On 26 January 2011, all German personnel of Baltic Barracks and representatives of other Corps’ nations took part in a winter seminar conducted by a guest speaker Dr Romedio Graf von Thun-Hohenstein.
“Tradition is a part of an attempt to come to terms with the values of the past,” said the Commander of the Multinational Corps Northeast Lieutenant General Rainer Korff in his welcome speech. “The Bundeswehr has been faced with the struggle to find the right way of handling tradition since its inception,” he continued. Afterwards, General Korff presented three main lines of tradition that have evolved for the Bundeswehr: its own history, the army reform and the army resistance. As the MNC NE Commander said, the right decisions were drawn from the injustice and violations of human dignity and experiences of the World War II and post-war period. General Korff also briefly introduced the topic of the lecture, namely the army resistance against Adolf Hitler and Nazi regime.
The guest speaker Dr Romedio Graf von Thun-Hohenstein delivered a detailed lecture on the resistance within Wehrmacht prior and during World War II against Adolf Hitler and his growing power, including main personalities of the movement and the assassination attempt of July 1944. As Dr von Thun-Hohenstein underlined after the lecture, this topic is an interesting issue regardless of time or political system we all live in. “If you want to make a real change, you have two possibilities: you mobilize hundreds thousands of people, probably like the Solidarność movment or you do a coup d’éta and that only can do the military,” he said.
Dr Romedio Graf von Thun-Hohenstein also admitted he had already met General Korff in the past when General Korff was commanding the Brigade “Hostein” in Schleswig-Hostein where the guest speaker comes from. “Of course, I knew about the Multinational Corps Northeast but I had no imagination about it. And I was very surprised to see brand new barracks over here,” he also admitted.
The winter lecture coincided with the promotion ceremony of two German personnel serving at Baltic Barracks - a military and a civilian.
