With this in mind, we set off on an excursion to the border region between East Belgium and the Eifel. After settling into our accommodation in St. Vith in East Belgium, we were given a guided tour of the town by regional historian and teacher Gary Jost. After just a few steps, it became clear how much the events of the Second World War, particularly the Battle of the Bulge from the end of 1944 to the spring of 1945, have shaped the town and the identity of its inhabitants to this day. At the beginning of the tour, we came across the "Millionberg", where the rubble of the village was piled up, which was destroyed down to the last house during the Allied offensive and counter-offensive. Accordingly, there are no buildings in St. Vith today that are older than the end of the war - with the exception of a tower of the medieval fortifications. For many of the excursion participants, walking around the mountain of rubble, which is now an extensive town park, was an initial emotional irritation. On the one hand, the "Millionenberg" is a place of remembrance of pain, suffering and loss. On the other hand, it was a peaceful place that offered us protection from the midsummer sun.

We also visited the church and war memorial of St. Vith. The church was built to demonstrate the resilience and fortitude of the people of St. Vith and in its current form is reminiscent of a massive defensive building. At the war memorial, Jost explained to us several historically determined tensions in the East Belgian self-image, which moves between German, Belgian and independent references. The memorial consists of a white stone obelisk on a green square, which is supplemented on one side by a stone block. There are nine crosses on the obelisk, representing the war years of the First and Second World Wars in which St. Vith was involved. While St. Vith had been part of the German Empire during the First World War, it belonged to Belgium during the Second World War and was invaded by Nazi Germany. This memorial made us physically aware of the identity diversity of St. Vith. The students explored the memorial sites both through accompanying discussions and artistically, e.g. by making sketches.

We then crossed the border back into Germany and approached the Siegfried Line. This played a central role in the Ardennes offensive, as the Allies did not dare to cross the Siegfried Line after the Normandy landings and instead waited for reinforcements. The massive propaganda efforts of the Nazis were intended to boost morale on the "home front" and social cohesion, as well as to stir up fear on the Allied side of overcoming the Siegfried Line. This earned the Westwall its name ("Siegfried Line") in the English-speaking world. The Siegfried Line consisted of various installations, including several thousand bunkers and countless humped lines, which were also known as dragon's teeth due to their shape and were used to ensure that vehicles could only pass through the area at certain strategically selected points. Andrea Rumpf, the managing director of the foundation "Grüner Wall im Westen - Mahnmal ehemaliger Westwall"[3], showed us the various installations of the rampart, some of which are invisible today. This place also offered the opportunity for a multi-perspective examination of the past. The war memorials are located in the midst of the natural beauty and remoteness of the Eifel, which lends some of the bunker ruins an almost idyllic aura. This directly raises the question of the challenges of the culture of remembrance and commemoration at such "perpetrator sites". In this context, the term "defensive landscape" was coined, which symbolically expresses the relationship between nature and the machinery of war and destruction. The West Wall also stands for the expropriation and forced labor of the local population. This difficult relationship between the suffering of the German civilian population and the instrumentalization by the Nazis means that political education work on the Siegfried Line is very limited and is almost entirely carried out by private individuals and initiatives. The actors around the former Siegfried Line represent a heterogeneous group. Their offerings range from partly romanticized representations, which are connected to the narratives of the Second World War and the Nazi era and originate from committed laypersons, to traffic-secured sites, which are maintained by the foundation "Grüner Wall im Westen - Mahnmal ehemaliger Westwall".[4] This problematic relationship to the history of the Siegfried Line is vividly illustrated by the private Siegfried Line Museum in Primasens.5] The current state of political education and reappraisal as a memorial site is made clear by the legal designation for the Siegfried Line sites. These are so-called non-places, i.e. places that cannot be used for anything.

In the evening, the second part of the film[6], "Kriegssplitter- Kriegsjahre in der Venn/Eifel Region" about the events during the Ardennes offensive of 1944-45 in the region, offered a multidimensional learning opportunity. The film, which was rich in eyewitness interviews with civilian participants and historical footage, turned the historical events into an emotionally involving experience. Through this rich learning experience, not only could historical factual knowledge be acquired, but at the same time sensitivity for the perspective of people who, as civilians, were exposed to the atrocities of war, sometimes without protection, or who are exposed to them today. The subsequent joint discussion of the film in a casual setting turned the evening into an experiential, dialogical and meaningful and thus holistic learning experience[7] for all participants.

On the second day, we met with the regional historian and retired forester Erich Hönen. He has turned some parts of the old battlefields into a memorial site. He explained to us not only the conditions on the front lines, but also how the region was interwoven with the events of the war, because just as nature has reappropriated the former Siegfried Line, Hönen reported that the inhabitants of the region have appropriated the legacies of the armies. For example, Hönen reported that the former pressure plates of anti-vehicle mines were used as coasters for pots and the like, or that it used to be common to use old shell casings as flower vases. Such practices were the result of a pragmatic approach to dealing with the shortages that prevailed in large parts of Europe in the post-war period. Hönen not only gave us an impressive account of the conditions during and after the war, but also how he helped in various contexts to identify fallen soldiers, especially from the USA, and to provide them with a funeral and reassurance for their relatives. He summarized the motivation for his commitment by pointing out that it does not matter whether it is the 499th or the 501st case, because behind all the numbers that are in the history books today are people who had a life ahead of them, full of dreams, wishes and fears. Afterwards, the participants explored the hump line on the "Hollerather Knie", guided by an artistic mindfulness exercise: showing the multidimensionality of aesthetic sensations. These exercises provided an impressive example of how every place or situation can be viewed from different, complementary perspectives. Taking the hump lines as an example, they can be seen as an objectification of the historical contexts learned in theory or as an aesthetic blend of the feel of the concrete when touched or as a seat and the natural sounds of the forest, such as the chirping of birds. In this way, the interweaving of artistic-aesthetic and rational-social-scientific approaches ran through the entire excursion right up to the last item on the program.

The excursion, which appealed to all the senses, not only conveyed a part of cross-border German-Belgian history, but also made its effects on people, the environment and entire regions tangible. The impressions and experiences were subsequently reflected on in the seminar and processed in the form of artistic projects and podcasts/audio contributions, such as the podcast "Focus on Peace". In conclusion, the course can be seen as a successful opportunity to show how it is possible not only to teach students about history from the perspective of different disciplines, but also to enable them to experience the significance of places of remembrance for the preservation and perpetuation of peace with their own bodies.