The Kempten Museum is starting its new series “Active Thursday” with an explosive topic. It starts with “the forgotten history of Islam in Bavaria”. Nina Nowar, research assistant at the Erlangen University Center for Islam and Law in Europe (EZIRE), will give a lecture on this. So that not only the people of the Allgäu can benefit from the speaker’s findings, her lecture will also be available to follow in the live stream on Thursday, January 11th, 7 p.m.
Almost 12 percent of Muslims living in Germany – 5.3 million people in 2019 – live in Bavaria. While the immigration history of guest workers from Turkey has been widely known since 1961, it is surprising to many that the points of contact with Islam in what is now Bavaria can be traced back over several centuries. That’s what the organizers think.
Therefore, in addition to the testimonies and reports about the Crusades or military conflicts with the Ottoman Empire, Nowar’s lecture also traces the transfer of knowledge between the area of today’s Bavaria and the cultural exchange with the Islamic world. Corresponding art treasures are now exhibited in Bavarian museums, churches and archives.
The lecture also shows how Muslim volunteers from the Caucasus were trained for the Waffen-SS in Bavaria during the Second World War and found refuge as allies in the Cold War after the end of the war. They founded the first Islamic association in Germany in the 1950s. This also resulted in the construction of Bavaria’s first mosque in Munich-Freimann.
The lecture is part of the supporting program of the special exhibition “Kempten checked! Muslim traces of my German homeland”, which can be seen in the citizens’ room in the Kempten Museum until June 23, 2024.
Moving Thursday: The forgotten history of Islam in Bavaria, lecture by Nina Nowar, Thursday, January 11, 2024, 7 p.m. Kempten Museum in the Zumsteinhaus (lecture room), Residenzplatz 31, 87435 Kempten (Allgäu), live stream: www.kempten-museum.de and on YouTube: @KemptenMuseum, further information: www.kempten-museum.de