oberhoff are or were editors-in-chief of Blickkontakt at the Von-Müller-Gymnasium in Regensburg.