Berghof Foundation: 50 years of conflict transformation

Interview
Johannes Zundel
“
Alone, we can achieve
nothing: the challenges
we face can only
be solved through
collaboration.
Chair of the Board
of Trustees of the
Berghof Foundation
50 years ago, your father Georg Zundel founded
the Berghof Foundation for Conflict Studies with
the vision to advance critical, independent peace
research and to question the mainstream political and
academic discourse with its strong focus on security.
What motivated your father to take this step?
The vision and spirit that drove my father to
set up the Berghof Foundation in 1971 were very much
shaped by his own life experience and the historical
context of post-war Germany during the Cold War.
The imminent prospect of another even more deadly
military confrontation created a widespread and
urgently felt need for alternatives. For my father, who
actively participated in the German peace movement
in the 1960s, protest alone was not enough. As a
scientist, he was optimistic that thorough and serious
research on the root causes and dynamics of political
conflict would enable viable and practical solutions
to be found. It is important to understand that what
he had in mind was not a theoretical endeavour, but a
means to equip political actors with the tools to make
a difference. The importance of practically relevant
research and active political and educational work
was therefore already enshrined in the Foundation’s
first statutes, adopted in 1971.
You mentioned your father’s focus on research on
issues relating to the Cold War in post-war Germany.
Since the 1990s, the Berghof Foundation has
evolved from being a supporter of conflict research
in Germany into a non-governmental organisation
running projects internationally and with an apparent
focus on practice. Where do you still see your father’s
spirit and vision reflected in our work?
In part, this development has been an
outcome of success. What had started as a
controversial project that was often framed as
leftist had succeeded in reaching out to the political
mainstream. And with the end of the Cold War,
the political context had changed. So we started
to search for an active and constructive role
internationally — similar, in fact, to what Germany
itself was doing. Along with that, practice took on
a more dominant role in our work. The existing focus
on action research and peace education pointed the
way. However, despite the present predominance of
practice-related projects, the Berghof Foundation
is, at its heart, still a research organisation. We do
care a great deal about concepts and we try to reflect
systematically on our work. We continuously strive
to better integrate research with our practical work,
and very much believe in reflected practice. There can
be no learning otherwise. And that is very much
in keeping with my father’s spirit.
In this book, we present a number of stories showing
where our work has made an impact. What is your
most memorable success story personally?
What are you most proud of?
I vividly recall when we started our work with
resistance and liberation movements. It began with
an action research project involving participants
from a number of armed groups, who under the
guidance of our researchers wrote papers on
topics like negotiation and disarmament. To build
their capacities to make a transition from violent to
political engagement, the process was set up as a
peer exchange involving groups who had already
succeeded in negotiating a settlement. This was right
after 9/11 and the idea of ‘talking to terrorists’ was
highly controversial back then. It also proved to be
an extremely contentious issue at board meetings
and I am proud to have spoken up in favour of it more
than once. Despite the obvious risks involved, I am
convinced that in most situations a sustainable
settlement can only be achieved by finding ways to
constructively engage those who are seen as difficult
or hard to reach.
Ultimately, this kind of work and the projects
that followed proved to be groundbreaking for
Berghof. It also serves as an excellent example that
to be successful in the long term, an organisation has
to take risks and do things beyond the mainstream.
It is important to remind ourselves that success often
breeds an aversion to risk. So we should consciously
preserve the radical edge that has made us strong in
the past.
If we look at the world, we see intensified geopolitical
rivalries and eroding multilateralism, widening inequality
and polarisation in many societies, and a decline in
liberal, democratic values, which create new risks for the
work of peacebuilders. What role can organisations
like the Berghof Foundation play in this context?
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