In its biannual membership convention on Saturday, Nov. 23, the German Schiller Institute met in Niederwalluf, near Wiesbaden. Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche, prevented by other important obligations, could not attend and delivered her keynote via video. She pointed out that a profound strategic, economic and cultural crisis (this being the preliminary result of the destructive work of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (its name in Orwellian Newspeak) like the present one can and must only be overcome by constructive creativity. That is in the tradition of the combination of creativity with a human image on the basis of beauty, as worked out by Friedrich Schiller 250 years ago. Faced with a profound crisis in his time, Schiller developed the concept of elevating mankind with ideas laid out in his Aesthetical Letters.
Reviving that concept has been the task the Schiller Institute set for itself since its founding in 1984, fully 40 years ago. Some of these ideas have begun to appear on the agenda of China and the BRICS as the alternative to the war drive and cultural ugliness pursued by the trans-Atlantic West. But there we still require an extraordinary mobilization to prevent the escalating conflict between these two camps becoming a nuclear world war.
Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche’s video was introduced by Ulrike Lillge, who expanded on the cultural decay of the West, and of Germany, in particular. What followed was an intense discussion among those present, focussing on the need to develop more efficient ways to mobilize citizens to make a profound change toward a New Paradigm, in politics, in economics, in culture and in science.
The Institute’s board were elected at the meeting’s close: Helga Zepp-LaRouche as chairwoman, Christa Kaiser as first vice chairwoman, Ulrike Lillge as second vice chairwoman, Rainer Apel as third vice chairman and treasurer.
