Armenians in Germany Commemorate Armenian Genocide

By Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
Special to the Mirror-Spectator
BERLIN — Among the many nations where people gather on April 24th every year to commemorate the victims of the 1915 genocide, Germany holds a special place for three reasons: first, because it was here that the Holocaust occurred, a case of mass murder that was modeled on the Armenian genocide; secondly, because the post-war German political world faced up to what the Nazis had perpetrated. It was not only the fact that many of the criminals were brought to justice at the Nuremburg trials, and that Germany acknowledged it as genocide, but also that in the years and decades that followed, the reality of what had been committed was subjected to historical scrutiny, so that broader layers of the population and members of the successor generations became aware of this past. Germans refer to this process and what it has produced in civil society as “a culture of remembrance” (Erinnerungskultur). The third reason is that Germany’s Turkish population is the largest outside of Turkey, a fact which has a political, social and cultural impact in both countries.Read Further...

Tags:Commemoration, April 24th 2013, Paulskirche, Michael Hesemann, rof. Dr. M.A. Niggli, Cem Oezdemir,, Zülfü Livaneli, Sibylle Thelen, Ambassador Armen Martirosyan, Archbishop Karekin Bekdjian, Artak Kirakosyan

POTSDAM, Germany — Among the required reading for most Armenians is the novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel, and the author is thus known among Armenians mainly — if not exclusively — for this monumental work.Read Further...

Tags:The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, Franz Werfel, Peter Stephan Jungk, Lepsius House, Franz Werfel, Peter Stephan Jungk, Lepsius House, Martin Tamke, Rolf Hosfeld, Rubina Peroomian

MAINZ, Germany — The relationship of Armenians to their language is very special, actually unique. To my knowledge, Armenia is the only country that offers the foreign visitor a monument composed of giant letters of the alphabet, standing as stone sculptures in a vast field outside Yerevan. And Mesrob Mashtots (360-440), the genius who invented the alphabet as a perfect phonetic system in the year 405 AD, is not only honored as a great intellectual but is revered as a canonized saint. Read Further...

Tags:Armenian language, Armenian Alphabet, “Schriftkunst und Bilderzauber,”

Her name is Sabiha, the same name as the favorite adopted daughter of Kemal Mustafa (Atatürk), who as a female pilot was a symbol for her nation. But this Sabiha is German, and lives with her immigrant mother, whom she calls Anne – “mother” in Turkish. This Sabiha, we learn from her best friend (actually soul mate), also named Anne, is 150 per cent German, and only learns Turkish when she attends university. She soon feels drawn to Turkish nationalist circles, and even participates in nationalist demonstrations, honoring Talaat Pasha, for example.
But who is Sabiha really? Is she German? Is she Turkish? Or is she, perhaps, something else? Could she be Armenian? Read Further...

Tags:Anne’s silence, Annes Schweigen, Bea Ehlers-Kerbekian, Doğan Akhanlı, Theater unterm Dach

BERLIN — Every Armenian knows (or should know) Komitas Vardapet. He was the great musicologist, musician and composer who literally founded modern classical Armenian music and whose songs, dances and liturgical works play a prominent role in our musical culture. But perhaps fewer people know about the influence of Germany on his work. On September 5 in Berlin, a gathering of scientists, politicians and artists convened to honor Komitas, unveiling a bronze commemorative plaque at the Humboldt University, which was the composer’s alma mater.Read Further...

Tags:Komitas Vardapet, Prof. Armenuhi Drost-Abgarjan, , Minister of Culture Hasmik Poghosyan, Mesrop Mashtots

Book review: The Armenian Genocide in Literature: Perceptions of Those Who Lived Through the Calamity, Rubina Peroomian, Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, 2012.
http://armenieninfo.net/muriel-mirak-weissbach/4106-muriel-mirak-weissbach-working-through-the-past-to-embrace-the-future
http://asbarez.com/104802/book-review-working-through-the-past-to-embrace-the-future/
http://www.mirrorspectator.com/2012/08/16/book-review-working-through-the-past-to-embrace-the-future/

Read Further...

Tags:Armenian genocide, Rubina Peroomian

“Especially as 2015 approaches, the pressure will increase. Turkey will, as it has done before, react harshly. It will utter threats, but they will remain ineffective.
“Do you know why? It is because the Armenians have gotten a significant part of the world to accept their claims of genocide.”
Who is speaking here?Read Further...

Tags:Mehmet Ali Birand, Hurriyet, Wolfgang Gust, Serdar Dincer, Umit Kardas, CUP