Between May 16th and 20th 2024, a delegation of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization, led by the President of its Scientific Council, Professor Emil Constantinescu, and comprised of the Director of the Directorate for the History and Culture of the Levant, dr. habil. Cătălin-Ștefan Popa and Maxim Onofrei, Communications Expert at the Levant Institute, took part in the proceedings of the 2024 Berlin Forum for Culture & Folklore Diplomacy organized by the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (ICD) on the topic of “Dancing and Singing Nations Closer”.
Scheduled to run in parallel to the 2024 edition of the Berlin Carnival of Cultures, the Forum was held over several days of proceedings, bringing together former heads of state and government, ministers in national governments and representatives of international organisations to the German capital to address an interdisciplinary audience comprised of politicians, diplomats, artists and academics, focusing on the potential of an inclusive diplomacy centred on culture and folklore to serve as an important vector for the furtherance of classical diplomacy.
A Special Award for Irina Bokova, conferred by President Emil Constantinescu on behalf of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin
Day One of the Forum included interventions from Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland (2008-2014), Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Chair of the Alba Party, Scotland), Irina Bokova (10th UNESCO Director-General 2009-2017), Professors Karl Erik Norman and Olivier Arifon (Academy for Cultural Diplomacy, Berlin), Yosef Beilin (Minister of Justice of Israel 1999-2001), Mladen Ivanić (President by Rotation of Bosnia and Herzegovina 2014-15, 2016-17) and H.E. Ali Ahmad Jalali (Ambassador of Afghanistan to the Federal Republic of Germany). During the first day's proceedings, the President of the Scientific Council of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization, Professor Emil Constantinescu, took the floor to give a presentation of the lengthy activity of Madam Irina Bokova, and to introduce the special topic she had selected for her address. Madam Bokova had succeeded President Constantinescu at the helm of the Academy for Cultural Diplomacy that he had established as part of the Berlin Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, after he elected to focus his continued efforts on bringing the expertise acquired and the international networks he had created to Romania, as part of a new institutional project that would coalesce into the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization.
After her address and presentation, President Constantinescu presented Madam Irina Bokova with a special award on behalf of the Berlin Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, in honour of her outstanding work in support of the protection and promotion of universal cultural heritage.
A Lifetime Achievement Award for his activity in service of peace throughout his lengthy career, conferred to President Emil Constantinescu
The second day of the Forum for Culture & Folklore Diplomacy featured interventions from notable speakers such as Hassan Diab (Prime-minister of Lebanon 2020-2021), H.E. Katalin Bogyay (President of the 36th UNESCO General Conference, Ambassador of Hungary to UNESCO and the United Nations), Natalia Gavriliță (Prime-minister of Moldova 2021-2022), Ann Linde (Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden 2019-2022), Delia Domingo-Albert (Director-general of the Association of South East Asian Nations – ASEAN, 1990-1995, Secretary for Foreign Affairs of the Philippines 2003-2004) and Walter Mzembi (Minister for Tourism of Zimbabwe 2009-2017).
Following his own intervention (outlined below), H.E. Katalin Bogyay offered President Emil Constantinescu a “Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions for World Peace” on behalf of the Berlin Institute for Cultural Diplomacy.
Emil Constantinescu: Cultural Diplomacy in Service of Peace through Art and Music: A Pathway to Understanding the Other
As part of the proceedings of the Berlin Forum for Culture & Folklore Diplomacy, Professor Emil Constantinescu, delivered an address and presentation on the topic of Cultural Diplomacy in Service of Peace through Art and Music: a Pathway to Understanding the Other, focusing on the subversive impact that jazz, folk and rock music had had on the younger generations growing up behind the Iron Curtain, ultimately leading to the collapse of totalitarian communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe in 1989-1991:
Our session tries to discuss the ways in which cultural diplomacy can contribute to peace building. We have often addressed this theme at the conferences organized by the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin. But now, given recent developments, war is no longer something we watch at the cinema or on TV. Every day, even as we speak, people are dying in Ukraine and Gaza. Local conflicts have become regional, and now threaten to become global.
Can music help create a spirit of peace that proclaims love and not hate, eliminates violence, and spreads understanding between people?
2000 years ago, the Greeks said that when weapons speak, the muses fall silent. Among the seven muses were the Muse of Poetry, the Muse of Dance (Terpsychore) but also Clio, the Muse of History. I believe that in times of war, literature, music and dance must speak; and perhaps then history, personified by Clio, would look different.
Why music? Because, three and a half decades ago, music and the spoken word succeeded in bringing down the communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe, ending the global Cold War and the most murderous regime in the history of the world, responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of its own people, leading to the establishment of democratic regimes throughout the former Soviet space.
For the first time in human history, this transformation took place peacefully. Millions of people occupied the streets and squares of major cities in Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic States and the former USSR in 1989-90, rendering the weapons and tanks of the army and security forces useless.
After the fall of the dictatorships, the liberated peoples decided, through free elections, to bring in presidents from academic and cultural backgrounds as recognition of their role in awakening democratic consciousness. Among the most well-known of these were the playwright Václav Havel, President of the Czech Republic; the playwright Lennart Meri, President of Estonia; the Chancellor of the Vilnius University of Music, Vytautas Landsbergis, President of Lithuania; the professor of philosophy at the University of Sofia, Julio Jelev, President of Bulgaria; the President of the Hungarian Writers' Union, Arpad Göncz, President of Hungary; or the philosophers Geremek and Mazowiecki from Poland.
I will try to illuminate some of this seemingly forgotten history by recalling the role that music has played. For me, this is also a moral duty, because many of those listed above, the first democratic presidents of their countries, were close friends of mine and, sadly, are no longer with us.
Even before 1989, the music of the free world had played a role in shaping the democratic consciousness of peoples under the Iron Curtain, awakening in their souls the ideals of freedom, democracy and peace among people. At a time when Western music, considered imperialist and decadent by the authorities, was banned or carefully censored, the musical movements of the West had a great impact on the consciousness of oppressed peoples – at once through folk music, associated with the hippie peace movement, and jazz, which, through improvisation, promoted freedom of expression.
The road to freedom and democracy for countries under the political and military domination of the Soviet Union after the Second World War began in 1977 with the solidarity of Czechoslovak cultural personalities, led by Czech dissident writer Václav Havel and Slovak journalist Jiří Diesntbier, with the students of the Prague University of Music's rock band, “Plastic People of the Universe”, who were expelled from their studies and investigated after holding an underground concert. The “Charter ‘77” manifesto document criticising the Prague government for refusing to implement the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Charter was also signed by intellectuals such as Bronisław Geremek of Poland, Gabor Demszky of Hungary, or Paul Goma of Romania. It was still too early, repression too strong, and the number of signatories to the Charter too small; but the idea of protesting for human rights remained.
In August 1989, at a meeting called “Picnic with Music” held on the Hungarian-Austrian border, participants crossed into Austria, marking the first breach in the Iron Curtain - followed by the mass exodus of East Germans, through Hungary and Austria, into the free world.
In the same month of August 1989, citizens of the Baltic States formed a human chain from Estonia to Lithuania, which was called the "Baltic" or "Freedom Chain", initiated by the playwright Lennart Meri in Tallinn, Estonia, at one end, and Vytautas Landsbergis, Chancellor of the University of Music in Lithuania, at the other. Two million people joined hands, singing and dancing along a human chain over 600 km long across the three Baltic countries, showcasing the popular desire for independence and self-determination, as well as the solidarity between their peoples – and, thereby, approaching the Baltic States’ independence from the USSR not as a political issue, but as a moral one. In January of 1991, Lithuania became the first Soviet republic to declare its independence, when peaceful demonstrators led by Vytautas Landsbergis occupied the national television broadcaster in Vilnius. The head of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, sent in KGB special forces to suppress the demonstration, famously quipping that "never will a mere 'musician' be able to defy the authority of the Soviet state". In total, 14 peaceful demonstrators were killed and 600 injured in Vilnius; but, Lithuania gained its independence.
Another evocative example of the revolutionary year 1989 is the liberation and reunification of Germany itself.
In East Germany, protests against the communist dictatorship began with religious music in the churches of Dresden and Leipzig. They continued with those in Dresden who, at the end of Verdi's “Nabucco”, featuring the famous Choir of Slaves, took to the streets to demonstrate peacefully for freedom and democracy.
We are now in Berlin – the most fitting place to evoke the role of music in the liberation, democratisation and reunification of the German people.
While folk and jazz music helped to shape the consciousness of freedom among oppressed peoples in the latter half of the 20th century, it was rock music that played the most important role. First, there were a number of rock concerts held in West Germany near the Berlin Wall, where, from the summer of 1987 onwards, artists such as the Eurythmics, Genesis or Michael Jackson performed. Faced with crowds of young East Germans gathering on the eastern side of the Wall to listen to music that had previously been forbidden to them, the authorities begrudgingly allowed for domestic, GDR rock bands to also organize their own concerts; however, in the end, the consciousness of German cultural unity prevailed over repression, East Germans tore down the Wall, and the communist government resigned.
Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, on July 21st, 1990, Pink Floyd, alongside Van Morrison and Bryan Adams, performed their album “The Wall” in full at Potsdamer Platz among the ruins of the Berlin Wall itself, in a concert that was attended by an estimated 500,000 people from both Western and Eastern Berlin, which signified the true start of Germany's reunification process.
I, too, had the opportunity to take part personally in the events that, in Romania, led to the collapse of Ceaușescu’s communist dictatorship in 1989, in the struggle for democracy against neo-communist power after 1990, and in the establishment of the first democratic regime in my country in 1996.
The 1989-1996 movements in Romania were, largely, the creations of young people at the time. University Square in Bucharest became a truly free space, and through the songs sung then, the Romanian nation, embittered for so long, was again able to find itself.
In November of 1996, the spontaneous crowd that filled University Square when my victory in the presidential elections was announced was once again mostly comprised of young people, who spontaneously came to celebrate what they perceived as being their own victory.
This year, we mark the 35th anniversary of the collapse of communism. In the 20th century, starting in Eastern Europe, two World Wars broke out in which tens of millions of people died; subsequently, tens of millions more were killed by Communist dictators. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, the war in Ukraine has marked the beginning of a Second World Cold War, a hot war in which young people on both sides of the front line are dying every day, and has foreshadowed the threat of a new World War which, if it turns nuclear, could well turn into a veritable apocalypse.
Can music play a role in what we call "cultural diplomacy" now, when it would appear that classical diplomacy is not working as intended and military confrontation is unlikely to end soon? I, for one, am convinced that it can. For many, it seems impossible now; but, when all other means of communication that appeal to reason fail, it is music, which appeals to the soul, that can once again bring people together in the spirit of peace.
I also believe that music can play a vital role in the establishment of a culture of peace through education. Music is already a force that brings huge crowds of people together, filling stadiums around the world and broadcast by the global media. Perhaps many of those attending are there to forget about life’s many difficulties, or to distract themselves from the violence that is increasingly prevalent in our society. However, if music were to be more explicitly deployed as a component of a culture of peace through education, its role could become all the more important; and it is through reunions with young people from different parts of the world, representing different cultures – just like that organized by the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy today - can contribute to this noble mission.
The Healing Role of Culture and Folklore in Reconciliation after Violent Conflicts and Division
The third day of the Berlin Forum for Culture & Folklore Diplomacy focused on The Healing Role of Culture and Folklore in Reconciliation after Violent Conflicts and Division (Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Cyprus 2009-2008, 2011-2013), Empowering Human Cultures for Hopeful Global Diplomacy (Dr Hakima El Haite, Morroccan Minister of the Environment 2013-2017, President of the Liberal International since 2018) and the Surprising Lives of a World Currency (Professor Eurydice Georgantelli, Department of Art History, Harvard University). The same day saw the launch of the Latin American Carnival of Cultures, organized by the Institute and Academy for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin.
During the 2024 Berlin Forum for Culture & Folklore Diplomacy, the President of the Scientific Council of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization Professor Emil Constantinescu and Mark Donfried, Director of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin, ratified a Memorandum of Understanding and Collaboration. Seeking to expand upon the existing compact between the two institutions over the medium and long term, Associate Professor Cătălin-Ștefan Popa, Director of the Directorate for the History of the Culture and Civilization of the Levant, presented a series of proposals for the joint organization of a number of scientific and academic events and conferences in close collaboration.
At the close of the Berlin Forum for Culture & Folklore Diplomacy, the event organisers invited attending members of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy’s International Advisory Board, alongside the Levant Institute’s delegation, to undertake a work trip to the city of Potsdam.
Memorandum of Understanding between the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization and the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin
During the 2024 Berlin Forum for Culture & Folklore Diplomacy, the President of the Scientific Council of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization Professor Emil Constantinescu and Mark Donfried, Director of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin, ratified a Memorandum of Understanding and Collaboration. Seeking to expand upon the existing compact between the two institutions over the medium and long term, Associate Professor Cătălin-Ștefan Popa, Director of the Directorate for the History of the Culture and Civilization of the Levant, presented a series of proposals for the joint organization of a number of scientific and academic events and conferences in close collaboration.
At the close of the Berlin Forum for Culture & Folklore Diplomacy, the event organisers invited attending members of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy’s International Advisory Board, alongside the Levant Institute’s delegation, to undertake a work trip to the city of Potsdam.
