Barevner from Germany!
Hi everyone, I’m Leonid from good old Germany. From now on I’ll be blogging here on the internet’s biggest Armenian blog, what an honour this is! And how come I was given this honour? It was because I asked Raffi K. to write something on this blog to contribute to the Armenian Cause, which he refused in this case, but actually told me to do it myself, so here I am. Thank you Raffi for giving me this opportunity, I really appreciate it….
So a little bit about myself:
I’m a student of Political-Science and Sociology and very interested in “All Things Armenian”, especially Armenian history and politics. I’m also a very active member of the Armenian community here in Germany. I should mention that I have a wonderful girlfriend, who at the moment studies in Yerevan. She originally comes from Iran, but moved to Armenia a few years ago. So in order to see my darling love, I fly to Armenia twice a year. I actually do not identify myself that much with Germany, I consider Armenia my country and my homeland and in my opinion it’s the duty of every single Armenian to help the homeland in any way possible. I’m not a businessman who could invest in Armenia’s economy, but I have certain skills that I will be able to offer Armenia. Armenia is facing a heavy brain-drain at the moment and we all know how much the quality of education has suffered during the last 15 years of independence. Armenia needs (western educated) specialists and we in the Diaspora have the ability to reverse this brain-drain. If we really want to help the homeland, many of us need to move there in order to personally contribute to the nation-building process and strengthening of the country. And by moving to Armenia, we Diasporan-Armenians would give the locals the hope that there will be a brighter future. We should never underestimate the positive psychological effects of a massive repatriation on the people of Armenia, which would certainly reduce the emigration! And to be honest, I don’t particularly like the life in the Diaspora. I therefore hope to finally move to Armenia after I have finished my education. My dream job would be to work for the Armenian Foreign Ministry as a policy adviser, but this is not going to happen in the near future, so it will remain a dream for now. I do have some other dream jobs as well, but I will most probably end up working for an international organization at the beginning, which seems more realistic at the moment…
And since you won’t find much information on the internet about Germany’s Armenian community and it’s activities, I will provide you with some info:
Around 40.000 Armenians live in Germany with the majority originally coming from Turkey and many newcomers having arrived from Armenia. The rest of the Armenians mostly come from the Middle East. Unfortunately the majority of our community is not centered in a certain city, like for example in the case of Beirut, Paris or Los Angeles. Armenians live all over Germany without having a centre anywhere and this is a huge obstacle for many things and raises the danger of assimilation. We do have a number of cultural and educational organizations, which are mostly members of the German-Armenian Central Council , the representative body of our community. Due to the united efforts of the Council and the Armenian Church we succeeded in getting the Armenian Genocide recognized by the German parliament in 2005. But until recently we didn’t have any organization that would primarily deal with political issues. So last year, because of the lack of political activities and the lack of a political consciousness especially within the German-Armenian youth, we, a group of Armenian university students, officially established Germany’s first Armenian political youth group (http://www.norserunt.de/). Our aim is to initiate a strong Armenian grassroots movement in the country and by doing that to influence the shaping of an united Armenian grassroots movement in Europe. The Armenian community of Europe is not as organized and politically active as the Armenian community of the US or Lebanon. If we Armenians want to achieve anything in Europe we need to work together and speak with one voice, that’s for sure. So the final goal is to develop an effective European-wide network of devoted Armenian political organizations and activists that are in direct contact with each other and work strongly together. To achieve this goal we are concentrating on the youth, because this is the new generation, where the leaders of tomorrow will emerge from. Therefore we will be organizing a conference in May 2007 in the city of Karlsruhe, where dozens of Armenian students from all over Europe will come to participate. The title of the conference is: European Armenian Youth Conference – Shaping an Armenian Grassroots Movement in Europe. I will provide you with more information very soon.
So this has actually become quite a long post, but I hope it’s acceptable for a first time post. After all, I had to introduce myself and my community…
Hajoghutyun
So a little bit about myself:
I’m a student of Political-Science and Sociology and very interested in “All Things Armenian”, especially Armenian history and politics. I’m also a very active member of the Armenian community here in Germany. I should mention that I have a wonderful girlfriend, who at the moment studies in Yerevan. She originally comes from Iran, but moved to Armenia a few years ago. So in order to see my darling love, I fly to Armenia twice a year. I actually do not identify myself that much with Germany, I consider Armenia my country and my homeland and in my opinion it’s the duty of every single Armenian to help the homeland in any way possible. I’m not a businessman who could invest in Armenia’s economy, but I have certain skills that I will be able to offer Armenia. Armenia is facing a heavy brain-drain at the moment and we all know how much the quality of education has suffered during the last 15 years of independence. Armenia needs (western educated) specialists and we in the Diaspora have the ability to reverse this brain-drain. If we really want to help the homeland, many of us need to move there in order to personally contribute to the nation-building process and strengthening of the country. And by moving to Armenia, we Diasporan-Armenians would give the locals the hope that there will be a brighter future. We should never underestimate the positive psychological effects of a massive repatriation on the people of Armenia, which would certainly reduce the emigration! And to be honest, I don’t particularly like the life in the Diaspora. I therefore hope to finally move to Armenia after I have finished my education. My dream job would be to work for the Armenian Foreign Ministry as a policy adviser, but this is not going to happen in the near future, so it will remain a dream for now. I do have some other dream jobs as well, but I will most probably end up working for an international organization at the beginning, which seems more realistic at the moment…
And since you won’t find much information on the internet about Germany’s Armenian community and it’s activities, I will provide you with some info:
Around 40.000 Armenians live in Germany with the majority originally coming from Turkey and many newcomers having arrived from Armenia. The rest of the Armenians mostly come from the Middle East. Unfortunately the majority of our community is not centered in a certain city, like for example in the case of Beirut, Paris or Los Angeles. Armenians live all over Germany without having a centre anywhere and this is a huge obstacle for many things and raises the danger of assimilation. We do have a number of cultural and educational organizations, which are mostly members of the German-Armenian Central Council , the representative body of our community. Due to the united efforts of the Council and the Armenian Church we succeeded in getting the Armenian Genocide recognized by the German parliament in 2005. But until recently we didn’t have any organization that would primarily deal with political issues. So last year, because of the lack of political activities and the lack of a political consciousness especially within the German-Armenian youth, we, a group of Armenian university students, officially established Germany’s first Armenian political youth group (http://www.norserunt.de/). Our aim is to initiate a strong Armenian grassroots movement in the country and by doing that to influence the shaping of an united Armenian grassroots movement in Europe. The Armenian community of Europe is not as organized and politically active as the Armenian community of the US or Lebanon. If we Armenians want to achieve anything in Europe we need to work together and speak with one voice, that’s for sure. So the final goal is to develop an effective European-wide network of devoted Armenian political organizations and activists that are in direct contact with each other and work strongly together. To achieve this goal we are concentrating on the youth, because this is the new generation, where the leaders of tomorrow will emerge from. Therefore we will be organizing a conference in May 2007 in the city of Karlsruhe, where dozens of Armenian students from all over Europe will come to participate. The title of the conference is: European Armenian Youth Conference – Shaping an Armenian Grassroots Movement in Europe. I will provide you with more information very soon.
So this has actually become quite a long post, but I hope it’s acceptable for a first time post. After all, I had to introduce myself and my community…
Hajoghutyun
posted by Leonid at 4:58 AM
6 Comments:
it was quite interesting to read your blog, keep up the good job! I admire the fact that people are willing to contribute to Armenia by moving there and doing it directly. I also have plans to move there once I finish my university studies. I don’t anticipate an easy path in Yerevan, but I am convinced it’s going to be a very interesting one.
Welcome to the Blog, Leonid. Good luck with your future plans. I look forward to hearing more about the German Armenian community.
I agree on what you said about the European Armenian community, and I am thrilled to hear about this conference. I used to live in the UK, and things over there are just as bad. So I would appreciate it if you could keep us posted on the youth movement of European Armenians, and also where we can get more information on the conference for those people who would like to attend.
Guten Tag. Did I spell that correctly?
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
Hello everyone I am Vigen from Liverpool, England. I agree with what a representative from Germany said. Apparently, the situation in many European countries are as bad as in the UK with Armenian political activity. Therefore, as a resault we can not influence mainstream political opinion in our home countries. However, having said that we should all know that although the Armenian polpulation in the UK is approximately 12, 000 people and it is far greater than it was in the 20's of the last Century, nontheless, making possible for ARmenians of Manchester of that times to heavily influance politics in Britain. This is not happening now unfortunately due to inconsistancy of our community leaders and their inabilty to actually encourage businesspeople to get involved. Although, having said that we should also note that Armenian community in Britan was recognized as the most successful and established economically and socially progressive.
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