A DIY guide to places of shared cultural heritage—created by young people
Project launch and first phase
In June 2025, young people from Germany and Poland began working on a new project by Schloss Trebnitz on sites of German-Polish cultural heritage. The Polish project partner is the Mikołaj Kopernik Primary School in Pszczew (western Poland). In the first phase of the project (“The Oder region between war and peace”), students from Hamburg and Sokołów Podlaski in eastern Poland explored the turning point of 1945 through biographies and historical sites in the Brandenburg–Polish Oder region.
Second phase: Human–Power–Landscape
In the second phase of the project (“Human–Power–Landscape”), the focus is on places that are potentially significant for German-Polish cultural heritage. As “cultural heritage sites,” children from Letschin and from the Polish partner municipality Pszczew explore places such as the European Bridge between Neurüdnitz and Siekierki and the Oderbruch Museum in Altranft.
Aim of the project
The aim of the project is to address the profound transformation of the region between the Oderbruch and Warthebruch into a transnational cultural space from the perspective of children and young people. As independently as possible, the children and young people develop new formats on the sites of a shared transnational cultural heritage.
80 years after 1945: remembering and conveying
80 years after the “liberation” of the Oder region by the Soviet Army, marked by massive destruction, displacement, and violence, the consequences of the new German eastern border and the Polish western border, as well as the resulting social ruptures, are still clearly visible. The project aims to help young people in particular to understand the significance of places such as the Peace Forest near Seelow, the old town ruins of former Küstrin, or the historical bridgeheads of the railway bridge now known as the “European Bridge,” as shared cultural heritage of the cross-border region.
Perspective of young people
In this context, the project also pursues another goal: the works created by the young participants can show through which “lens” or from which perspective children and young people from Poland and Germany today—80 years after the political reordering of the German-Polish border region—look at the cultural heritage of this cross-border area.
European dimension and cooperation
The concept of European cultural heritage has already been successfully applied by the team of the Oderbruch Museum in Altranft to the Oderbruch region, bringing it onto the European stage through the award of the European Heritage Label by the EU Commission. For two years now, the Oderbruch Museum and Schloss Trebnitz have been jointly implementing educational projects on the cultural heritage of the Oderbruch. The cooperation within the framework of the project “Oder:Brüche” between the museum and the educational and meeting centre Schloss Trebnitz, with its transnational orientation, is therefore particularly welcome and will encourage further people interested in cultural heritage, as well as people on both sides of the Oder, to engage with sites of shared German-Polish cultural heritage.
Digital formats and online portal
In addition to activities in cultural and media education and the development of innovative media formats on sites of German-Polish cultural heritage, the project is developing an online portal that brings together selected contributions by the young participants and is intended to encourage viewing, discovering, trying out, and replicating. It will also continue to represent the collaborative work of Schloss Trebnitz and the Oderbruch Museum in the future.
Contributions and news about the project will also soon be available on the Oderbruch Museum Altranft blog, on the social media channels of the partner organisations, and through the partners’ mailing lists.
Funding and duration
The project has a duration of one year. “Oder:Breaks” is co-financed by the European Union and funded through the Small Projects Fund of the Euroregion Pro Europa Viadrina.
Contact
Dr. Martin Müller-Butz
+49 (0) 33477 519 22
mueller-butz@schloss-trebnitz.de