School competition: "City and Religion"

Cities today are seen as secular, while religion is less associated with them. But if you look more closely, you can still find religious influences on cities today. Who doesn't see the many churches in Thuringian cities before them? Religious groups have an influence on the urban image. The visibility of religious institutions in cities in particular is always the subject of controversial discussions in Germany, based on new mosque buildings and renovated synagogues. But urban actors also influence religious institutions. Today, for example, urban actors creatively appropriate churches that are no longer needed. Historically, cities and religion were even more closely connected. The competition will explore this relationship and how religions and cities have influenced each other.

The students are therefore invited to approach the topic from very different perspectives and subjects such as linguistics and literature (German, English, Spanish, French...), social studies, art history or religion/ethics. The competition enables them to work independently on a topic of their own for a longer period of time. The pupils can analyse literary texts or works of art, evaluate sources or interview contemporary witnesses. Grades 9 to 12 of all school types in the federal state of Thuringia can participate. Individual, group and class work is possible. In addition, there is the possibility of cooperation with student teachers from the University of Erfurt, who will accompany the preparation of the contributions and give tips on how to deal with sources and research possibilities. To make this possible, the collective research group is cooperating with Antje Schedel and Professor Christiane Kuller (History Didactics at the University of Erfurt).

The students can submit classic contributions in the style of a subject paper or creative contributions in other audiovisual/digital formats. Both local and regional as well as supra-regional subjects can be covered. All standard formats are acceptable. The contributions can be sent by post in physical form or as a data carrier as well as by e-mail to urbrel-conf@uni-erfurt.de (contact persons are Simone Wagner and Professor Susanne Rau). The deadline for submissions is 28.02.2023.