AUFbrüche is the motto for Chemnitz2025
Chemnitz presents the guiding principles for the Capital of Culture bid
If Chemnitz has anything in its blood, then it's the fact that it has become Germany's leading industrial city at the beginning of the 20th century, the leading mechanical engineering centre in Central Eastern Europe during the Cold War and an up-and-coming medium-sized business location since the turn of the millennium.
Whatever history has led to radical upheavals, the people of Chemnitz have turned it into a new beginning with their can-do mentality and inventive spirit. And they have always cultivated an active cultural life in the city. In 1909, for example, the citizens gave themselves an art collection and an opera house, built the open-air theatre in Küchwald between 1955 and 1963 in thousands of hours of voluntary work and to this day afford cultural facilities like hardly any other city of this size. Not to mention the rich work of the association throughout the ages in a wide range of artistic genres, in sport, in the allotment garden movement, in traditional work and international exchange.
Nevertheless, the ruptures in the city's history have also left their mark. Three different city centres within 70 years, two city names, different social systems - Chemnitz is still searching for its identity and self-image. The bid to become European Capital of Culture 2025 will also make a decisive contribution to this process
It will tell a story of Chemnitz that gives the great historical impacts in Europe concrete faces, destinies and upheavals. And it will show that Chemnitz has always benefited from European influences: from industrialists who came with expertise from Manchester or Alsace. From merchants who brought cotton from Macedonia. From labourers who came from the surrounding regions for wages and bread. They all made Chemnitz rich and found a place in the city that gave them a new home, existence, energy and space for their dreams. The city, which is the cradle of German patent law, is still the city of inventors and tinkerers, of creative ideas, new approaches and innovation - and it will show this to the whole of Europe in 2025.
It will face the challenges facing the whole of Europe with courage and openness. Issues such as immigration and emigration, social justice and the new fault lines between nation states or between generations call on us to reflect on Europe's values - and to argue in Chemnitz in favour of people, countries and cultures working together. To stand up for the European peace project.
Culture has always been the key to engaging the city and its people in an open dialogue and creating encounters.
Chemnitz has defined three fields of action for this process:
Giving new spaces.
"Give space!" is the motto of the city's 2030 cultural strategy. The city is opening up new spaces for thought and action - and opening up for a cultural region along the lines of the Chemnitz model. Chemnitz offers the space in which dreams can come true.
Reconnecting work.
Digitalisation is changing the world of work. Co-creation and transformation determine everyday life. New networks and working models are emerging.
Traces for a shared future.
The courage to face the past becomes the impetus for a European future. Only those who know their own history can continue to write it.
In the coming months, the task now is to revitalise these three programmatic pillars with creative AUFbruch scenarios and concrete projects in an intensive exchange with the people of Chemnitz.
Hence the demanding title:
AUFbrüche. Opening Minds. Creating Spaces.