This year, October 3 has a very special significance for the German Cultural Center Taipei, because the very next day will be the official opening of our new premises. Because of SARS, this opening had been delayed. If you haven't received an invitation yet, please regard this as an invitation. The event will begin at 6pm.
The official opening will celebrate innovations that have been undertaken since last year. First there is the new logo, which expresses our function more concisely than before. The new logo consists of the old Tang-Dynasty character "de" for "virtue" (and also Germany), in a globe with a bridge underneath. The second change is the new address, which was much more difficult to achieve. Since our old building was irreparable because of, among other things, the frequent earthquakes and was at risk of collapsing, it had to be closed and we had to find new premises under enormous time pressure. You are most welcome to visit our new center close to Kuting Station. The third and most demanding task was the design of our new Web site, whose soft launch took place during the first half of September. I would like to thank DaimlerChrysler Taiwan who generously supported this project, thus opening up new avenues of cooperation between business and culture.
Now the way is free again for our main tasks, which are language teaching, information service and cultural exchange between Germany and Taiwan. In September the major events included movies by Helma Sanders-Brahms at the "Women Make Waves" film festival, and presentations on "Bauhaus" and "Architecture and National Identity" as part of the European Forum by the German architect Ulf Meyer. For further information about our program and us, please visit our new Web site, www.dk-taipei.org.tw, where you will find more details about the events planned until the end of this year.
An outstanding one should be mentioned here: On December 6 we will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the opening of the German Cultural Center in Taipei with the double opening of a documentation center and an exhibition of paintings by four painters from Kiel, northern Germany. At 40, we are the oldest European Cultural Institution in Taiwan, yet by no means old, as all the changes mentioned above that signal a fresh start clearly reveal. Another reason why this year and this German National Day are very special to us!
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