History as a project of the future — the European history textbook debate 1

“A common European history textbook — The successful result of international cooperation in the history classroom” — This was the title of an interview with the founder of the International Textbook Institute, historian Georg Eckert from Brunswick, printed by the West German newspaper Welt am Sonntag in August 1950. Eckert had returned from an international seminar on textbook improvement in Brussels, which took place from July 12 until August 23, 1950. ² Fifty- seven years later, at a conference in Heidelberg on March 1 and 2, 2007, German Minister of Education, Anette Schavan, proposed to her colleagues from the EU a resolution to develop a common history textbook for use in all EU countries.