By E. Halberd Filed from Sussex.
The reconciliation march at Pohořelice began at a mass grave. Approximately 1,300 people — German and Czech — walked together on the first section of the route along which, in May 1945, approximately 27,000 German-speaking residents of Brno were marched toward the Austrian border. More than 2,000 did not survive the journey.
German federal interior minister Alexander Dobrindt attended. "The graves at which we stand today are witnesses to deep suffering," he said. European friendship, he said, was "the bulwark against every new nationalism."
The Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft held its annual gathering in Brno on 24 May. This was the first occasion since 1950 that the Sudetendeutscher Tag had taken place in Czech territory. The event was held at the invitation of Meeting Brno, a Czech civil society organisation.
The Czech government did not attend. The Abgeordnetenhaus had passed a resolution against the event. Parliamentary president Tomio Okamura described the participants as Nazi descendants. Former president Miloš Zeman called the Landsmannschaft "Hitler's fifth column." A memorial stone at the Pohořelice mass grave was defaced with swastikas before the march. The police deployed an anti-conflict team. The atmosphere remained largely peaceful.
Bavarian minister-president Markus Söder also attended. The Sudetendeutschen have historically resettled in Bavaria.
The Landsmannschaft dropped its demand for the "recovery of the homeland" in 2015.
The Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände in Nuremberg reopened this month with a redesigned permanent exhibition. The centre occupies the north wing of the unfinished Kongresshalle, a structure whose construction was halted in 1939.
The redesign adds 350 square metres of display space, bringing the total to 1,600 square metres. Construction in the north wing cost 28.7 million euros. Exhibition redesign cost a further 7.4 million. Visitor capacity has been revised from 100,000 to 300,000 per year.
The exhibition's centrepiece is an interactive installation through which visitors examine Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph des Willens. The film was made at the Reichsparteitag of 1934, on the same site. Using a console of controls, visitors can isolate camera placement, editing sequence, and musical selection. The purpose, according to director Imanuel Baumann, is to identify the mechanisms of propaganda in the manner of a criminal investigation.
"We must develop it together with the people," Baumann said.
The exhibition also includes stations at which visitors are invited to consider their own relationship to democratic values — intended, Baumann said, to reach those who had become uncertain which information to trust, and those who had become disaffected with institutions. "Where are the points in history where things went wrong?" he said.
The centre is in trial operation until November.
Prof K. Glasskügel of the Vienna Institute for Trend Analytics noted that the Documentation Centre's revised visitor projection — 300,000 annually, against a prior design capacity of 100,000 — was "consistent with established patterns of cultural reinvestment in economies navigating transitional periods." He was asked whether the events in Brno and the Nuremberg reopening represented connected developments. He said the question fell outside his institute's current terms of reference.
This publication has followed Ms Streifenstahl's career since reporting in May that she had been appointed creative director of Funk's documentary commissioning — a role carried without broadcast credit. Sources now indicate she is advising on the digital and media layer of the Nuremberg exhibition. She is not named in the centre's communications. The museum did not respond to a request to confirm her involvement.
Meeting Brno, the Czech reconciliation initiative that organised the Sudetendeutscher Tag, received media partnership support from Reichweite. Sources indicate Ms Streifenstahl's involvement with the Reichweite partnership extends beyond the festival. RTL Deutschland did not respond to a request for comment. Ms Streifenstahl did not respond to a request for comment.
Her first commission as Funk creative director is an official documentary series on Germany's preparation for the 2036 Olympic Games.
The working title is "Wieder."