My Effort for European Folk High Schools

It’s been 30 years since I first set foot in a folk high school. I dove headlong into a campaign and advocacy for European folk high schools. It led to a lot of enjoyment—and a fair amount of trouble. Here is how I remember events and inspiration from Jürgen Habermas (1929-), Højskolen Østersøen (Folk High School Østersøen), the Association for Community Colleges (ACC), Youth 2002 and beyond.

I completed my studies in the summer of 1995. Afterwards I wandered a bit, pondering K.E. Løgstrup’s (1905-1981) notion of the unmediated in perception and Habermas’s diachronic concept of rationality, before I happened upon Højskolen Østersøen in Aabenraa.

First as a student—that was around the time peace agreements were being made in Dayton for Bosnia. Then I became a teacher, and then I began working—and it was already 1996.

Knud-Erik Therkelsen was principal at the time. Among the teaching staff, roughly half were German and the other half Danish, while the administrative and technical personnel were typically locals who—so far as I could tell—spoke Sønderjysk. Indefinite articles were “jen” and “jet,” not “en” and “et”  like in codified Danish, but “Formel‑1” wasn’t “Formel‑Jet,” it was “Formel‑Eins.”

The school’s core idea was rooted in encounters between Danish and German.

Ethno-Relativism and European Enlightenment

Bosnia plays a part in this story because during my studies it struck me as odd that the Yugoslavs hadn’t developed rationality—or rather, that they fell into ethno-nationalism at a time when that should have belonged to yesterday. I believed Europeans had moved beyond that, but I only knew it from books. And I was wrong.

Understanding, culture, humor, and other concepts could — and indeed were only allowed to — be understood within a beam of light whose borders happened to coincide with ethno-national limits. And since those limits were unclear, it became all the clearer what enlightenment could mean: to switch on the light meant to make ethno-national limits clear and to make them coincide with state borders. Enlightenment was relative to the concept of folk/volk/narod! So much for the clear light of hindsight.

I often felt that I ran into this “Yugoslav folk relativism” when I entered the world of folk high schools, and it left me somewhat shaken. Then Ove Korsgaard’s Kampen om Lyset (“The Struggle for the Light”) landed in my lap. We discussed the book extensively, especially among the Danish staff. I think it’s fair to say that the German colleagues had long since moved on from that discussion.

That coincided with our decision to hold European minority courses. I became the lead organizer, with Elly Andersen as my chief-andragogue— because I knew nothing about andragogy or running courses. Martin Groh, Frede Mortensen, Karen Hanne Munk, Lene Albrechtsen, and other good colleagues were also involved in different ways.

Minority courses as future workshops

The first minority course at Højskolen Østersøen took place in the sunny summer of 1997. It was a four-week course with 61 participants who were citizens or residents of 18 different European states, representing around “… 35 different cultures, identities, kinship groups or nations” according to the final report.

There was light and joy and color and emotion and a fireworks display of engaged young adults. The lecture hall buzzed when Therkelsen spoke about liberal-mindedness (da: frisind), and how the school didn’t care which rooms you stayed in at night. Then there was Sasha, the Polish-Ukrainian, trying to teach me 7/8 time, earnest Belarusian students, Unai from the Basque Country with a fantastic Fado voice, and overall “Faces, Frontiers and Friendships,” as a film report came to call it—crossing all borders.

And then there was the day when the EU Commission recommended that six of the Eastern European countries be invited to begin actual accession negotiations with the EU, while seven others would have to wait. Some were disappointed, some were happy, and the Western European youth were slightly taken aback by how much it meant. And they felt all of it – together!

For me, that moment was an eye-opener to the potential of the folk high school format in a European context. It was about the setting. The boarding-school form. It had to do with space, sensation (da: sansning), and the retreating horizon (da: horisontens vigen). Yet I was unsure how precisely these phenomena of Løgstrup powered a folk high school course.

At least Anne Knudsen wrote about us in Weekendavisen under the title Fremtidsværksted (en: Future Workshop), so I thought we were onto something.

Ingredients

The tension between new and traditional approaches to enlightenment was constant—at least for me. It was strongly motivating to help institutionalize the concept of reason I knew from Habermas. The minority courses were Die Einheit der Vernunft in der Vielfalt Ihrer Stimmen (“The Unity of Reason in the Diversity of Your Voices”), as a Habermas article was called, translated into educational ambitions. We created a miniature European public sphere.

That was my view, and I worked around the clock.

It was Therkelsen who initiated it. It seemed natural in Schleswig that a folk high school should showcase the Schleswig model to the world. So that became the courses’ academic content.

Even if one couldn’t quite pinpoint the cause, it is nevertheless a fact that in Schleswig, the relationships between majority and minority populations have moved from war to peaceful coexistence. And there were several voices supporting the idea of showcasing the Schleswig model. One of them was the historian Lorenz Rerup (1928–1996), whom I just managed to meet.

There was also another factor at play. There had been an event in North Schleswig in which, among others, citizens from the collapsing Yugoslavia had participated. As I recall, two groups had, to some extent, brought their belligerence with them from home, and the organizers had some difficulties dealing with that.

That’s why we did things differently at Højskolen Østersøen. We didn’t want any group to dominate — not even Danes or Germans. That’s why the participants in the minority courses were selected so that everyone came from different backgrounds. Demographic diversity, based on applications. We prioritized the needs of the whole.

It was likely the luckiest move we made. That core ingredient I later carried into both Association for Community Colleges (ACC), and from there into the major project Youth 2002.

Højskolen Østersøen continued European courses for years afterward; I left after the 1998 course. The school thought “interfolkally” (da: mellemfolkeligt), but I believed legitimacy lay in the transnational or post-national. I needed to move on.

We are founding the Association for Community Colleges (ACC)

Several participants from those early minority courses told and wrote afterwards that they wanted a European folk high school in their home regions modeled on our courses. I recall David Rei from Galicia and Laszlo-Zsolt Dani from Transylvania.

After some initial sounding out among Danish folk high school people and a European tour — snow in the train compartment in Slovakia, fire and turmoil in the streets of Hernani in the Basque Country, endless light over the flat landscape of Friesland (NL) — to meet with a few key individuals, we founded a European folk high school association. We couldn’t open folk high schools everywhere, but we could work to raise awareness of the good idea.

The founders were the former participants from 1997 and 1998 minority courses, along with some of us organizers. It happened on August 11 1999, while I was employed at Ubberup Højskole (Ubberup Folk High School). From 2000, the association got its first office in IT-Folkehøjskolen Snoghøj (Snoghøj Folk High School), with principal Bøje Østerlund’s agreement, where I also became employed. Aforementioned Lene Albrechtsen volunteered to take charge of the accounts.

The organization was named Association for Community Colleges (ACC). It was a non-profit, non-governmental membership organization. We didn’t want “Folk/Volk/Narod” in the name. “Community Colleges” wasn’t ideal either—we hadn’t realized it meant something entirely different in the USA.

ACC was to work toward making it possible, one day in the future, to hold European folk high schools all across Europe — ideally with funding from a common pool (possibly the EU). To convince decision-makers of the idea, we aimed to organize more European folk high school courses based on the model we knew from the Højskolen Østersøen.

It was important that a European folk high school system be seen as part of a European citizen-centered liberal-democratic infrastructure. We worked to develop a transnational European public sphere, which also meant that we insisted on being a European association.

Although the first statutes were more or less a copy of those of the Studstrup Beach Owners’ Association (small settlement in Denmark), the composition and activities of the board reflected a European association. The aforementioned Laszlo Dani became vice-chairman, and among others, the experienced organizer Conchi Gallego (with experience from the Spanish Youth Council) became a central figure for most of the years and later took over as vice-chair. I myself became the working chairman — and unfortunately, as that had not been the intention — remained so throughout all the active years. There were up to nine board members from across Europe.

Jesper Nielsen, who succeeded me at Højskolen Østersøen, also held a seat on the board, allowing him to meet former minority course participants and ensure easier recruitment for the school’s future courses.

 

European folk high school courses—ripples across Europe

ACC subsequently held folk high school courses — European Community College Courses — across Europe, doing our best to replicate the format the organizers knew from Højskolen Østersøen. For this purpose, we rented folk high schools or similar institutions when necessary.

In the first wave, organizers were former minority course participants; the next wave were participants’ participants, etc. With few exceptions, we adhered to demographic principles to avoid dominance.

From 2000 to 2010, courses were held at locations including Rites Tautskola and Sārnate (Latvia); Ryslinge Højskole; Højskolen Østersøen; International People’s College (Denmark); Studium Foundation in Târgu Mureș; Reformat Church School in Szekelyudvarhely/Odorheiu (Romania); Slovenian Dijaški Dom and Casa Cares (Trieste & Tuscany, Italy); Hostel Pliskovica (Slovenia); Németh László Academy (Hungary); Folkshegeskoalle Schylgeralân (Netherlands); Stephansstift (Hannover, Germany); Rodos Palace Hotel (Greece); and Amayuelas de Abajo Hostel (Spain).

The courses in Transylvania and Hungary were developed by Barna Kovács (bottom right) and Ágota Illyés, who is third from the right in the bottom standing row. They later got married. They both participated in the 1999 minority courses at Højskolen Østersøen and went on to play a significant role in Youth 2002. The photo is from Szekelyudvarhely/Odorheiu in 2001, where the course was called Transylvania Community College.

The courses in Tuscany were organized by Eva Valvo (far left in red), Peter Ciaccio (white T-shirt in the center of the image), Marzia Pistolesi (on the right in a white T-shirt), and Silvia Cardi (center, wearing a white dress with green). The photo is from the course venue Casa Cares near Reggello, Tuscany, 2003. The organizers had participated in the minority course at Højskolen Østersøen in 1998.

Courses and other events in Latvia were organized around various teams, with Linda Jakobsone playing a central and recurring role. Linda had participated in the minority course at Højskolen Østersøen in 1997.

Linda and Conchi Gallego, who also took part in the 1997 minority course, were the course leaders in Palencia, Spain—an event that, for once, was arranged for older European citizens.

The course on Rhodes was organized by Maria Bakari, who had likely been a minority course participant in 1999. Maria worked together with an international Art of Hosting team to carry it out.

The course at Stephansstift in Hannover was organized by a team consisting of Erik Jentges and Anna Littke, with support from Allan Siao Ming Witherick, the aforementioned Marzia Pistolesi, and Emma Yeoman. Erik and Allan had participated in Youth 2002 at Snoghøj Højskole; Anna had attended Transylvania Community College in 2003, and Emma Yeoman had taken part in the Europe of Rights Community College in Tuscany, also in 2003. The contact person at Stephansstift was Jürgen Klaassen, who had previously been a teacher at Højskolen Østersøen.

Course activities in Slovenia and Trieste were carried out by a team led by Daša Bolcina, who had participated in the minority course in 1999. One of the team members was Maja Mezgec, who took part in Youth 2002 at Snoghøj Folk High School. Daša is seated in the center wearing a white T-shirt. I can’t seem to spot Maja. Challenges of Enlargement Community College, Trieste, July 2004.

Courses in Denmark and the Netherlands were handled by the ACC office. Over time, we had various employees and volunteers involved. Among them were unemployed humanities graduates—Danish recipients of unemployment benefits—who could take part in the project as a form of internship. Malene Jepsen, who had been a participant in the 1998 minority course, was one of them. We also had EVS volunteers. Naomi Woltring, who compiled a European songbook and later (in 2024) published a book on neoliberalism in the Netherlands, was among them. Naomi was also involved in our collaboration with Folkshegeskoalle Schylgeralân.

We always made sure that the courses were both a goal and a means. A goal—because the organizers had something on their minds they believed Europeans should be teaching one another. A means—because the courses themselves served as campaign material. It ought to be the norm in Europe that citizens are given the opportunity we and our participants had: to take part in pan-European courses modeled on the folk high school format. That’s what we wrote. That’s what we said. Everywhere.

Memorable Moments

There are an overwhelming number of funny, interesting, and formative moments and faces associated with these courses. Here are a few moments that, in my world, have grown to be more than just moments:

As early as six in the morning one day in 2003, lights were turned on at Højskolen Østersøen in Aabenraa. It was mid-February, bitterly cold but quiet outside. Shortly after, from the dining hall, you could see shadows swarming on the beach in the dim light and hear soft commands and quiet laughter. Tables and chairs crossed Flensborgvej along with the shadows moving between the school and the shoreline. Soon, the sun rose from somewhere behind the Ensted Power Plant, and co-editor Allan Siao Ming Witherick (Dunstable) captured the cover photo for Journal of World Education vol. 33 no. 1 at precisely 07:01, based on an idea by Birgit Staack from Hamburg. What commitment!

“I was deeply moved to see so many families being reunited.”
“It was the first sign of hope—that we could not only think freely, but also speak and write freely.”
“When the wall fell, we hoped that disarmament could finally begin. That was the dream we held on to.”

That’s how three older EU citizens experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The voices belong to Manuela Garcia, Rita Ābolina, and Jo Falk from Spain, Latvia, and Denmark respectively—and it was moments like these they shared with one another during their stay at Amayuelas de Abajo Hostel in Spain in 2010. The synoptic presentation of the vastly different lives they had lived—even from before the war—is profoundly fascinating. A film was made about it, which is still available today.

It was a sight to behold when Jozefin Petreska (Skopje) arrived at Rites Tautskola (Latvia) in stilettos, with a rolling suitcase, freshly curled hair, full makeup, and a pink dress with a generous neckline—after which she politely asked to have a cup of coffee brought to her room. She was clearly ready for a five-star conference and had apparently not fully familiarized herself with the program, which included helping to renovate the old school building and its interior.

One should note that at the time, the nearest paved road was far away, water came from a well, only select windows had glass, and accommodation meant dormitories and outhouses. It was August 13, 2000, and Jozefin took it all in stride—sewing blue curtains for the school.

And then there was the day with black wine in the Slovenian mountains; the simulation games in Hannover and Ryslinge; games of Balleball on the hilltop in Tuscany and at Stephansstift; midsummer in Sārnate; endless conversations in Transylvania about ethnos in French and German thought; the encounter with the tarot master Ulrik Golodnoff (1948–2014) and his Art of Hosting friends on Rhodes—and, of course, plenty of romances.

I flew a lot during those years and maintained a circle of friends that included a large part of the—at our peak—600 members from nearly every European country. My role was to safeguard the association’s mission and to assist with fundraising, and it did happen that I carried the money in cash.

Our courses were often organized with a specific outcome in mind. It was a valuable pedagogical tool. For example, some of the courses functioned as week-long editorial meetings. One course concluded—as mentioned—with a completed issue of the Journal of World Education, another with an edition of Das Haus La Maison The House, and several courses ended with the publication of our own magazine, ACCENT. The first was made possible because we had become a member of the Association for World Education (AWE), which publishes the Journal.

There was also a clear intended outcome in the largest project we took part in—namely, Youth 2002:

Millions meet at Café Jorden

Around June 30, 2002, Danish media covered the arrival of 1,000 young Europeans in Copenhagen. They met Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, had pancakes at City Hall, visited Tivoli, and more. It coincided with the start of Denmark’s EU presidency.

After arriving, the 1,000 youth were spread across 13 folk high schools in Denmark for two weeks to draft a European constitution. On the final day, delegates from all schools met at Rønshoved Højskole (Rønshoved Folk High School) to negotiate a consensus document—a proposal from Europe’s youth.

The constitutional proposal was subsequently to be delivered to many prominent politicians both in Denmark and abroad, and as far as I know, that did in fact happen. At least, that was the intention.

Ude i højskolernes lokalområder blev projektet også dækket af medierne, så det er alt sammen velbeskrevet andetsteds, og der er vist ingen grund til at repetere det hele her.

In the local areas of the folk high schools, the project was also covered by the media, so it is all well-documented elsewhere, and there seems to be no reason to repeat it all here.

But perhaps it’s time to tell how the project actually came about. At least the parts that I know of and as I remember them.

During the year 2000, the ACC board must have discussed that the Danish EU presidency could perhaps be used as a showcase for our idea. What if we could present the folk high school model to Europe? In those years, many talked about the EU lacking a “popular” complement to the institutions in Brussels, and we believed we knew the solution: European folk high schools on a large scale!

In any case, in the summer of 2000, the ACC board wrote a letter to the Minister of Education, Margrethe Vestager, in which we mentioned the idea of employing the Danish EU presidency for our purpose.

Before this, Therkelsen had worked for Højskolen Østersøen to be granted an exemption from the 50% rule, which required half of all students to be Danish citizens to qualify for state grants. He succeeded—allowing minority courses to continue—but required matching funds from elsewhere, e.g., the EU.

I supported the waiver with a lengthy letter to Vestager—some of which was printed in Politiken in 1999.

Then in winter 2000/2001, Søren Winther Lundby from the Danish association Nyt Europa called me about support for a “Constitution Initiative”—that should bring youth together during the Danish presidency to draft a European constitution.

He called, presumably because he had heard that I had previously recruited young people from across Europe. He had also spoken with Principal Henning Dochweiler at Askov Højskole (Askov Folk High School) and with Therkelsen, both of whom were interested in hosting the Constitution Initiative at their respective schools. But Winther Lundby thought their vision was too limited. He wanted a larger event—and preferably not at folk high schools, as he feared they might take over the project altogether.

In January 2001, I sat with Winther Lundby at Café Jorden in Aarhus. Apparently, he believed he could secure a million Euros for the project, and I got the impression that he was, in fact, in town on behalf of Søren Søndergaard, who was head of the European Parliament’s Information Office in Copenhagen. All that was needed was some co-financing to unlock these EU funds.

To that, I simply replied that if he had a million, I knew where to find another—provided the Constitutional Initiative was carried out as folk high school courses. After all, there was precedent from Højskolen Østersøen for state support of European folk high school programs, and the EU presidency was practically an open invitation to scale things up. It had to be possible.

Winther Lundby wrote “1,000,000 €” on a scrap of paper—and then we had cake.

We establish Youth 2002

The mutually matching Euro-millions made everything possible: 1,000 young people in Denmark, ACC could assist with recruitment, the project had to take place as folk high school courses with government subsidies via a special exemption, the central focus of the courses could be the drafting of a European constitution—and suddenly, ACC’s core ideas could also be brought to life. The project came to be called Youth 2002.

I advised Winther Lundby not to mention the scale, the EU presidency, or the matching millions to the folk high school principals before the project was more firmly established. I was concerned that the schools—and the Danish Folk High School Association (FFD)—might conquer the project and run with it, without its pan-European content, and in the worst case, in the spirit of comic strip character Rasmus Klump:

“Where are we sailing, Skipper?”
“I don’t know, but we’re moving along nicely!”

In my view, that would also have made it impossible to obtain EU funding.

Winther Lundby didn’t follow that advice for long. By chance, I overheard the phone call in which he linked the EU presidency to the possibility of an exemption in a conversation with Therkelsen.

“You’re some dreamers,” Therkelsen said to me when he hung up, and then hurried into his office to make a few more calls—presumably to the Danish Folk High School Association (FFD).

Shortly after, on May 22, 2001, we had both the organization and the project: Youth2002, which ultimately came to include 13 folk high schools, as well as IUC-Europe, ACC, Nyt Europa, FFD, and the Danish Youth Council (DUF). And even though the schools—and especially the folk high school association—became involved earlier than I would have liked, we managed to preserve the “Constitutional Initiative” as a central element of the project.

The folk high schools involved became Ask Højskole, Askov Højskole, Brandbjerg Højskole, Egmont Højskolen, Esbjerg Højskole, Højskolen Østersøen, International People’s College, Oure Idrætshøjskole, Ry Højskole, Rønshoved Højskole, Skælskør Folkehøjskole, and the IT-Folkehøjskolen Snoghøj. The 13th “folk high school” was Svendborg Søfartsskole (Svendborg Maritime School), where IUC-Europe rented facilities.

Principal Asbjørn Lyby from Brandbjerg Højskole (Brandbjerg Folk High School) became chair, and Nina Nørgaard from IUC-Europe became vice-chair. Elly Andersen became ACC’s representative on the board. I don’t know how Nørgaard came into the picture, but presumably it had to do with creating a counterweight to the many folk high schools involved in the project.

We got an office at Brandbjerg Højskole, though I was the only one who used it. We were two employees: I had the main responsibility for recruitment, while Winther Lundby was in charge of securing additional funding.

The “national impact glue”

I had to draw on Conchi Gallego’s experience to approach things properly. Should ACC simply assist with recruitment without any kind of “compensation”? According to her, I needed to make sure the statutes stated that the ultimate goal of Youth 2002 was to contribute to the development of a European public sphere and to showcase the folk high school model in a European context. We managed to include the first point, but the second one was left out.

Even the first was soon ignored, as the partners turned out to be more concerned with other priorities. I had the impression that, for most of them, it was about positioning themselves for future political favor in Denmark, fundraising, organizational development, or personal career advancement.

The “Copenhagen event” was the perfect example of this tendency. It was the Youth 2002 board that decided the project should begin in Copenhagen, to mark the opening of the Danish—meaning the Danish ministers’—EU presidency. This meant photo opportunities and Danish media coverage, but it was also expensive.

At the same time, the originally planned three-week courses were cut down to just two weeks. The bonds formed between young Europeans at folk high schools—naturally growing stronger the longer the courses lasted—were sacrificed in favor of the national impact glue. The Danish organizations’ desire to tie themselves to Copenhagen, and thereby to the Danish press, and decision makers, proved too strong. Not even Nyt Europa held the line, and the unity between Winther Lundby and me was, by then, truly broken.

I remember being told by Nørgaard, in no uncertain terms, that “Copenhagen is the capital of the entire country,” and I found myself wondering whether she thought my objections were just a case of provincial narrow-mindedness—as we might call it today, Jutlanderism (da: jyderi).

Between Gratitude and Ingratitude – To some Key Persons

It became clear early on that Winther Lundby’s EU million was more of a pie in the sky than what I first got the impression of. Fortunately, I had kept a small detail in reserve, just in case.

From Michael Hansen at the Informationscenter for Udveksling (ICU), I knew that the Youth Programme budgets included a fund for special purposes. I met with him in July 2001, as it was becoming apparent that the EU million wasn’t exactly ready for withdrawal.

He put me in touch with Pierre Mairesse (DG EAC – Directorate-General for Education and Culture) in Brussels, with whom I also secured a meeting. I outlined the project, and Mairesse confirmed that support was a possibility. I believe Conchi Gallego also played a role—she knew Mairesse’s superior through the European Youth Council (EYC).

After that, I handed the contact over to Winther Lundby—it was, after all, his responsibility to handle the fundraising.

As far as I know, it was Mairesse’s funding that saved the project, which had essentially been launched on a mistaken assumption about EU funding opportunities.

Michael Hansen had also confirmed that a larger European Voluntary Service (EVS) project could be arranged in connection with Youth 2002. That allowed ACC, in parallel with the Youth 2002 project, to recruit 13 volunteers who could help the schools with preparation and execution of the courses. Many of them were ACC members with prior experience from European folk high school courses—either as organizers or as participants:

Helena Soares Silva (Espinho) at Esbjerg Højskole, Stasy Kaneva (Sofia) at International People’s College, Dasa Bolcina (Trieste) at Askov Højskole, and Ágota Illyés (Budapest) and Barna Kovács (Budapest) at Brandbjerg Højskole.

The 13th volunteer was Mjellma Mehmeti (Skopje), a member of the ACC board, who ran the ACC office and safeguarded ACC’s interests while I was tied up as an employee of Youth 2002. At that time, the ACC office was located at Højskolen Østersøen.

In addition to the volunteers, Linda Jakobsone (Riga) and the aforementioned Conchi Gallego served as course leaders at Snoghøj Højskole. Linda was also a board member of ACC. Furthermore, the inquisitive Lucie Čížková (Prague) travelled between the schools to collect material for her master’s thesis. Her work ended up strongly presenting ACC’s idea, and she later became a member and was elected to the board—and eventually became a folk high school teacher at the International People’s College in Helsingør, after a stint in “The World Class” with Rex Schade at Ryslinge Folk High School (also an ACC member).

Elly Andersen, incidentally, withdrew from the Youth 2002 board because she felt that the board didn’t actually make the decisions. She was right. I also resigned from my position. I felt I would be betraying the project if I remained loyal to the de facto leadership.

Many of the ACC volunteers and the team at Snoghøj Højskole carried an enormous load throughout the project—especially Ágota Illyés and Barna Kovács, who helped with recruitment from the Brandbjerg office. We had a routine that called for 10% extra invitations, since there were always dropouts. However, due to organizational constraints beyond our control, we had to send out around 1,600 invitations, and in the end, “only” just under 900 confirmed their participation. That was a dropout rate of around 45%. We were certainly not used to that.

Nevertheless, Ágota, Barna, and all the other workhorses were forgotten when a kind of final report was eventually issued on September 19, 2002. I don’t know who it represented, but it certainly wasn’t the full board. Fortunately, Therkelsen, who also sat on the Youth 2002 board, was kind (and firm) enough to point out this and other omissions and inaccuracies in a group email:

“Furthermore, I believe the efforts of the young ACC’ers are overlooked in the report.”

In my view, the final report as a whole was both fanciful and misleading, but it was delivered in a linguistic stew of pomp and circumstance that seemed to help it go down. I don’t know whether the project was ever reported on seriously, but it took many years before the EU disbursed the final funds. Perhaps that was related.

Afterthoughts & awards

When no one would pat us on the back, we had to do it ourselves. Mjellma Mehmeti had persistently held on to ACC’s purpose of participating in Youth 2002 from the ACC office, and we nominated her for an award, which she received. Mjellma was an obvious choice because she also had achievements from other contexts to highlight.

ACC co-founder and board member Mjellma Mehmeti thus received the Heinz Schwarzkopf Foundation’s Young European of the Year award at the end of 2002. The award was given for, among other things, her efforts for European folk high schools in ACC and Youth 2002. It was indeed very prestigious, and Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse delivered the keynote speech and everything.

Years later, the foundation invited Mjellma back to present another award—the “European of the Year”—to EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

In 2004, ACC also received a prize—likely on the same basis: Outstanding Achievement in Global Work, handed out by the Organization Development Network at its 2004 annual conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As I recall it, ACC-member Nataliya Nikolova in Sofia had something to do with it.

We also chose to publish our own report on ACC and Youth 2002. In February 2003, we held another European course aimed at producing an issue of Journal of World Education.

The journal was published with reflections covering the theoretical, practical, and legal dimensions of our idea and activities. Former participants had the opportunity to evaluate and share their experiences with and opinions on the folk high school model, as they had come to know it from Youth 2002.

The legal part was a reprint of the Act on European Community Colleges, which we originally sent out at the turn of the year 2001/2002. The Act on European Community Colleges was a simulated EU legislative act, which we diligently used to promote our idea. You could say it was “fake news,” so in that respect, we were ahead of our time.

Similar to Journal of World Education vol.33 no.1, the Act on European Community Colleges was also the result of a European Community College course. In both cases, in 2001 and 2003, we had rented space at Højskolen Østersøen.

We promoted ourselves as global Europeans

ACC was an independent member of the Association for World Education (AWE), until 2012 a member of the European Association for the Education of Adults (EAEA), and of the European Civil Society Platform on Lifelong Learning (EUCIS‑LLL). ACC also participated in the European Alliance for the Statute of the European Association (EASEA).

And there were many more activities in ACC.

Done at 40

The aforementioned Maria Bakari, an organizational psychologist, once told me that I was a good leader, but a less capable manager. I was good at ideas and consistency, but not at running an organization—partly because I did far too much of the work myself. There was probably some truth to that.

In any case, I was truly, truly exhausted by the time I turned 40 in 2006. Although ACC wasn’t formally dissolved until 2021, the organization had more or less run out of steam by then. ACC had no secure operating funds, so continuing was not exactly an attractive task for anyone.

Fortunately, I received a very heartwarming reminder that it hadn’t all been in vain. First came a letter from Astrid Ranvig, saying, “… few people achieve what you’ve accomplished in an entire lifetime,” along with other kind words. Then came another letter, and another, and I realized that someone must have borrowed the membership list and coordinated it all. A tsunami of birthday greetings poured in from ACC members all over Europe.

And they were postcards and handwritten letters—not emails. That really warms your heart.

By the time I turned 50, I had two wonderful daughters with Mjellma Mehmeti, and I know that several other children have come into the world because of our European work, so to speak. Since then, Mjellma and I have divorced. We all live in North Macedonia.

We failed—but history has again surfaced as wide open

I sometimes claim that thousands of European citizens have taken part in our European folk high school courses over the years. And that’s true. But strictly speaking, it’s not much. Any medium-sized European city can gather more people every weekend for a football match at the local stadium.

That’s why it was so important for us to advocate for the idea of institutionalizing the folk high school model at a European level. We didn’t reach that goal—and that wasn’t a great surprise. What was surprising was the amount of headwind we encountered in Denmark, the very place we had expected would carry the idea forward. That was the issue with the “national impact glue.”

But there’s another point I’d like to mention—one that has only become more relevant over time.

Among the former participants in our European Community College courses are ministers and politicians, authors, EU officials, professors, and all kinds of elite figures. One could choose to brag about that and even suggest there’s a connection. But no! In fact, that too is a sign of failure.

From the very beginning at Højskolen Østersøen, we focused on young people who were already active in civil society organizations or similar networks—because they were the ones we could reach. These young people were, almost without exception, university students.

I always saw that as a necessary evil to get things started. The real idea, of course, was that European Community Colleges or folk high schools one day be for everyone.

I fear that with our partial success; we merely helped to cement and reproduce the very divisions that are dangerous in both Denmark and Europe—divisions that have now had real consequences in the United States. In practice, we reached only the few. But it should, quite obviously, have been ordinary “carpenters and hairdressers” attending European courses, to borrow a phrase Johannes Jensen might have used.

Johannes Jensen (1925–2007) was the man behind the now-closed Højskolen Østersøen—where it all began. He wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the EU, but he still deserves to have this vision revisited by the upcoming Danish EU Presidency.

The Presidency could, for instance, allow the reopening of Højskolen Østersøen as a European folk high school, letting new ripples spread outward once again. I’ll gladly gather the founding group. History, after all, remains wide open.

The memoir was originally written in Danish (Min tørn for europæiske højskoler) in March 2025 and at the request of Højskolehistorisk Forening (Danish Folk High School History Association).