Having its biannual membership convention on Saturday, Nov. 23, the German Schiller Institute met in Niederwalluf, near Wiesbaden. Institute 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 end result of the destructive work of the Congress for Cultural Freedom–title in Orwellian newspeak) like the present one can only, and must, be overcome by constructive creativity. This 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 at his time, Schiller developed the concept of elevating mankind with ideas laid out in the Aesthetical Letters which he wrote.
Reviving this concept has been the task set for itself by the Schiller Institute since its foundation 40 years ago in 1984. Some of these ideas have begun to be put on the agenda of China and the BRICS, as the alternative to the war drive and cultural ugliness pursued and performed by the transatlantic West. But there is still an extraordinary mobilization required to prevent the escalating conflict between these two camps mounting into a nuclear world war.
The video was introduced by a presentation by Ulrike Lillge on the cultural decay of the West and of Germany in particular. This was followed by an intense discussion by the members present, focussing on the need to develop more efficient ways of mobilizing citizens for a profound change of the situation toward a New Paradigm in politics, economics, culture and science.
At the close of the meeting, the board of the institute was elected: 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.
