Within the diverse activities of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, publications are a unique and important tool. It is here where all the knowledge and information generated by our various programmes, research and collaborations is condensed. With scientific methodology, reliability, completeness, but also with nice aesthetics, our publications are important points of reference.

Their broad themes concern all fields of our activity - ecology, democracy, migration, social solidarity economy - while specific topics include: energy poverty and energy democracy, gender equality, racism and other forms of discrimination, asylum legislation, housing, cooperatives' legislation. It should be said here that many times over the years a publication can be updated.

A special category is the 'Atlases', an international series of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, whose Greek edition is much more than a translation, as it is enriched with a wealth of local data and information from experts.

Finally, a mention must be made of the publications concerning the work of the great German author Heinrich Böll, whose name our Foundation bears.

The printed version of the publications is available after contacting our offices, while the electronic ones (in pfd format) are available free of charge through our website, where they can be found and downloaded (https://gr.boell.org/en/publications).

Now, on our anniversary events, they will be on display throughout the day in special stands in the "Akivernites Polities" and "Oblik" bookstores, in order for a wider public to get to know them and obtain them free of charge.

"Akivernites Polities"

"Akivernites Polities" is a cooperative initiative in the field of books, which was founded in 2013 and operates as a bookstore, publishing house and café.

It was founded to host and promote books that inform and criticize, that narrate and paradigmatize, that do not submit to the frivolity of the times but insist on being "outside the walls". As a Social Cooperative Enterprise, however, it was also created to confront the constant anti-labour and anti-social attack, to respond to unemployment in a collective and comradely way.

Since its foundation, "Akivernites Polities" has managed to become a bookstore friendly to the broader radical thought, an inviting meeting place welcoming to any different voice of the region, a café - meeting place for all the people of Thessaloniki, permanent residents and passers-by. Its activities are varied: from selling books, publications and fanzines, "Akivernites Polities" has acquired its own publishing activity, while every year it holds dozens of events and book presentations.

Oblik Editions

Oblique (облик) means slanted, bent in Latin languages, and shape, pattern in Slavic ones. Therefore, the defense and dissemination of the “divergent form”, aesthetically and politically, was set as the criterion and motivation for the establishment in November 2019 of the homonymous publishing house (along with a bookstore and art gallery) by Anastasia Deligianni, Psychologist and Visual Artist, in Thessaloniki. In her own words:

"A small bookstore, not a stationery store, a toy store, a café or a venue for events of supporters (of political parties and others), but a pure bookstore in today's market, especially in Kapani of Thessaloniki, which is being impoverished in order to sell out, is not something hipster and quaint [...] On the other hand, it is not a start-up with capital and sponsorships, this kind is not for investment on this scale [...]

A small bookstore speaks all the languages of the world, it is religious tolerant, anti-fascist, feminist, humanist but not charitable, it flirts with all the arts, it believes that the quality of content is not exclusionary, as those who peddle commercial junk for the masses would have us believe, but is inclusive, since it treats each reader as the ideal self towards which we are constantly moving".