The German Hardt disc on one side only by the small river Lauter from the French disc hardware separately. The village puts a lot of hopes in the new Élysée Treaty.
“A bridge, two municipalities, and brethren, and sisters here and there.” So the French and Germans sing together, the second of the Élysée Treaty. They came to the bridge over the stream that gave your choir name: the Louder.
In hardly any other place in the Republic of the Germans and the French are as close as here. On the one hand, Hardt disc in the Palatinate, Germany. On the other side of the disc hard in Alsace, France. In between, only Louder. For around 200 years, the once common village is divided. “The people who reject today’s Europe, who know what are not more boundaries,” says Jean-Paul Board Kircher. He is President of the choir. He knows the border, in his village from the times of closed barriers and customs controls. France and Germany are today the most important trade partners for each other in Europe. In 2017, the imports and exports amounted to about 170 billion euros.
bureaucracy – the limit of friendship
For their services to the German-French friendship you have gained in scheibenhardt already prices. On the border there each year, a common bridge. The children are now running over this bridge, scissors in any case little attention to national boundaries: The French children to visit their friends in the German kindergarten “sunshine”. You do that several times per year. It is a small walk with great symbolic importance.
For the French children of the “Ecole Maternelle” of disk hard is the border crossing is only a walk away.
“Actually, that would have to happen every week,” says the French mayor is Francis Joerger. As a true European, he is to rest on its Laurels, never satisfied, he says. Although the children are learning in the German Kita French and also the children in the “Ecole Maternelle” in disk hard the German language. Many years ago, you had the dream of a common kindergarten. He failed due to different education systems, the hurdles and bureaucracy, but also to the barriers in the mind of the parents. “Just in the border region, we need less bureaucracy”, the German mayor Edwin Diesel.
Better recognition of education degrees
The new Élysée Treaty is intended to create the basis for this. It should also help in the recognition of school leaving qualifications. Although there is a Binational financial statements, for example, the “Abibac”. 69 schools there are in both countries.
Since its inception in 1963, the German-French youth office, nine million people exchange programs. Everything sounds good, but: “especially the youth in the village is not lead so easily to each other,” mayor Diesel. In German schools, less and less students even learn French: in 2006 there were 1.75 million, ten years later, with only 1.5 million.
“We have to move forward”
“a Lot of people might think, The borders are open. I can be over there shopping. This is a good thing. But that’s not enough. We must go further”, appealed to the French mayor Jaeger. The “Scheiweda Blättel” is hardtern a common village newspaper, written by disc hardern and Disc. In the current issue you describe your dream of Scheibenhardt the near future: A joint cross-border Council, funded by both sides and the EU. A joint school with rooms on both sides of the Loud, common worship and a common fire brigade. Currently German-extinguishing not to be alarmed forces in a fire in France, namely, automatically. Of course, you will have to help nevertheless, to each other, such as the recent severe weather in June 2018.
“New opportunities for the border region,”
“The agreement gives new possibilities in the border area. And we need to use now”, says Thomas Gebhardt, CDU. He is the member of Parliament of the constituency in the Scheibenhardt. With his French counterparts in Paris he also came to scheibenhardt to the bridge, to celebrate the new Treaty of friendship. “Then let’s hope that money goes”, answers the mayor at almost the same time. In the Background, the kindergarten kids marching back over the bridge. You had a great day with your friends on the other side of the Loud.
28 articles for more cooperation, 21.01.2019 “world champion in the brakes”, 21.01.2019 Background: The Élysée Treaty, 15.01.2013
