Courses

Money plays a big role in our world nowadays. Whether someone lives or survives depends on whether and how much money he has. Money is an important part of our society and has a great influence all over the world.

Many people are worried about money. They are afraid of crises and try to avert them. They believe that if they protect money, all the problems caused by money will also be solved. But actually we have to start with the whole system.

The MoneyMuseum organized a discussion group called Sunflower Talks for over ten years. The topic was "Doing business with and without money." The participants were academics and people involved in commons and alternative currencies. This book contains the main insights from these talks.

To begin, we asked ourselves the question: what is money? Who knows what? There were many different opinions. We needed some kind of map to organize our knowledge. But what should this map look like?

We discussed a lot and after each meeting we asked the linguist in our group to summarize the most important points on a page. He wrote a text for each area, which consisted of three parts. In this way, 21 pages were created. From these texts we made 21 videos. Eske Bockelmann deserves great thanks for his texts and the videos, which give us an overview of the topic of money.

Anyone who traces the phenomenon of money can approach it from many directions. To help you find your way around, we have developed the Money Map. It is divided into seven areas and takes you from the obvious, such as money and material, time and power, to the abstract, such as society and thought. Explore the texts and accompanying videos or click through the interactive brochure "Money:Critical."

You get an easy introduction to the complex topic of money.

• You approach the phenomenon of money in a playful way through familiar areas.
• You learn exciting aspects about the nature and effect of money.
• You will find ideas for your own thoughts.
  Who is behind it?

The MoneyMuseum in Zurich is responsible for the content. Some time ago, we set up a roundtable to discuss money with people from academia and practice.

The texts as well as the scripts for the videos were created by Eske Bockelmann, book author and lecturer for Latin and Greek in Chemnitz.

The Sunflower discussion group was set up by the MoneyMuseum Zurich many years ago on the topic of money:critical.

Eske Bockelmann is a classical philologist and Germanist. Since his habilitation he has been teaching at the TU Chemnitz. Bockelmann has repeatedly discussed the topic of money and monetary economy in fundamental books and essays, including, for example, Im Takt des Geldes (2004) and Das Geld. What it is that rules us (2020). He edited the texts and narrated the videos.