Message of Greeting: Rainer Klemke
Rainer Klemke
Chair of berlinHistory e. V.
Original message of greeting in German. This is an English summary.
Rainer Klemke, Chair of berlinHistory e. V., sends warm greetings from Berlin and welcomes the launch of the BayernHistoryApp in the district of Landsberg am Lech. For the first time, the underlying concept of a location-based, free and ad-free history app — already running successfully in Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, with further cities planned — is being applied to a large rural state like Bavaria.
He is pleased that Wolfgang Hauck and the association dieKunstBauStelle have developed a distinctive approach to deploying the software in Bavaria. With their cultural containers, the Kultainer, they have collected stories on location in eight municipalities of the district of Landsberg and brought them into the app. This participatory approach to local historical mediation, growing into a network across the state of Bavaria, is unique and promises to engage entirely new audiences for regional history.
The app makes diverse perspectives and themes accessible without the threshold of thick history books or museum gates. It is not didactic but available on location at any time, and invites people to contribute their own stories. Through its location-based design, a collection of houses can become a place of belonging – a Heimat experience built from the many stories the houses tell.
berlinHistory’s apps, Klemke writes, are living storytellers that keep growing and remain available to everyone: a growing history library in your pocket and a digital form of local studies (Heimatkunde).
He thanks the local actors who brought the project to life, and the State Government, the District of Upper Bavaria, the Fund for Socio-Cultural Initiatives, the German Foundation for Civic Engagement and Volunteering (DSEE) and the District of Landsberg am Lech for their support, recognising the potential of the BayernHistoryApp for the regions as well as for Bavaria as a whole. He concludes by wishing the project every success and lasting growth.