On July 17, 125 scouts and camp correspondents participating in the 7th Scout Camp of the Armenian Youth Association of the AGBU visited the RA Ministry of Diaspora under the leadership of the AYA Managing Director Kevork Santurian and had a meeting with Minister Hranush Hakobyan.

The 7th Scout Camp (14 July-4 August) has brought together 125 young scouts from Lebanon, Syria, Georgia, Bulgaria and the United Arab Emirates.

AGBU President Berge Setrakian undertook the initiative of organizing the first Scout Camp with the support of the AGBU Central Board in 2007.

Throughout the past six years, nearly 2,000 scouts from several countries (Armenia, Artsakh, the USA, Argentina, Uruguay, Georgia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran) have participated in the “Antranik” Scout Camps.

Minister Hranush Hakobyan greeted the participants of the Scout Camp and mentioned: “I’m pleased with the fact that you decided to spend your summer at the AGBU AYA Scout Camp this year. For most of you, the dream of visiting the Homeland has come true. Over the past couple of years, Armenia has become a center for the scout movement.” The minister also called on the scouts to stay true to their slogan (love the homeland, the nation, the religion), speak only Armenian in Armenia and preserve, develop and disseminate the native language upon their return to their countries of residence.

Managing Director of the AYA Kevork Santurian mentioned that the members of the AYA participate in the “My Armenia” Pan-Armenian Festival and “Ari Tun” Program organized by the RA Ministry of Diaspora every year and expressed gratitude to the ministry for the close collaboration.

During the meeting, the scouts watched a film devoted to the RA Ministry of Diaspora.

The scouts expressed their gratitude to the ministry for the warm reception, shared their impressions of Armenia and presented their activities with great enthusiasm.

The annual scout camps provide Diaspora Armenians with the opportunity to visit the Homeland, as well as get acquainted and communicate with each other. The scout camps also include excursions, lectures, meetings and other events.

Established in 1931 in Lebanon, the AGBU Armenian Youth Association carries out athletic, cultural, scout and other programs and has offices in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Argentina, the USA, Canada, Cyprus and other parts of the world.

*By MURIEL MIRAK-WEISSBACH*

Johannes Lepsius is known for his work as a pastor and humanitarian who intervened on behalf of the Ottoman Armenians in the late 19th century.

When the genocide began, he returned to Constantinople from Berlin and tried in vain to dissuade the Young Turk leaders from their extermination project. His report on the systematic elimination of the Armenians through murder and deportation raised the alarm in Germany.

What is less well known about Lepsius, the “German exception,” is that he established the German-Armenian Society, an organization that has just celebrated its 100th jubilee. Together with journalist Paul Rohrbach and the Armenian writer Avetik Issahakyan, Lepsius founded the “Deutsch-Armenische Gesellschaft” (DAG) in June 1914, with the aim of promoting understanding between Germans and Armenians, as well as catering to the needs of Armenians living in Germany. In addition, the DAG intervened to protect the interests of Armenian minorities in Turkey and other countries of the region.

On June 14 of this year, the DAG and the Lepsiushaus (the research and meeting center located in Lepsius’s family estate in Potsdam) together celebrated the centenary with a conference and commemorative ceremony, at a time when events recollecting the outbreak of the catastrophic First World War are being organized internationally. In addition to Dr. Rolf Hosfeld, the director of the Lepsiushaus, and Dr. Raffi Kantian, president of the DAG and publisher of its quarterly journal, the Armenisch-Deutsche-Korrespondenz, were political, intellectual, and religious figures in attendance.

Following opening remarks by Hosfeld and Kantian was Prof. Manfred Aschke, president of the Constitutional Court in Thuringia, as well as member of the Lepsiushaus board. Aschke, who is the grandson of Johannes Lepsius, spoke about the period between the Armenian reforms of 1913 and the genocide, and the corresponding changes in the tasks of the DAG. Prof. Hacik Gazer, anArmenian from Istanbul, who is professor of Oriental Church History at Erlangen, illustrated German-Armenian cultural cooperation during the 19th century, taking the example of Armenian students.

How Germany has dealt with the genocide became a focus of discussion in a lecture given by Dr. Christoph Bergner. A member of the German parliament (Bundestag), Bergner talked about the 2005 resolution on the massacre and expulsion of the Armenians, which urged the government to support efforts in Germany towards reconciliation. As he pointed out, the problems addressed in the initiative have still not been resolved. Prof. Armenuhi Drost-Abarjan, the leading Armenologist in Germany, presented the cultural-political collaboration between the federal state of Saxon-Anhalt and the Republic of Armenia.

A roundtable discussion brought together several political figures, including Bundestag members. Under Kantian’s moderation, the participants assessed the current situation of relations among Armenia, Germany, and Europe, with a view to the future.

The festive celebration in the evening opened with music by tenor Artak Kirakosyan and baritone Asatur Baljyan. An ecumenical prayer for the founders of the DAG and those they protectedwas offered by Archbishop Karekin Bekdjian, Bishop Markus Dröge, and Ecumenical Episcopal Vicar Father Matthias Fenski. This was followed by greetings presented by Gunter Fritsch, president of the State Parliament of Brandenburg, Hasmik Poghosian, cultural minister of Armenia, Stephan Dorgerloh, cultural minister of Saxon-Anhalt, Martin Gorholt from the Brandenburg State government, and Jann Jakobs, mayor of Potsdam, which is the capital of Brandenburg.

After another musical interlude by the vocalists, Prof. Jan-Hendrik Olbertz, president of Humboldt University, delivered the keynote address. A former cultural minister of Saxon-Anhalt, he spoke about the cultural cooperation between that federal state and Armenia.

The evening celebration took place in the Brandenburg State Parliament, housed in a magnificent castle that, torn down in the 1960’s, was rebuilt and has just recently reopened. Attending the conference and reception were more than 250 guests.

Excerpts from the speech by Hosfeld follow:

“The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung referred to Johannes Lepsius recently as a representative of the politics of law in a period in which international relations were characterized by anything but principles of law. Implementing such principles of law in the ‘Armenian question’ served the lobbying of the German-Armenian Society in its foundation before World War I, and these principles characterize its successors‘ work still today…

Johannes Lepsius was a German exception. This is the title of a book that we published last year, with the acts of a scientific conference held at Potsdam University. A free conscience and the resulting responsibility for human rights for him always stood above national claims to power, also and especially in times of violence and war… The Lepsiushaus sees itself in his tradition and in this spirit as an institution for scientific research and debate as well as political education and dialogue with civil society aims.

“The common aims and activities of the Lepsiushaus and German-Armenian Society have come about as an expression of their similar traditions and tasks. On this occasion, I would like to thank Raffi Kantian, who has participated in several conferences we have organized at the Lepsiushaus since its opening, as speaker, podiums discussion member, and especially through his constructive, stimulating contributions. I have the impression that we understand each other very well on a principled level. Like us, he is a promoter of dialogue, impressively documented in the Berlin lecture series, and a convinced representative of what, in the spirit of Lepsius, I would like to call a morally grounded Realpolitik…”

armenianweekly.com

*By EDWINA CHARLES*

Mrs. Phaedra Behrent is a woman-poet, from a British sea-town – Margate – made famous by William Turner, according to John Ruskin, the greatest English painter (of his time, in Ruskin’s mind meaning of course “of all time”).  Mrs. Behrent, with a savvy initiative has created and just launched a most stunningly beautiful Blog-site https://vahe-vahian-poet.blogspot.co.uk/    dedicated to a great modern Armenian poet of the Western Armenian literary tongue – Vahé-Vahian.

The latter was a survivor of the most horrendous genocide of the Armenians by the Young Turks perpetrated in 1915 – the first of its kind launching the First World War – and had ended up in Beirut, the vibrant capital city of the beautiful Lebanon, frequently referred to as “the Switzerland of the Middle East”, but as Professor Pilikian (who grew up there in the sixties) puts it,

“Converted into a … brothel, by and for the Saudi Arabian Sheikhs – hypocrites, who run to the mountains of Lebanon to guzzle alcohol, as endless as their petrol … guzzled in turn by their American slave-masters”.

Vahé-Vahian, tasting poverty, and through sheer hard-work turns himself into one of the great poets of Western Armenian literature.  Unfortunately, unbearable tragedies strike him.  As if the genocide by the Turkish beasts were not enough, Vahé-Vahian loses his beautiful wife, and then their second son to a fatal car crash in Dubai.  Against all the odds, the last tragedy renders him even a greater poet … he conceives and publishes a unique book in world-literature; a father’s unbearable grief and lamentation for his son.  And herein lies the second most powerful feature of Mrs. Behrent’s Blog – inspired by the most learned intellectual of the Armenian Diaspora (with University Degrees in English Literature, Social Anthropology, Economics, from Universities in the Lebanon, Germany, and Britain) Professor Hovhanness I. Pilikian’s translation and exegesis of Vahé-Vahian’s work, Mrs. Behrent has written a huge commentary with the clever ironic little title of a Brief Comment!

Mrs Behrent is entirely right to relate to the grand theme of Love propagated by Professor Pilikian as the grand theme of Vahé-Vahian’s poem.  Her views are a tad naive and rosy-tinted, with US New Age hippy sweetness – go out and enjoy the sunshine! If you could find it of course in cold Britain – but strangely Mrs. Behrent’s heart-warming optimism works mental miracles as a total contrast to Professor Pilikian’s powerful, mind-blowing socio-political ideas.

Mrs. Behrent escapes personal controversy shrewdly by publishing directly citations/gems from the Professor’s intellectual treasure-house.  Upon the basis of this Blog alone, one can confidently consider the Professor to be one of the great thinkers of our time, Karl Marx & Sigmund Freud in one – Pilikian is definitely the most inventive and innovative of the lot, always evidence-led even in a most boring field of study such as Theology; the Professor argues very convincingly that the Pre-Socratic philosophers were a great source of influence in the construction of the Christian dogma.  This idea (as all of the Professor’s radically new ideas) is worth a whole PhD thesis!

A Polymath, by definition an expert in many fields of knowledge, Professor Pilikian’s incredible discovery of Picasso’s famous outraged horse in Guernica, the most powerful anti-war painting in Art-history, found in a Lady Elizabeth’s 19^th c. anti-war Painting, is an unexpected major art-archaeological find.

Finally, the most extraordinary paradigmatic shift yet affected by Professor Pilikian in the context of world-wars (in plural) is the following; Granted that thenotion is common (first propagated by the gay Bloomsbury set) that the 2^nd World War happened because the victors of the First were too harsh with the instigators (the German Kaiser and his ‘British’-imperialist set), the Professor argues that in fact the Germans were not punished enough for a deed that cost the world 20 million dead, and equal numbers of the maimed.  Professor Pilikian offers the outstanding concept that actually there only was a single World War, the First stretched into the Second, extended further into the Korean War … in terms of statistical numbers, perhaps 200 million people were killed as a result of idiots, like hyenas tearing nations apart for almost half a century  of the 20^th …

According to the Professor, “the Military, were they not such butchers, are always ridiculously hilarious with their stiff rhythmic walking in North Korea, and oven-heat producing tall fur hats of the daily British Changing of the Guards – we laugh at the Koreans, but tourists take selfies with the equally ridiculous Brits!    Alas, this is the way of the world – one is loved and the other is hated precisely for the same reason…”

Mrs. Behrent has most kindly dedicated her Blog to several distinguished Editors of multilingual Armenian websites, Messrs Garabed Hakopian (from Sweden), Yervand Khosrofian (from Germany), Simon Aynedjian (from Cyprus), Dikran Aprahamian & Jerry Tutunijian (from Canada), and the Milton Keynes poet Richard Skellington, founder-Editor of Britain’s Open University Forum on the Net.

What is even more extraordinary, is Mrs. Behrent’s next sweetest thought – she has dedicated her Blog to the global Readers, every one of them, of those websites where they had read Professor Pilikian’s published translation of Vahé-Vahian’s unique world-masterpiece.   She calls upon them to re-appear and inscribe their names on her Blog as a Memorial Stele honouring the great Armenian poet himself, Vahé-Vahian.