Grashaus Europa – Ein europäisches Klassenzimmer

The start­ing point for this Euro­pean day trip is the build­ing itself. Through its var­i­ous uses, from town hall to prison to city archives, it tells a small Euro­pean sto­ry. There­fore, it has been tak­en seri­ous­ly as an exist­ing struc­ture; its archi­tec­ture and all its fur­ni­ture have been incor­po­rat­ed into the scenog­ra­phy. Above the entrance gate, for­mer­ly the domain of the eagle, the budgie has now also con­quered ter­ri­to­ry. At the gate itself, four for­mer res­i­dents of the build­ing answer the fic­tion­al inter­com and wel­come vis­i­tors. 
In the court­yard below stands a strange-look­ing object. A bus stop to Europe? With a sophis­ti­cat­ed timetable, there are bus­es depart­ing from here direct­ly to Aachen at 8:00 a.m., to Mün­ster at 4:48 p.m., to Vien­na at 6:15 p.m., and to Ypres at 7:16 p.m. 

The stair­well reveals a cos­mos of very dif­fer­ent images, fig­ures, and sym­bols, hand-drawn by Berlin artist Andree Volk­mann: waves, price tags, tears, hug­ging peo­ple, pass­port pho­tos, foot­ball play­ers, the arm of Jus­tice, etc. Ini­tial­ly a con­fus­ing cos­mos, but one that won­der­ful­ly con­dens­es the vast­ness and diver­si­ty of Europe into a sin­gle stair­well. All of the sym­bols will be found again and again in the knowl­edge dis­play cas­es lat­er on, and become increas­ing­ly clear through active reen­act­ment, so that these leit­mo­tifs not only become deci­pher­able but also reflect the dif­fer­ent approach­es to the top­ic of Europe. 

The focal point of the day is the Euro­pean class­room. The shelves are the cen­tral ele­ment. The Grashaus is not a muse­um, yet it grad­u­al­ly becomes a col­lec­tion in its own right, a col­lec­tion of young Euro­peans. The idea: each stu­dent, each group, brings an exhib­it, a piece, a some­thing that some­how rep­re­sents Europe for them, can rep­re­sent, or should rep­re­sent. Whether it’s a tick­et from Paris, a sou­venir from Dublin, a scarf from Sofia, or a can­dy wrap­per from Lis­bon, the exhibits are pre­sent­ed to the group and dis­cussed – how, what, and what? Tell us! All exhibits are also pre­sent­ed to the fol­low­ing group. The young peo­ple cre­ate a video for each group for the slow­ly grow­ing knowl­edge archive.

The knowl­edge archive is locat­ed in the Doc­u­ment Hall. Here, the orig­i­nal Goth­ic cab­i­nets have been con­vert­ed into lis­ten­ing nich­es, and the his­tor­i­cal dis­play cas­es have been con­vert­ed into media ter­mi­nals. In this knowl­edge archive, not only can all impor­tant infor­ma­tion be found in the media ter­mi­nals, but it also serves as a tool for work­ing on the var­i­ous work­sheets with their diverse research tasks. 
Europe is known to be a con­ti­nent, but how does it all relate to geog­ra­phy? In the chapel, inter­ac­tive pan­els are used to intro­duce chil­dren and young peo­ple to this geo­graph­i­cal Europe and its car­tog­ra­phy. A media instal­la­tion illu­mi­nat­ed by four pro­jec­tors uses an ani­ma­tion of the con­ti­nent to give them an idea of​what’s behind, on, and pos­si­ble with maps. Work­ing indi­vid­u­al­ly with the ani­mat­ed maps, they can then explore Europe sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, mete­o­ro­log­i­cal­ly, and by trans­port routes, and cre­ate maps themselves.