50 Jahre Hanseatic Scholarships

Was passiert, wenn man zum 50-jährigen Jubiläum eines Stipendienprogramms zu einer Reunion einlädt? Im Falle der Hanseatic Scholarships kamen 30 Stipendiatinnen und Stipendiaten der letzten Jahrzehnte zusammen, um über zwei Tage hinweg zu netzwerken, sich intensiv auszutauschen und ein bemerkenswertes Programm auf die Beine zu stellen. Der untenstehende Brief von Susan Diab (Stipendiatin aus dem Jahre 1988) gibt sehr persönliche Einblicke in die Bedeutung und den Einfluss, den ein Stipendiatenprogramm auf den Lebensentwurf eines Menschen haben kann.

Das Hanseatic Scholarship Programme geht ursprünglich auf das Jahr 1937 zurück. Bereits vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg wurden zwei Stipendien vergeben. 1970 wurde das Programm von der Toepfer Stiftung wiederaufgenommen und seitdem haben rund 100 Stipendiaten der Universitäten Oxford und Cambrige die Möglichkeit genutzt, an einer deutschen Hochschule zu studieren oder zu forschen.

Susan Diab (Stipendiatin aus dem Jahre 1988) wandte sich nach dem Symposium mit einem Brief an uns. Sie erlaubt uns, ihre persönlichen Einblicke auf das Stipendiatenprogramm und wie sehr es ihr Leben beeinflusst hat und immer noch beeinflusst, hier zu teilen:

Dear Judith

Thank you and please pass on my deepest thanks to everyone concerned with dreaming up and organising the wonderful Hanseatic Reunion.

To me personally the occasion marked an opportunity, which I perhaps would not have made for myself, to reflect on the two years of my scholarship and time spent in Hamburg in my mid twenties. 

This brought with it, the opening of files of notes from my research from that time, the reviewing of photographs of places I visited, visits from friends and family to me in Hamburg, pictures of friends I made whilst living in Germany. I also found theatre programmes, exhibition tickets, cinema schedules, student passes, even a hefty library fine for overdue books itemised and printed out in full!

I only found out about the reunion at the last minute so this process of reviewing and revisiting that time via my own carefully kept 'archive' of documents was very concentrated, intense and rather earth-shattering in the best possible way. It reminded me of myself as a young woman, of the fact that I had done this, gone to live and study in Hamburg on my own, immersed myself in the language and culture of Germany, made connections to new friends and got to know my literary subject from the inside out. 

The subject of my research at that time was Karoline von Günderrode (1780-1806), a female poet, playwright and correspondent. Christa Wolf revived her life and works in the anthology she published in the early 1980s, 'Der Schatten eines Traumes' (The Shadow of a Dream), which formed my introduction to her. Wolf also created a fictitious meeting between Günderrode and a young Heinrich von Kleist in her novel 'Kein Ort, Nirgends'. Through the difficulties Günderrode had to face living as a single woman of little financial means in the era she did and experiencing for myself the liberation of being young, free and enquiring at a revolutionary time in Germany, I found myself facing a transformation within myself which led to the decision to change paths from an academic career to trying to make it as an artist. 

I attended seminars at Hamburg University alongside my research, brilliant seminars by Sigrid Weigel and Inge Stephan about topics relating to the bicentenary of the French Revolution as well as in-depth investigations of what it means to write as a woman, 'feminine writing' and female perspectives on culture and society. I got involved in student journalism in a limited way, researching and publishing a piece in German for the student SPD 'Frontal' magazine on Section 28, an odious piece of UK Conservative government legislation which made it illegal to 'promote' homosexuality, which could be used to close down debate and discussion about the topic of different sexualities in schools, for one thing. I had the ambition of reading Marx and Freud in German and, though I did not complete their entire works, did make some inroads here. I read all of the Brontës and gave a talk about them to a Hamburg English Society.

My Hanseatic scholarship gave me the time to think, which is so important and which, ever since, working as an artist and as an academic, there is rarely enough paid time for. It is only when you have time to think deeply that you are able to make those discoveries about who you really are and where you actually want to go in your life. When the Berlin Wall fell, ending the Cold War I had spent most of my life living within, it felt as if anything was possible. I returned to England at the end of my two years in Hamburg and enrolled on an Art Foundation course in London, then took a second degree, this time in Fine Art: Sculpture, which brought me to Brighton and the rest, they say, is history.

Looking back can help to carry us forwards. Now, the box files reopened, I feel ready to deal with all the material I researched but this time perhaps in a more artistic, more visual or more performative way. I may even choose to do so in such a way that I finally complete the PhD I began all those years ago. 

So you see, this opportunity, arising, as far as I was concerned, completely out of the blue, to re-encounter my much younger self and then to take her with me to meet all those other wonderful Hanseatic Scholars in the incredible setting of Wilton Park has opened up much much more than will neatly fit back into a box file. The conversations I was fortunate enough to have with my fellow scholars, reminded me that I am still a scholar as well as being an artist. There was such enjoyment to be had in finding out about other people's experiences of being Hanseatic Scholars in Germany in whichever era they were there, so many resonances from what they were saying within myself on so many layers, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually even. 

I really look forward to taking the insights shared and gained from this week into my future activities as an artist, a teacher and a researcher. So it doesn't really seem enough to say 'thank you', the effects go so deep. It was lovely to meet you and to talk to you and to Ansgar and everyone involved in the Toepfer Stiftung and to learn more about its remit, vision and activities. 

I hope that our paths cross again very soon.

Best wishes

Susan