The name alone is not enough. When the municipal councils of Straßlach-Dingharting decided over a year ago that the “unit of foyer and forecourt” of the community center should henceforth bear the name “Geschwister-Scholl-Forum”, they wanted a place for political education here to accomplish. For this year, a working group made up of municipal councils and interested citizens is now planning a program with exhibitions and events. There are also ideas for the external design of the forum. For the start, the municipal council made 15,000 euros available this year, in future 5,000 euros are to flow into political education at this location every year. Of course, not everyone on the council agreed.
An exhibition and a musical cultural evening are currently planned, to which Hildegard Kronawitter, chairwoman of the White Rose Foundation in Straßlach-Dingharting, is also expected. There will also be an open-air film evening featuring “Sophie Scholl – The Last Days”, a 2005 film starring Julia Jentsch. The community also invited Pavel Taussig, a contemporary witness who was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau with his family in 1944 and survived the concentration camp at the age of eleven. The municipality also has a small library in the foyer of the town hall in mind.
But how do you make it clear to the community that the memory of the Scholl siblings is important to the community, even if there is no event taking place or an exhibition going on? Finally, the forum is intended to encourage young people and young adults in particular not to look away when they are confronted with scenes of xenophobia or discrimination in everyday life. Therefore, on the one hand, a stele with information should be erected on the forecourt. There are also considerations to display on the walls of the foyer the leaflets that Hans and Sophie Scholl had distributed in the atrium of Munich University on February 18, 1943 and were arrested as a result. A first draft for the design of the Straßlacher Forum is based on the stone replicas of the leaflets on the Geschwister-Scholl-Platz in front of the university in Munich.
However, not all councilors are convinced of the idea. It is somewhat difficult to see what is shown, so the criticism at the most recent municipal council meeting, where a first visualization was shown. Albert Geiger from the Bavarian Party did not agree at all with the further action of the community to finance the program and the design of the forum. He advocated collecting donations for the implementation of the plans. With Mayor Hans Sienerth (independent), however, he triggered great indignation. “It would be a shame if I walked through the village to collect donations now,” he said. After all, it is about creating an offer of political education, and whoever says A must also say B. He said to Geiger: “This suggestion can’t be meant seriously.”