Germany expects visitor overnights from India to cross 1 mln in 2019 on Bauhaus movement centenary

The year 2018 saw around 9.22 lakh Indians travelling to to Germany and staying at least for a night, a year-on-year growth of more than 8 per cent, and the country expects the number to climb to 1 million by the end of this year, the German National Tourist Office (GTNO) has said.

"Our vision 2030 is to have 2 million overnights from India into Germany and we are right on track to achieve that," Romit Theophilus, Director (India), GTNO, said.

A visitor overnight is a tourist who spends at least one night at a travel destination.

The GTNO's tourism theme for 2019 is the centenary of the Bauhaus movement in Weimar, Theophilus said, adding that the Bauhaus is a lively school of ideas and a field of experimenting in the free and applied arts, design, architecture and educational methods.

The Bauhaus art school was opened in Weimar, Germany, in 1919, and moved on to Dessau and Berlin, before its closure under Nazi pressure in 1933. Its approach towards the relationship between art, society, and technology continues to have a major impact the world over.

Besides architecture, the Bauhaus is famous for its product design which focuses on removing unnecessary ornamentation and introducing minimalism to everyday items.

In 2020, the GNTO's tourism theme will be the 250th birth anniversary of German composer and pianist Ludwig van Beethoven, Theophilus said.

Deputy Head of the German Mission in India Jasper Wieck said the Bauhaus has had close ties with India.

"Rabindranath Tagore inaugurated our own Indian Bauhaus, the Kala Bhavan, in Shantiniketan in 1919. Like the Bauhaus, it developed a modernist language. In 1921, Tagore visited Weimar," Wieck said.

"The first major Bauhaus exhibition took place in Kolkata in 1922. You see a lot of Bauhaus architecture in Chandigarh, Delhi, Ahmedabad and many more cities in India," he added.

There is a lot of mutual curiosity, respect, and affection between the two nations, and this is reflected in the booming numbers of Indian tourists going to Germany, the German Mission deputy head said.

He added that the number of Indian students enrolled in German universities has doubled in the last five years and now stands at 17,500.