The Institute of Ethnology is a cooperation partner in a new project.

We often associate Europe with imposing buildings, prominent historical events, or major intellectual movements such as the Enlightenment. But Europe is primarily a part of everyday life – In actions, gestures, and habits that we initially do not attach any significance to, precisely because they are so self-evident. Experiences in childhood and youth have been and continue to be formative in this regard.

The project deals with the specific connection between biography, everyday life, and Europe. Together with cultural and educational partners in the Danube region, we are developing an Open Educational Resource (OER) on the topic of “Childhood and Youth in the Danube Region.” The freely accessible and free educational resource will consist of five podcast episodes with accompanying teaching and learning materials. The educational tool aims to make human experiences, actions, needs, and testimonies tangible in their European dimension through meaningful materials and media: What ideas about childhood and youth existed and exist in changing social contexts? How do children and young people themselves describe their everyday lives? What aspects of everyday life can be depicted in terms of growing up in (post-)war or crisis times?

School pupils, students, museum and archive visitors, teachers, and cultural mediators actively contribute to shaping the educational resource. By engaging with archival sources and museum objects, as well as through discussions with contemporary witnesses and experts, participants not only acquire knowledge about current and historical developments, but also become sensitized to the diversity and commonalities of (everyday) cultures in the Danube region.

The EVERYDAY DANUBE project is funded by the Baden-Württemberg Foundation as part of the Perspektive Donau program (Perspektive Donau - Baden-Württemberg Stiftung).

Project participants: IKDE Freiburg i. Br., Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and other institutions from the Czech Republikc, Slovakia, Germany, Croatia and Moldova. The project is supported by the Baden-Württemberg-Stiftung (EVERYDAY DANUBE. Open Educational Resource zu Alltagskultur im Donauraum | IKDE).

Picture: Game in Gánt, Gánt, Republic of Hungary, 1938. Photo: Elli Zenker-Starzacher. Estate of Elli Zenker-Starzacher. IKDE image archive. Inv. no.: Dx00357.