50 Years IBZ Gimborn

1980s
The Offices are now in the Castle’s Annex
Internationalisation is real
The plan to become more international; that is, to attract to seminars
interested persons from other countries – one of the goals that had already
been a force behind the founding of the Association – could not be
realised with the approach adopted so far, of German-language seminars.
Admittedly, events did attract attendance from immediate neighbour
countries, specifically from Austria and the Netherlands, but also from
Switzerland, Denmark, and Luxembourg. To widen the circle of countries
permanently, however, it proved necessary to admit other languages
too. Some encouraging experience had already been gained from early
seminars that had been carried out in English, without interpretation, with
international participation – albeit largely without British participants
initially. The growing ranks of the Association and the efforts to acquire
Members from outside Germany too made it appear advisable to provide
the IBZ with a visibly international profile in educational work.
Before this plan could be implemented to any great extent, in 1984 an
obstructive new rule appeared in connection with public funding, which
had already been reduced besides: the incorporation of the Landeskinderklausel
(state citizenship clause) into the North Rhine-Westphalian
Weiterbildungsgesetz. With the aim of channelling the expenditure of
North Rhine-Westphalian tax money first and foremost to benefit persons
who lived or worked in North Rhine-Westphalia, the amount of funding
for participants from outside North Rhine-Westphalia became especially
regulated and substantially restricted. This regulation affected and still
affects the IBZ very painfully, since the implementation of international
events without basic financing under the Weiterbildungsgesetz was not
economically viable in most cases. Nonetheless, the projected approach
to internationalise the seminars could be undertaken and subsequently
maintained also.