The Gerda Henkel Foundation is incorporating 46 new research projects from all over the world into its funding programme. Added to this are five approvals for social welfare support measures. Scholars from a total of 24 different countries have successfully submitted applications, for which the Foundation's Boards approved almost five million euros of funding in total. One of the projects receiving support focuses on the “Paris Commune” of 150 years ago, and new findings are also promised by a study into life in urban districts in the USA that have been particularly affected by the consequences of deindustrialization. The cultural heritage of Iraq is the subject of multiple projects, while support is also going to the creation of twenty Sahara gardens in the Republic of Chad.

Example I: Vive la Commune and Lost in the USA
A team led by Dutch historians Dr. Mathijs van de Sande and Prof. Dr. Carolien van Ham (Nimwegen) is investigating the enduring presence of the Paris “Commune”. A good 150 years ago, in March 1871, the citizens of Paris declared their city a free “commune”. Although the French national government retook the city with much bloodshed after just 72 days, the “Commune” is still alive in Parisian memory today. With the use of historical examples through to the protest movements of the present day, the group of researchers at Radboud University aims to show that the “Paris Commune” represents an important benchmark in democratic practices to this day. The Gerda Henkel Foundation is supporting the project as part of its “Democracy” funding initiative.

The “Rust Belt” is the name given to the industrial region of the Northeastern USA which has been in crisis since the 1970s. New Yorker and urban researcher Prof. Joseph Heathcott is examining what he calls the “Rust Archipelago”, a chain of urban districts in five metropolitan regions: Philadelphia, St. Louis, Gary, Birmingham, and Detroit. Deindustrialization and capital flight have left notable scars here, but anyone who looks only at vacant properties and dilapidated infrastructure, Heathcott claims, is overlooking the life still going on in these districts. As part of the Foundation’s “Lost Cities” funding initiative, the research project therefore poses the question how local people are able to deal with the major changes in their surroundings that have been going on for 50 years: Where are they picking up the pieces for themselves? How are they creating a sense of community? Is there room for creativity? Which animals and plants have returned to these areas?

Example II: Iraq: three projects, almost 3,000 years of history
Mosul’s old town is characterized by a dense jumble of houses, markets, baths, mosques, churches, and synagogues. Following its occupation by the terrorist militia ISIS in 2014, this part of the city, in particular, was the scene of fierce fighting. In 2018, the World Bank estimated that one third of homes had been destroyed or severely damaged, while almost all suffered at least slight damage. Prof. Richard Zettler (University of Pennsylvania) and Ali Hazim Dhanoon (Nineveh Inspectorate of Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, Mosul) are planning to produce an inventory of the traditional buildings in the old town. Given the city’s ethnic and religious diversity prior to 2014, the ISIS regime aimed to use conversion and persecution to create a homogenous Salafist demographic structure. The project therefore also seeks to help preserve cultural identity and the memory of previous diversity. 

In 2019, an Iraqi-Italian team uncovered ten rock reliefs along an Assyrian irrigation channel in Faida in the Kurdish part of Iraq. The discovery earned the group under Prof. Daniele Morandi Bonacossi (University of Udine) and Dr. Hasan Ahmed Qasim (Duhok Antiquities Authority) the “Khaled al-Asaad” prize, named after the former Director of Excavations and Museums at Palmyra who was murdered in 2015. The prize was awarded on 20 November. After the archaeologists documented the Assyrian reliefs from the 8^th/7^th century BCE last year, their challenge is now to protect them from illegal excavations and vandalism in the future. With support from the “Patrimonies” funding initiative, the researchers intend to build a fence around the excavation site and to involve local residents in their work with an information campaign. 

“Present, but forgotten” is how Islam researcher Dr. Khodada Rezakhani (Princeton) describes the former capital of the Parthians and the Sassanids, Ctesiphon. When Baghdad was founded not far north of the city in the second half of the 8^th century, Ctesiphon’s importance and size was gradually forgotten. A team of historians, religious researchers, and philologists are examining the material and narrative sources that have previously been studied in somewhat piecemeal fashion. This way, the researchers aim to form a basic overall picture of Ctesiphon and the region of the middle Tigris as a whole.

Example III: Gardens in Chad – traditional knowledge reinterpreted
The Tibesti mountains in the north of the Republic of Chad are the highest in the Central Sahara. In the oases of the Tibesti, the local Tubu Teba people used to plant date palms. Decades of violent conflict and displacement have meant that the date-planting and horticulture have largely been forgotten. Dr. Tilman Musch (University of Bayreuth) and Djiddi Allahi Mahamat (N'Djamena) are aiming to plant 20 “Sahara gardens” of dates, fruit, vegetables, and herbs according to the traditional model. With the help of modern techniques such as three-stage husbandry, drip irrigation and solar energy, they hope to improve the economic prospects of the local people and contribute to the stabilization of Tibesti. The Chad-German initiative is a social welfare support measure that accompanies a research project the Foundation is funding led by Tilman Musch.

Gerda Henkel Foundation
You can find information on the Gerda Henkel Foundation at www.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de.

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