For months it led Peacemaker Tour through Europe. At the end of the tour, all peacemakers met in Verdun. There we visited the various memorial sites the horror of the battle there . remember
In Project Peacemaker, people who want peace network. A simple wish that everyone together cannot realize in their lifetime. But together we have seen many places where there is war. In the past, peacemakers have traveled to Ethiopia, Mali, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Kurdistan (Iraq), Iraq, Syria and parts of Turkey. Every war is different, but they all have suffering as a common denominator. When you tell people in Europe about the suffering in the world and the desire for peace, it doesn't get through to many people's minds. People here see poor WiFi reception or a coffee for €5,00 as suffering. People are not interested in other countries. They pretend to be, they feign gross interest, but only until the next soap starts. In the same way, everyone pretends that they would help, but... and then a lot happens. Very few people say “I have other priorities, my car is more important to meIn order to talk about the nonsense of war away from these people, to have serious conversations about extremism and to exchange experiences, such meetings are important. The youngest Peacemaker is sixteen years old, the oldest is already over fifty.
"You stood on the mine in Mosul, right? HAHAHA“ – The people here have experienced a lot and take it with humor. There's nothing more left than gallows humor. We compare who is banned from entering which country, who has been expelled from which country and who has ever had to spend a night behind bars because they were offended by their commitment there. Funny, bizarre and sad stories that show the self-made madness on our planet.
On the other hand, I read the comments under my Verdun pictures on social networks. “What is Verdun?"Or"Isn't there a club or why do you have to go to church all the time? :Dare some of them. I went to a comprehensive school in Bochum. The stereotype is that you don't get much education there. Both comments quoted come from people with college degrees. I wonder if they've really never heard of the First World War - and are too stupid to enter the place name into Google Maps. And I'm wondering if I should explain it to them? “Enlightenment is man's exit from his self-inflicted immaturity“ by Kant goes through my head. You are just one click away from getting the answer yourself. But they are too lazy for that. And I don't feel like presenting general knowledge on a silver platter in Instagram comments. I also wonder if it would do anything. If you've never heard of it and don't understand the purpose of such a visit, can I explain to you what it's about? Others want to know what we do differently if we want peace. Why should you do something differently than others? Peace is not a competition. “Hey, my peace is better than yours, I have it with vanilla flavor“ – or how is that supposed to work? I put the cell phone away again. This was exactly the stupid world I wanted to escape from. So why bother with it when I have more exciting people around me? And why does the sixteen-year-old here have more on her mind than the people out there? So it's neither age nor formal education level. It depends on whether you want to go through the world with open eyes and an open heart, or whether you choose “Greed is hot“ and is interested in the next soap and would like to become a professional outrager on Facebook.
We shoot in empty and well-maintained cemeteries. Hundreds of thousands of square meters in size, in the best condition, and for three hours we don't meet a soul. Not even any kind of supervision. We are filming the final interviews for the Peacemaker film, which will be presented in Augsburg in May. And we sit there quietly and think about this epitome of senseless battles and why people continued to shoot at each other after the Christmas truce.
A little further we see the ruined walls of a fort. Someone describes the landscape as “mini Teletubby land”. This refers to the countless small and large craters that are now overgrown by the meadow. Between perhaps one and ten meters in diameter, they are lined up one after the other as far as the eye can see. The fort has some relatively small retractable towers that look like the forerunner of the Maginot Line. When you see the holes in the towers and walls of the fort, you can imagine how bodies must have been blown to shreds. Hundreds of thousands of them were or are lying here. Next door in Douaumont Ossuary lie the bones of 130.000 German and French soldiers. This is where the famous quote “We made up. We have come to an understanding. We became friendsby François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl. This is where Angela Merkel and François Hollande cemented their friendship again in 2016. The reality of today catches up with me again: “I'll be happy when Merkel is finally gone” is one of the comments under a picture. You notice again that many people don't understand a bit what this is about and how happy we can be about the longest period of peace in German history.
I saw the war and I lost many friends to the war. I know why I want peace. But you don't have to have seen war to want peace. Peace has just become so normal for us that we no longer appreciate it.
