100 Years of Workcamps - Volunteering for Heritage

This year we join the anniversary campaign “100 years of workcamps - Peace and Solidarity for the Future" with a special project which will be representative of the work camp culture of Open Houses. Old spaces are being brought back to a new life one camp at a time. In the opinion of Open Houses, building and maintaining what has been built brings about a unique way of understanding how people relate to one another. This kind of manual work in the context of history and the honest simplicity in the shared aims of that work, often provide a new perspective to those involved in it. Thus Open Houses believes that historical monuments and old manors can and should become open spaces that allow for intercultural exchanges and serve as stages for knowledge sharing. For this reason, the topic of this special Work will be “Volunteering for Heritage”. The work camp will start in the setting of Lohra Castle which is situated in the heart of Germany in Northern Thuringia. The castle is located on the edge of a nature reserve area surrounded by an idyllic landscape of rolling hills. Being one of the largest castles in Thuringia, the history of the castle Lohra stretches back to the Middle Ages for more than a thousand years. Today it includes twenty buildings from different times: medieval fortifications, remnants of a tower from the 11th century, a Romanesque chapel, a manor house from the Renaissance period as well as stables and granaries from the 19th and the early 20th centuries. The ensemble is situated in the centre of a beautiful forest. On the 25.08 – 28.08 the volunteers will travel to the second location and join the big international anniversary event “100 years of workcamps - Peace and Solidarity for the Future" in the bustling capital of Germany, Berlin. LEISURE TIME The camp place is situated near a small village in rural Thuringia, so the participants should not expect busy places and normal city activities for the leisure time during the working days. Small trips in walking distance are possible in the afternoon. The second part of the workcamp will be in the setting of the German capital Berlin, which will be an exciting opportunity for the volunteers to experience interesting activities in a big city. Usually average temperatures in Germany during the summer time are about 20º C to 30º C; during the night it will get colder. It is possible that there may be three weeks of non-stop sunshine, but every day rain is not impossible either. In September and October it's about 8º C to 18º C.