Regional Group Meeting in Frankfurt a Big Hit
Eight Bremen alumni met for a second time in Frankfurt on March 19 only six weeks after the first meeting there. Together they came together in a small kitchen that is under a preservation order although it is used in everyday operations.
The event helped to build bridges between the generation of recent graduates and those pursuing a doctorate in Frankfurt and Wolf Gunter Brügmann, a true institution at the University of Bremen. The 72-year-old, who had been the spokesperson of the University of Bremen in its founding phase from 1970 onwards and had been among the first generation of students once the university had opened, had extended the invitation to the event.
Over Frankfurt’s specialty, Green Sauce, which he had prepared himself, the alumni got to know each other better by passing in review their experiences during their studies at the University of Bremen and the institution itself as well as talking about how they experience and evaluate their work situations today and what the different forms of sociopolitical commitment mean to them.
When Brügmann demonstrated the kitchen, the conversation moved to the changing of lifestyles and forms of living and the problem of affordable housing. The kitchen is an original ‘Frankfurt Kitchen’ from 1928 by architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. That was the period of the ‘New Frankfurt,’ in which the city built approximately 12,000 ‘affordable’ apartments in a short amount of time. The kitchen is considered the ‘mother of all fitted kitchens’ and can nowadays be found almost more often in the world’s most famous museums than in apartments in Frankfurt. In the wake of the 100th anniversary of Bauhaus, it has received new attention in Frankfurt.
The fact that the get-together went on until 11:30 p.m. reflects how profound and inspiring it was. The idea came up that the alumni extend invitations to their respective workplaces one by one.
Author: Wolf Gunther Brügmann-Friedeborn