The celebrations of 100 Years of Volkshochschulen in Germany have started with a grand ceremonial event in St Pauls Cathedral of Frankfurt. More than 700 participants were present when the Lord Major of Frankfurt, the President and the Chairperson of DVV gave their greetings and congratulatory remarks.

The keynote was delivered by the President of the Federal Constitutional High Court as the Volkshochschulen were part and parcel of the Weimarar Republic as the first German Democracy and its constitution.

There is a text on the Website of DVV International that can be seen here:

https://www.dvv-international.de/en/dvv-international/news/detail/100-ye...

The major German TV channel provided a Video that was shown in the News at different times:

https://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video-505005.html

Werner Mauch of UIL has sent the following blog:

http://thelifelonglearningblog.uil.unesco.org/2019/02/14/democracy-needs-places-of-adult-education/

DVV has started a Special Website which is providing a wealth of Information, and will be filled while the year goes on:

https://www.100jahre-vhs.de

For further information: Heribert Hinzen has written a chapter on the German Volkshochschulen for the Report on Good Active Ageing which has been published recently in the context of PASCAL and PIMA Special Interest Group (SIG) on Learning in Later Life; please see featured below and find attached.

It would be great if the year could be used to collect, document, analyse and compare other ceremonial Events that we shall be having this year, like the 100 Years of the Report on Reconstraction Adult Education, 50 Years of AONTAS, 40 Years of the ADult Education Work at Belgrade University, and of course 50 Years of DVV International.