DSE and Villa Borsig in Berlin have almost become synonyms. It was here where it all started 40 years ago. Thousands of partners from all corners of the world have lived, worked, and discussed here, among them government leaders and top ranking officials, but equally men and women of grassroot organisations from the most remote areas. In the course of this year, DSE is moving to Bonn, and this will end an era which began in 1960. One of DSE's pioneers, Dr. Dieter Danckwortt, remembers the good old days when DSE was founded in Villa Borsig.
Usually when a new institution is established, you first have the institution and then you look for a suitable building. In the case of the German Foundation for Developing Countries as DSE was called in its initial years it was the other way round. Villa Borsig, situated in a huge park on a peninsula in Lake Tegel in the west of Berlin, had been around for a long time. Built by the industrial tycoon von Borsig from 1908 to 1910 in viewing distance to his sprawling locomotive factory across the lake the villa had later served as a finance academy of the German Reich and, after the Second World War, as headquarters of General König, the commander of the French Sector of West Berlin. Evacuated by the French in 1950s, the building lay idle for a number of years until the idea was born to use it as a centre to promote the dialogue with the developing countries. Dr. Dieter Danckwortt who at that time was working in Hamburg with German youth organisations and had experience with organising international meetings and seminars, was asked by the first DSE Director General, Friedrich Georg Seib, to join the new Foundation. He remembers his first visit to Villa Borsig: "When we arrived from the airport, we saw about 200 workers all over the extensive park clearing the bush which had overgrown the area in the years of neglect. The building, too, was completely run down, partially plundered by local people during the years of the Berlin blockade, with the pannelling pulled out from the floors, and everything in a state of rot. The Finance Ministry, which owned the building, then had the idea to establish a foundation for developing countries and turn Villa Borsig into the German conference centre for development aid. So we first had the building, and then an idea of what to do with it."
That idea was not really very precise. The Budget Committee of the German Bundestag, which had conceived the notion of the new Foundation (with its deputy chairman, Rudolf Vogel, becoming the first President of DSE's Board of Trustees), just vaguely thought of conferences and seminars on subjects like agriculture, health, vocational training etc. where Germany had some experience to offer to people from developing countries. Dr. Danckwortt, a trained educator, then went abroad to look at other institutions which were engaged in similar work: Wilton Park in England and above all the renowned World Bank training institute where ministers and permanent sceretaries from developing countries attended courses and seminars an management and modern administration. "We then decided to follow the same pattern of short- to medium-term seminars with a maximum duration of four weeks", says Dr. Danckwortt.
For its programme work, the new Foundation relied on the knowhow of the two Berlin universities which had experience, for instance, in international agriculture and provided contacts and partners abroad. The teaching methods adopted at Villa Borsig were innovative and unique. Dr. Danckwortt, who became the first Director of the new training centre, explains: "I could realise my own pedagogical ideas. The seminars went in three phases: the first days were the phase of confidence building to allow the participants, who came from different countries and cultures, to get to know each other. Also, problems had to be identified during this phase, and the group had to decide on their work programme for the following four weeks. This was really something new: the programme was not imposed on the participants, but it was worked out by the participants themselves together with the German experts. After the first week came the excursion phase when the participants went out all over Germany to look at German solutions to problems identified before. The third phase was devoted to evaluation of the experiences gained during the excursions and rounded off the seminar, sometimes with decisions on practical implementation of lessons learned in Germany. For instance, the Asian association of forestry was founded in the Villa Borsig, because participants felt it was necessary to continue the exchange of experience begun at Villa Borsig."
Participatory lear-ning as introduced at Villa Borsig this was something which the participants from developing countries were hardly used from their own experience. How did they react to the unusual teaching methods? Dr. Danckwortt: "There were big differences, depending on the background and culture. The Arab participants had the greatest difficulties, Indians also had problems because they were used to top-down hierarchical systems, whereas Latin Americans were more outgoing and went along more easily. But in general, the first phase when everybody was asked to open up to the others was seen as a creative, innovative experience. Some said lateron, this was the first time they could openly voice their own opinions and others were listening to them."
Another aspect of the DSE approach was to warn participants not to imitate blindly what they had seen in Germany. Instead, there was the constant reminder that there were no ready-made models and recipes which could simply be transferred to developing countries. Dr. Danckwortt says participants were encouraged even to look at what solutions were being tried in the communist part of Germany, the former GDR. To study that experience, Villa Borsig in Berlin was ideally situated. "We showed participants how to get to the Soviet Sector of Berlin; initially, until the Berlin Wall was built, we even had resource persons from the GDR at Villa Borsig. We always told the participants that Berlin offered them a unique chance to compare the capitalist and communist systems. In our library, we even had newspapers from the East like Pravda and Neues Deutschland until this was stopped by the Foreign Office in the hot phase of the Cold War."
The euphoria and enthusiasm of the early years created what was soon sensed by all as the "spirit of Villa Borsig". Dr. Danckwortt believes this was not only due to the innovative teaching methods, but above all to the person in charge of the social side of the seminars. Traute von Daviér, a trained journalist and art historian, soon earned herself the honorary name "Mama Borsig" for her motherly care for all who came to Villa Borsig. She was not only responsible for accommodation and catering, but also for the extensive cultural and social programme which accompanied the expert training. "Mama Borsig was ready to help anybody with whatever problem he or she may have had, day or night: health problems, shoping in Berlin's department stores, or organising leisure activities including visits to the famous Café Resi with its table telephones where one could make contact with ordinary Germans. She also kept regular contact with German families who were willing to welcome course participants as guests to show them how people lived in Germany."
A frequent visitor to the Villa Borsig in those years was Willy Brandt, then Berlin's Governing Mayor, who regularly sought contact with the visitors from abroad. Perhaps it was here that the later German Chancellor and Chairman of the Socialist International got some of the insights that qualified him to chair the Brandt Commission in 1977. Others who frequented the Villa Borsig were top officials from relevant Bonn ministries who were involved in programmes of DSE. Since a wide spectrum of subjects were covered at Villa Borsig, from agriculture and health to education, labour or women's issues, participants were equally diverse in regard to background and qualification. This interdisciplinary character of the work at Villa Borsig was lost later when the growth of DSE as an organisation necessitated the specialisation and decentralisation of its training programme.
Dr. Danckwortt recalls that originally the Federal President had the idea that DSE in Berlin should be the central organising and coordination point for all of Germany's activities in the new field of development policy. As a consequence it was here, at Villa Borsig, that the conceptual framework for the new German Development Service, modelled on John F.Kennedy's Peace Corps, was laid. The regional associations for Africa, Latin America etc. of German scientists were all born in Villa Borsig. But with the creation of a separate ministry for development cooperation the later BMZ and the springing up of a variety of development services of the Churches, the political foundations, the Carl-Duisberg Society and others, the central role for DSE was no longer tenable. From an institution tackling cross-sectoral issues ranging from security policy to environment and development policy, its became more limited to specific tasks in the field of initial and advanced training of experts from developing countries.
But some of the spirit of the founding years survived at Villa Borsig in the Development Policy Forum which was established in 1980 as an informal dialogue forum to promote the international discussion of important development issues. The many thousands of high-ranking participants of Forum events carried forward the "spirit of Villa Borsig" into a new era of development cooperation. The Forum also retained the interdisciplinary and open approach which had characterised the founding stage of the DSE in the early 1960s. With the move of DSE headquarters to Bonn (in compensation of the government's move to Berlin), Villa Borsig will be handed over to the Foundation Science and Politics, a government think tank who will continue to use the building partially as a conference centre.
For Dr. Dieter Danckwortt, the move to Bonn signals the end of an era. But with all the nostalgia connected with the Villa Borsig in Berlin, he also detects new chances and opportunities: "If we would succeed in establishing a new political dialogue centre for North-South issues in Bonn, and if we would succeed in turning the former Parliament building into an attractive conference centre, with the DSE as a main organiser of the events, then we could tell our old friends and partners in developing countries: we have made a step forward. Here in Bonn, in the much larger North-South Centre, we have far greater opportunities than in the small Villa Borsig."
