For the association “MitMachMusik – Ein Weg zur Integration von Flüchtlingskindern e.V.”

In an unusual orchestration – sheng, viola and contrabass – the WuWei Trio will play music from the Baroque era. The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) will pass on all proceeds from the concert to the initiative MitMachMusik, which creates opportunities for the integration of refugee children through joint musical activities.

Music as Medicine

The wonderful initiative “MitMachMusik – Ein Weg zur Integration von Flüchtlingskindern (JoinInMusic – A Way towards Integrating Refugee Children)” shows what an impact music can have. It was established more than three years ago by paediatricians, music educators and volunteers from Berlin. Since 2015, more than 300,000 children and young people have arrived here. Traumatised by experiences of war and displacement, these children live in cramped, ghetto-like lodgings, embedded in the tensions between different cultures, religions and political convictions. If we want to follow the slogan “Our Children Are our Future”, we have to add: “These Children Are our Future, Too”. If we do not manage to integrate them into our social system emotionally, culturally, intellectually and with regards to language, they face a future full of violence and crime, comparable to that of South American street children, and we face the emergence of new social hotspots. We must prevent this.

In as many as eleven refugee hostels and meeting points, music groups led by professional musicians and educators support the self-confidence and the integration of children by singing and making music together. “The children arrive here and are speechless. We give them a voice through their own activity”, says Pamela Rosenberg, former director of Berliner Philharmoniker and co-initiator of the project. Every day, the children bring what they have learned to their parents, making music into a link between them and us, too. Since 2018, they have been regularly meeting with children from Berlin to make music together, and they have even worked up the courage for first encounters with the Berliner Philharmoniker as part of their Education Programme. For many of the professionals who teach these children, these encounters – to rephrase the words of Yehudi Menuhin: “Life is a constant exchange” – are a bigger gift than the audience’s applause after a concert.

The concert on 22 September will hopefully help to find many new benefactors to ensure that this successful initiative cannot only continue but can even expand beyond the city limits of Berlin and Potsdam.

35 Years of IPPNW-Concerts

The organisation International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), which received the 1984 UNESCO Peace Prize and the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, established a German section in 1982.

In 1984, the Berlin-based paediatrician Peter Hauber and his wife Ingrid founded IPPNW-Concerts with the aim of introducing the message of IPPNW to a broad public with the help of charity concerts. Soon, IPPNW-concerts were taking place across Germany as well as in other countries, including the USA and the USSR. In 1987, a commentator of the RIAS broadcasting channel began a culture programme with the words: “For quite some time, the not exactly meagre concert life of the city of Berlin has been embellished with an exquisite touch – the concerts hosted by the IPPNW.” Since 1988, numerous concerts have been broadcast on the radio and published on CD. Only three years after the foundation of the label IPPNW-Concerts, this series of CDs received a mention in Süddeutsche Zeitung’s category “Die Schallplatte” as “highly estimable recordings”.

Two concerts by the world orchestra assembled by IPPNW have been broadcast on television worldwide. The proceeds of both concerts and CD-sales benefit those suffering from the impacts of war, industrial and natural disasters, long-term victims of atomic explosions from Hiroshima to Fukushima as well as the work of various peace organisations and the IPPNW. Countless musicians of the Berlin Philharmoniker as well as numerous famous soloists and ensembles from the Who’s Who of the international music scene – from Old to New Music, from jazz to classical music – have contributed to the IPPNW-Concerts since their foundation 35 years ago. Through their commitment, they have opposed the arms race and the destruction of the earth with culture.

The IPPNW-Concerts have been a frequent component of Musikfest Berlin since 1991.