Summer school with interdisciplinary practical experience
Students look intently at the various stone surfaces of St Michael’s Church. They are standing on the north side of the nave and have a drawing in front of them as a template, a detailed manual survey drawing – now they examine the drawn stone surfaces together and determine the type of stone, the tool marks and their condition on the plans using different colours.
“We do the mapping to find out which parts of the building are really original and which parts may have been added through later restorations. We try to get a fully comprehensive picture,” says Chloé Hönisch Gravel – she is studying for a master’s degree in architecture, a main field of study for building in Inventory Care/Conservation of Historic Buildings at the HAWK and is taking part in the summer school. St Michael’s Church provides a vivid opportunity to examine what belonged to the original building stock and what was added in later times.
The group has already spent a week with an intensive programme, designed and carried out by Prof. Dr Regine Schulz (LMU and HAWK University Council) and Dr Sven Kielau (freelance archaeologist), who are leading and coordinating the project: After a workshop day at the HAWK, the group visited the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum (RPM) and the Cathedral Museum, and took a day trip to Hannover to the August Kestner Museum. In between, there were regular archaeological workshops and lectures at the RPM and the HAWK. Now it’s time for a practical session at the St Michael’s World Heritage Site.
The Egyptian students are very positive: “It’s wonderful that German and Egyptian students can gain experience together here,” says Gerges Adel Lamie Ebrhim, for example, a lecturer at the Faculty of Arts in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Minia, who is accompanying the group. For Esraa Talaat Mahmoud Sayed, a 23-year-old restoration student at the University of Minia, it is the first time she has travelled outside Egypt – so she found it very exciting to come to Germany. She has learnt a lot from her colleagues and the lecturers, she says. Basma Ahmed Abdelbari could even imagine studying in Germany one day. In particular, this student of conservation learnt a lot about the World Heritage Site and about stone as a building material during the practical exercise at the church.
Summer school lecturer and HAWK Professor Dr Barbara Beckett emphasises: “At every summer school, our staff is interdisciplinary – conservators, architects, archaeologists and Egyptologists – and everyone gets to design a small teaching unit. And today, for the first time, we carried out the study on the St Michael’s Church walls together.” The summer school is very motivating for her and the students anyway: “I think the most important thing about this exchange is that everyone enjoys it and it’s a good opportunity to speak English.”
In general, the programme is a mixture of conservation, “visual exercise”, culture and museum visits – how objects are presented, for example – but also a lot of free discussion: “The basic idea is that students learn to express themselves and form their own opinions.”
Administrative Professor Dr Carolin Sophie Prinzhorn from the Faculty of Architecture, Engineering and Conservation is responsible for the technical aspect of architecture. She observed that everyone dealt with each other in an open-minded way: “There are no obvious restrictions and barriers to specialisation, at least from my perspective. Everyone is open to dealing with topics that may not even fit into their own field of study.”
“Our aim is to work together in an interdisciplinary and intercultural way. We have different methods in some cases and we can learn from each other very well,” emphasises project manager Prof. Dr Regine Schulz: “We want students and young colleagues in particular to work together in an intercultural and interdisciplinary way.”
The fact that not only the content, but also the intercultural experiences are an important part of the summer school, was clear on the final evening of the stay in Hildesheim: The group celebrated together with a barbecue at a barbecue area near the game reserve. The following day, all participants received their certificates in a small ceremony at the university.
The Egyptian project manager Prof. Dr Hussein Muhammad Ali Ibrahim, lecturer in conservation at the University of Minia, knows Hildesheim well – he himself studied at the HAWK – then a technical college – in the early 1990s and wrote his doctoral thesis in Germany: “First of all, we exchange knowledge,” he says, emphasising the higher purpose of this summer school. Germany is very advanced in the field of conservation, he says. His students get to know the modern devices, learn how to use them and also the techniques of conservation. “On the other hand, German students have the opportunity to study the field of Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology. We have a piece of excavation land in Egypt, so the German students have the opportunity to gain experience in this area too.” Hussein Ibrahim is alluding to the upcoming workshop: the field school in Egypt in September, where the German HAWK students and lecturers will be guests.
In addition to an extensive programme of visits and practical excavation work, an exhibition and a catalogue are also to be jointly produced, adds Regine Schulz.
The students spend the last days of the summer school in Berlin. The highlight they are all looking forward to: The bust of Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum, which is also the logo of the University of Minia. In September, many of them will meet again at the field school in Minia, Egypt.
The summer school and field school are part of a co-operation project (“Conservators & Archaeologists”) between the University of Minia, the HAWK, the LMU and other institutions and are fully funded by the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD. This partnership is to be continued and further intensified (see also - in german -: https://www.hawk.de/de/newsportal/pressemeldungen/austausch-und-vertiefte-zusammenarbeit-vereinbart ).
