How do young people in Germany view the constitution? What role does it play in the lives of schoolchildren? What thoughts and emotions do they associate with it? Young people were asked to address questions like these in the Germany-wide ‘My Constitution’ competition, in which selected school scholarship programmes took part and which was initiated by the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ) and the NRW Centre for Talent Development at the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences. The video by three scholarship holders from the ‘NRWTalente – Region OWL’ programme, which is run by Paderborn University, was one of the best entries and received an award from Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann at the Democracy Festival in Berlin.
The young people were asked to take an in-depth look at the constitution and produce creative short videos lasting a maximum of 90 seconds. More than 30 videos from over 100 pupils were submitted to the jury – consisting of the former Federal Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the former Federal Constitutional Court judge Prof. Dr Andreas L. Paulus, the musician Ben Salomo and Suat Yilmaz, the first talent scout from the NRW Centre for Talent Promotion. From a rap song to a stop-motion video to cinematically staged collages, a wide variety of video contributions were created.
In their video, Nele Katharina Maasmeier, Benedikt and Noah Frickenstein from the student scholarship programme ‘NRWTalente – Region OWL’ have explored the historical development and relevance of the constitution for current political issues. To do this, they selected various articles that are particularly important to them today – such as Article 5: The right to freedom of expression. They used various video and photo recordings to emphasise the importance of these articles of the constitution. The preparation took place as part of workshops within the student scholarship programme. As a prize, they were delighted to receive a winning certificate and the 20-euro collector's coin ‘75 Years of Constitution’ issued to mark the anniversary of the constitution.
"It was one of my first film projects. The constitution is very diverse, so you can develop many themes and ideas. I thought it was great the framework provided by the scholarship programme for the competition. We also had a documentary and advertising filmmaker at our side who supported us technically and thematically. It's important for me to always be able to try out new things as part of the scholarship programme in order to find my own personal path,’ reports Noah Frickenstein.
In addition to visiting the Democracy Festival, the scholarship holders were offered a varied programme during their three-day stay in Berlin: a visit to the Federal Ministry of Justice, a tour of the Reichstag building, a dialogue on values with the independent education movement ‘German Dream’, a boat trip on the Spree and a tour of the ‘Futurium’. There was also plenty of time to get to know the scholarship holders from other regions and exchange ideas.
This text has been translated automatically.
