4. Symposium of the Elisabeth Käsemann Foundation, Buenos Aires – 2019

COOPERATION PARTNER

The Latin American-German 4th Symposium of the Elisabeth Käsemann Foundation

PAST AND FUTURE
New Ways of Dealing with Past Conflicts and Past Autocracies Versus Traditional Criminal Prosecution

took place from 30 September to 3 October 2019 at the Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires.

Monday, 30 September 2019

The symposium started with the welcome speech by Mario Villar, PhD, the opening words by Dorothee Weitbrecht, PhD and the keynote by the Argentine federal judge Daniel Rafecas, PhD.

I. WELCOME

Mario Villar, PhD – Director of the Criminal Law and Criminology Department of the Law Faculty of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Dorothee Weitbrecht, PhD – manager of the Elisabeth Käsemann Foundation – International Dialog for Remembrance and Democracy, Germany.

Mario Villar emphasized the relevance of international legal exchange in the field of coming to terms with the past.

In her opening address, Dorothee Weitbrecht outlined the experiences of Argentina, Germany and Colombia with totalitarian rule and violent conflicts. Using Germany as an example, she described possible effects on societies and future generations if dealing with past experiences of violence takes place neither publicly nor privately.

II. KEYNOTE: DANIEL RAFECAS

Daniel Rafecas, PhD – federal judge, Argentina.

In his keynote, Daniel Rafecas summed up the defeats suffered, but also the clearly predominant successes achieved so far in the legal coming to terms with the civic-military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

Mario Villar, Dorothee Weitbrecht, Luisa Wettengel (Elisabeth Käsemann Foundation), Natalia Barbero
Fabián Martínez, Cornelius Nestler, Jörg Eisele, Alejandro Ramelli Arteaga, Bernd Heinrich, Hartmut Hamann, Friederike Mieth, Alberto Yepes, Jens Rommel, Dorothee Weitbrecht, Mario Villar, Natalia Barbero, Ramiro Vera-Fluixá (Elisabeth Käsemann Foundation)

III. RECEPTION AT THE RESIDENCE OF THE GERMAN AMBASSADOR IN ARGENTINA

On the occasion of the symposium of the Elisabeth Käsemann Foundation, the German Ambassador to Argentina, Jürgen Christian Mertens, invited the participants of the symposium and representatives of Argentine, German and Colombian institutions and organizations in Argentina who work in the field of memory culture and politics as well as German-Argentine relations. The reception offered the guests the opportunity to get in contact and exchange information about their work. Due to the presence of distinguished Colombian speakers of the symposium, the Colombian Ambassador to Argentina Álvaro Pava Camelo also attended the reception.
 
Address by the German Ambassador Jürgen Christian Mertens

Patricia Tappata, Daniel and Viviana Rafecas, Mónica Pinto, Silvina Alonso, Friederike Mieth, Natalia Barbero, Eugenia Carbone, Ramiro Vera-Fluixá, Maja Dimitroff, María Gabriela Quinteros, Andreas Vollmer, Hartmut Hamann, Gabriel Pérez Barberá, Mariano Borinsky

Left: Cecilia de Mertens, Jürgen Christian Mertens, Dorothee Weitbrecht
Right: Judith Lehmann (German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD), Andreas Vollmer (German honorary consul in Mendoza), Uwe Mohr (director of the Goethe-Institut Buenos Aires), Bernd Heinrich

Left: Natalia Barbero, Silvina Alonso (Law Faculty of the University of Buenos Aires), Friederike Mieth
Right: the colombian Ambassador Álvaro Pava Camelo, Dorothee Weitbrecht, Jürgen Christian Mertens

Left: Lena Viebrock (German Embassy in Buenos Aires), Jens Rommel, Monika Herwanger (director of the Pestalozzi School in Buenos Aires)
Right: Iris Barth (consultant of the German Society for International Cooperation, GIZ), Luisa Wettengel

Left: Ramiro Vera-Fluixá, Kristina Saenger
Right: Mónica Pinto, Dorothee Weitbrecht, María Gabriela Quinteros (Human Rights Commissioner of the Foreign Ministry of Argentina)

Left: Lena Viebrock, Bernd Heinrich
Right: Hartmut Hamann, Jörg Eisele

Left: Gonzalo Conte, Gabriel Pérez Barberá, Mariano Borinsky, Cornelius Nestler
Right: Alejandro Ramelli Arteaga, María Cristina Patiño, Alberto Yepes, Fabián Martínez

Day 2, Tuesday, 1 October 2019