The Achte Minute has a new baby: This week, we are starting a monthly section called ZEITGEIST. Jens Fischer will be editing the column. Below, you can find Jens’s explanation of the ideas behind ZEITGEIST, and he invites you to help us develop it. On Wednesday, December 8^th, the first piece will be published – and we are anxiously awaiting ZEITGEIST!

Editorial by Jens Henning Fischer

The Achte Minute was so kind to invite me with thinking up and installing a new column. Now it’s ready to go: On December 8^th, the first edition of ZEITGEIST is going public. Further editions are set to follow every second Wednesday in a month – should the format prove to be interesting and the readers interested, more often so.

ZEITGEIST aims to help with developing the “debate about debating”. Because is it only me to have the feeling that many controversies around our sport have fragmented and only take place in the frame of specific formats, circuits or continents? Yet many of these questions are essential to understanding debating better, and fruitful discussions are born from a holistic view – and by meeting other perspectives. ZEITGEIST aims to be a forum for exchange of ideas, discussion, disagreement and development of opinions. Over time we aim to collect individual points of view, so they can be analysed and focussed. Thus, I hope, we will be able to bundle some of the frayed out conversations, and make the discourse clearer, sharper and fruitful.

Thematically, there are no preset limits. However, all contributions should be written in a way that shows the perspective of the author, and – this will hardly surprise you – there has to be a connection with debating.

Published texts solely express the opinion of the author. Free from editorial influence, ZEITGEIST is a space for areas of interest in the eye of the contributors. Put shortly, it’s oriented along the concept of the “Op-Ed”.

To make sure that ZEITGEIST will be able to appear regularly, I shall try to actively win authors with interesting views to contribute.

In principle, however, everyone is invited to have a hand in ZEITGEIST. Expressly, I call for your submissions. Please send your ideas, drafts or proposals to achteminute[at]vdch.de – I promise to leave no message unanswered. I reserve the right to reject proposals that do not fulfil the envisaged standards, but will never reject anything because I disagree with the author.

For all publications, there are three rules:

1. A text needs to be shorter than 4.000 characters.
2. Contributions are not subject to any form of redaction. That being said, they need to express relevant opinions, or they need to offer relevant definitions. They should be relevant beyond the limits of a particular format of debate.
3. Articles can be written in English or German, and will be published in both languages on Achte Minute.

The discussion is open – let’s have it!

Jens Henning Fischer is one of the founders of debating in Germany, and helped to start the clubs in Passau and Berlin. As a debater, he was German vice-champion 2002 and won several national competitions. In 2010, he won opens in Bremen, Frankfurt and Utrecht, as well as the Master’s Cup of the German Debating Society. He was the Chief Adjudicator of Berlin EUDC 2006, and of many national and international competitions. Since 2009, Jens is president of the EUDC Council.

jef / apf