Elisabeth
Zilz - My life
The people aske me to tell them about my life. I don't like this kind of personality cult, but maybe the following lines can promt others to think about their own lives. I've worked as a librarian in theological libraries for over 30 years. As I was the only qualified librarian I was able to develop my own initiative. Although the librarian service is generally known as a "service to humanity" I wasn't satisfied entirely. I felt the need to become comitted to social and political issues.
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The World War Two, which was started by Germany and which I witnessed until its bitter end, turned me into a pacifist. Right after the end of the war I collaborated on projects against the arming of deafeated Germany, on the socalled "Fight against the Nuclear Death", against ecocide and last but not least for justice in Nicaragua. It seemed to me that the sandinista led government was realizing this justice by the means of free education and health service and the re-distribution of territorries. Especially the successfully realized campaign against illiteracy was an incentive for me to work in Nicaragua. I therefore retired at the age of 60 and realised my first journey to Nicaragua in order to inform myself about the conditions and needs. One year later, in 1985 I started the project "A Mobile Library for Nicaragua". Many friends of mine helped me and in 1992 we were able to found a non-profit-making organization.
In 1987 our Bibliobús Bertolt Brecht began to travel around Nicaragua an it is still doing so, even after soon twenty years. Later, in 1993, we were able to establish the German Nicaraguan Library in the facilities of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, before moving to our own, recently built facilities in 2001. Due to the fastly changing political environment, the war, bureaucracy and the lack of money, throughout the years we had to face many difficulties in suiting the project to the people's needs. But I never lost faith in the success of the project. I grew up in a protestant vicarage. My parents taught my three brothers and sisters and me, that I mustn't ever surrender, but to keep working with faith and confidence on the things I considered to be right and important. Today I am more than 80 years old and fortunately I haven't lost much of my mental and phisical fitness, so that I hope to be able to keep accompanying the project with my six-month-stays in Nicaragua in the next years, too. I wish this project will go on, yet it gives the people the hope for a better future.
