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Peace, freedom, and self-determination were among the themes at the 19th European Media Arts Festival (EMAF), held May 10-14, 2006, in Osnabruck, Germany. This predominantly white-collar town of about 150,000, located in the country’s northwest region at the intersection of the Hamburg-Cologne and Berlin-Amsterdam train lines, could hardly be a more appropriate host to media art committed to such issues. Already an important trading hub during the Middle Ages (the large cathedral and historic old town remain impressive traces), Osnabruck was one of the two original signing places of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648–a historic treaty that, because it ended the Thirty Year War, was responsible for the religious and geopolitical restructuring of post-medieval Europe and would, until the French Revolution, serve as the unofficial blueprint for the definition of European nation states. Those apt to dismiss these credentials for being too “Old Europe” may want to note that the city is also the birthplace of Erich Maria Remarque, the German novelist who wrote the mother of all antiwar stories, All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), and that the city was recently selected as the seat of the German Foundation for Peace Research.