My article about Ralph Haelbig

Caucasian Blogspot by German Ralph Halbig

Georgien.blogspot.com is the place where artists – musicians, painters, photographers gather and are able to share and discover eachothers work.
The artists don’t gather here randomly, all of them are Caucasians. The only foreigner here is the creator and author of the Blog,German Ralph Hдlbig, mostly known as just Rapho – a nick name that his Georgian friends gave him, adding to his real name a bit Caucasian dialect.
His story of achievment in the Caucasus began in the late 80’s. Once when climbing near his hometown Dresden, friends told him about the Caucasian Mountains. From that time he started to research the region. Everything begins with an amazing love-story in Berlin,but also with many harships in the relationship with his Georgian love. “We discovered the differences in our own mentality and traditional education. We had conflicts in our young life. And these differences are nevertheless very interesting for me. The caucasian culture is for me a private contact with my deeper mirror image of myself. In Georgia I could discover more about myself than in Germany. And besides I have learnt to respect my own roots more and my own daily culture. Now I would like to use the discrepancies of different cultural conditions for building a bridge between different cultures. I know Georgia and Armenia are very early christian cultures but the influences of the persian and asian cultures are more present than in Europe. Therefore we have to understand and learn more about each other. This abstract idea was the main-subject to open my blog five years ago,” remembers Ralph his first steps as a blogger for Caucasus.
First he asked friends for contacts, for links of different interesting sites to pubish on his blog and then connections and relations came step by step, in this regard, Ralph’s communicative character played it’s biggest role. “I got in touch with more and more people all over the world in the internet the most with Caucasian roots. In the virtual world I am well-known. I am very glad about the many caucasian and foreign people in the world who have been writing me and thanking me for my collections of news and caucasian stuff in my blog. Five years ago there was a small blog community in the Caucasus. Mostly by foreigners. Now the situation has changed and I hope more young people are interested in building a serious community. Not only in the internet and in networking. I hope the young generation can find a real development of their own culture,” says Ralph.
Among others, Ralph’s favorite hobby is photography. His Blog permanetly broadcasts collections of different Caucasian Photographers. The recent session belongs to Natalia Mali, A photographer from Dagestan Republic. His own photo sessions are all about Caucasus and one of his future plansis to hold an exhibit together with South Caucasian photographers,the topic is of course Caucasus. Another important segment on his blog is Georgian music. “My first serious contact with the georgian folk music was the documentary of my friend Ruth Olshan. Her film “Like Air To Breath” about the georgian music and dance was very impressive for me. This film completed my thinking about Georgian culture. Suddenly I felt the timeless energy and the strange emotions of the Georgian culture. I learned through experience also during my travels together with Tutarchela, what is the deeper sense of the caucasian mentality. In contrast to european culture I could relive an important ground of human being. The music, the dance and sometimes also the supra can bring different people realy together. But for the very typical europeans, that c an be ery difficult to understand,” explaines Hдlbig. “And I haven’t realy a favorite Georgian song. It depends on my mood. Last summer there was an impressive funeral song from Tamar Buadze (Tutarchela on the Tour) in Europe dedicated tomurdered people in the war. Now I often listen to the song “Kvira” by Sopho Aslanishvili. And one of my favourite singers are Hamlet Gonashvili.”
Being fond of Georgian and South Caucasian culture, besides blog activities, Hдlbig does most from internet as well. He has organized many small-budget events together with Georgiansin Germany. “I tried to popuarlizethe culture of Caucasus in Germany. With the aid of the Geothe-Institut and the State Department of Germany could we organize concerts in Europe for the Female Singer Chor Tutarchela from Rustavi. Four years ago I organised a georgian week “Kartuli Suli” together with my friend Knut GeiЯler in Leipzig with support of different cultural foundations in Saxonia. Different artists only from Georgia could come to the small Theatre Festival “OFF Europa” in Leipzig. And last year I invited in the same Festival the curator Nini Palavandishvili. We organized short-dated together with young artists from Georgia and the support from rusiko Oats New Art Gallery a non-budget exhibition with the works of georgian artists in two galleries in Leipzig.”
Ralph’s future plans are many and diversive but traditionally connected to Georgian and South Caucasus. “I want to present our artifical documantary about the archaeological travel from Jцrg Herold in all three South Caucasian countries. Now exhibitions about this project run in Berlin in the gallery Eigen+Art. And also I want to start some film projects with the SchmidtFilm Production from Leipzig. Friends from the EuroKauKasia Society would like to support the history of Germans living in Caucasian area like Bolnisi.”
Ralph thinks about travel development in the region. He plans to launch travel tours for Europeansinterested in folk music traditions of Georgia. “My dream is to find a company for all such activities,” he says. At last he makes a big anouncement, that Blog needs activists — “I am looking for support for my blog. Maybe some Georgians, Armenians and aAzerbaijanians from younger or older generation like to publish their intependent articles, photos, reports, posts, potcasts, videos and much more in my blog. It is easy to do it.”
Ralph is enormously optimistic. Maybe the book he has decided to write will see the day light soon. He puts all his knowledge and experience about Georgian and South Caucasus in it and writes with the great love forthis region, that is most significant for his life and maybe meaningful for Caucasus.

http://www.georgiatoday.ge/article_details.php?id=6424&cat=Culture&version=449