uni'alumni 2018

uni'alumni 2018_ENG

3 CO NT E NT S Cover Story Totally sustainable Survey: Testing and optimizing 4 7 Stefan Hiermaier Alumni Network Hagen Pfundner Georg Cremer enlivens the poverty debate Between the Lines: Sophie Passmann My Start-Up: Fifty2 Technology 10 11 11 Gundula Bavendamm takes a new look at history 12 13 My Course Certiﬁ cate: Jess Jochimsen Alumni Freiburg turns 20 14 Alumni help students help others Lifelong email address Astrid Fritz whisks readers oﬀ to the past Alumni answer: In diplomatic circles Hagen Pfundner runs Roche Pharma AG Successful fundraising in North America My recipe: Hans-Albert Stechl University News Margit Zacharias Friedhelm Beyersdorf runs the Heart Center My Tweet: Ralf Reski Elisabeth Cheauré and Russian Culture Dieter Speck brings order to the archive Margit Zacharias promotes transfer Continuing education for industry 4.0 Freiburg Nobel laureates: Heinrich Otto Wieland Campus Freiburg City Life 16 16 17 18 20 21 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 27 28 Fritz Keller Fritz Keller is excited about the new SC stadium Schlossberg Tower has been renovated Kronenbrücke is being rebuilt Images: The new Platz der Alten Synagoge 30 31 31 32 f l o W a i v l i S : o t o h P Dear Alumni, The University of Freiburg produced outstanding performance ﬁ gures in many areas in the past year – including third-party funding, awards, patents, and publications. But the competition in the Excellence Strategy is stiﬀ . In the Clusters of Excellence funding line, we are entering the competition with proposals from the life sciences and materials science. If both are successful, we will also be eligible to submit a proposal in the Universities of Excellence funding line. That will involve presenting convincing concepts for fostering top-level research. But what makes our university special? What makes it strong? My answer is that we are in the process of reimagining the centuries-old idea of the European university for the conditions of the 21st century. In a policy speech held in late September 2017, French president Emmanuel Macron set the goal of creating 20 European universi- ties awarding European degrees by the year 2024. With “Eucor – the European Campus,” we are on our way to making this goal a reality. The Universities of Freiburg, Basel, Mulhouse, and Stras- bourg and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology already opened the European Campus in 2016. It has the status of a European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation, or EGTC for short, a European legal entity – under German law, headquartered in Freiburg. Together we have enormous potential to produce additional beneﬁ ts for all of us. This European platform is what we need to stake our future on. In addition, we are also connecting with other partners from the region. We have been working closely and successfully with Freiburg’s two Max Planck institutes for many years – as well as with the city’s ﬁ ve Fraunhofer institutes, with which we founded the Sustainability Center Freiburg in 2015. Its engineering core is the Department of Sustainable Systems Engineering, INATECH for short. Discover what this new department means for our Faculty of Engineering in the cover story of this magazine. Enjoy reading the magazine – and keep in touch! Sincerely, Prof. Dr. Hans-Jochen Schiewer Rector of the University of Freiburg

44 Cover Story uni‘alumni 2018 I N AT ECH Totally Sustainable A one-of-a-kind joint project between the university and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft is strengthening sustainability research in Freiburg The heavy iron door to the “bunker” is the worse for wear. The inside is pitted with dents. They testify to tests with explosives conducted at the field laboratory of the Fraunhofer Institute for High- Speed Dynamics, Ernst Mach Institute, EMI for short. At the moment, scientists are smashing up battery cells at this site near Kandern in the South- ern Black Forest. Confronted with the demand for electromobility, the automobile industry wants to test the crash behavior of storage batteries for the cars of the future. Different types of battery cells are secured in the lab and exposed to increasing pressure – up to 50 tons, either in slow motion, all at once on the test object’s entire surface, or only at a particular point. How do the aluminum cases buckle under stress, when do welding seams burst open, and what happens when a loaded cell ex- plodes and sprays toxic substances? High-speed cameras and laser systems record the events in the testing chamber and break them down into thousands of snapshots. At another testing instal- lation nearby, externally intact battery cells can be tested for non-visible internal damage with the help of a computed tomography scanner. Unprecedented Bridge Building What is being done here is resilience research – in other words, research on the durability and regenerative powers of materials. It is the result of an unprecedented instance of bridge building: The University of Freiburg and all five of Freiburg’s Fraunhofer Institutes teamed up to plan the Department of Sustainable Systems Engineering (INATECH), which was founded in 2015 as the third department of the Faculty of Engineering (alongside

Photo: INATECH 55 grating ecological, economic, legal, and also ethical findings into their research. Core of the Sustainability Center The department’s three research areas – resil- ience, energy systems, and sustainable materials – correspond to those of the Sustainability Center Freiburg, also founded in 2015, which integrates further disciplines into the mix, such as economics and the social sciences. Under the broader um- brella of the Sustainability Center, the university and Freiburg’s Fraunhofer Institutes are collaborat- the Departments of Computer Science and Micro- systems Engineering). By the time it is completed, INATECH will encompass 14 laboratories, one half of which will be supported by the university and the other half by the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft. “There is no other such partnership anywhere in Germany,” says Prof. Dr. Stefan Hiermaier, found- ing director of INATECH and director of Fraunhofer EMI. “Sustainability research is conducted primarily in the natural sciences. INATECH, on the other hand, takes an engineering approach, and is there- fore very concrete,” emphasizes Prof. Dr. Gunther Neuhaus, vice rector of the University of Freiburg and vice president for research. However, the engi- neers are encouraged to look beyond what is tech- nically possible and calculable and take advantage of the resources a full university has to offer, inte- ing on joint research projects with industry part- ners, for instance on an extensive project on automobile safety with the corporations Daimler and Bosch. INATECH forms the core of the Sus- tainability Center Freiburg and is designed to be a self-standing institution enabling long-term, project- independent research work as well as teaching. The department has offered the English-taught master’s program Sustainable Systems Engineering (SSE) since the 2016/17 winter semester. The interdisciplinary approach is a characteristic feature of the INATECH concept. “We endeavor to take a more compr ehensive look at topics like lightweight construction, which requires less mate- rial than conventional construction, consumes less energy, and causes less emissions, contributing already in this way to sustainability,” explains Hier- Stefan Hiermaier, founding director of the Department of Sustainable Systems Engineering (INATECH) and head of the Fraun- hofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, Ernst Mach Institute (EMI). He is studying the behavior of materials in crash tests. Photo: Fraunhofer EMI

66 Cover Story uni‘alumni 2018 maier. “New materials only come onto the market if it makes good economic sense, if they fit into a common design format, if they can be made useful in mass production, and if they meet all other de- mands the product is expected to meet.” A light- weight electronic vehicle must be as safe as a conventional vehicle with an internal combustion engine. “And it also needs to be attractive and be constructed of recyclable parts.” Preventive Thinking Is Not Enough The resilience researcher can subject components for the automobile and aviation industries or even entire cars to various types of crash tests at the department’s testing sites. At the moment he is concentrating on diﬀerent types of batteries for new generations of automobiles propelled by electric mo- tors. “The tests focus on other chemical processes, other risks, and other situations in which crashes occur,” he says. The resilience expected of the storage batteries does not just include durability but also the capacity to regenerate after a crash or a mechanical failure. “We can no longer think ex- clusively in terms of prevention. We need to devel- op options for acting at the moment when the catastrophe occurs.” A charged lithium-ion battery cell after a test causing an extreme detonation. Photo: Fraunhofer EMI The complex networks governing our everyday lives play a key part in the spread of technical defects. One need only imagine a local power supply failure, explains Hiermaier. The communications networks in the affected sector would then also fail, and forms of public transportation that rely on electric- ity like trams would come to a standstill. Situations like these could have serious consequences. “We therefore need to demand that future energy sys- tems also be designed for resilience.” Materials research is particularly important in this pursuit, says the scientist, but it is also essential to all other areas of sustainability research. Supporting the Energy Transition Designing future energy systems is the job of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), an important INATECH project partner in two respects: With more than 1100 employees, the ISE is not just a particularly large Fraunhofer Institute but is also regarded as Europe’s most important research institution in this area. The task of the moment is to “support the transformation of our energy system, the energy transition, in Germany,” says Prof. Dr. Stefan Glunz, head of the Laboratory for Photovoltaic Energy Conversion at INATECH and also one of the division heads of the Photo- voltaics business area at the ISE. Thanks to the integration of sustainable solar and wind energy into its energy supply mix, Germany is currently still years ahead of other industrialized nations. “Replacing an energy system that works great with a new one in a fully industrialized country” is a more complex task than, for instance, building up an energy system from scratch in a developing country with poor infrastructure, says Glunz. To provide the “clean and inexpensive” electricity the energy transition in Germany requires, the researcher and his team are working on developing a new generation of solar cells that are capable of converting an even larger part of the solar spec- trum into electrical energy than previously built modules. The so-called tandem solar cells combine cells made of different materials, each of which is ideal for utilizing a different range of the solar spectrum. On a tour through the laboratories at the ISE, Glunz stops in front of a deposition unit, which is used to apply particular layers of materials to solar cells. “The Faculty of Engineering has a device like this too, but here at the Fraunhofer Institute we need to cater more to industry needs. That’s why we also have this industry prototype here, which can be used to produce large amounts.” The op- portunity to work under conditions similar to those in industry is attractive for students, says Glunt,

7 “whereas at the university, we are interested in con- ducting fundamental research.” This is the reason why the partnership benefits both sides: The Freiburg Fraunhofer Institutes gain access to fun- damental research, which is not included in the context of their joint projects with industry partners. In turn, the university can use the large testing sites and expensive laboratory equipment available at the Freiburg Fraunhofer Institutes. The scientific infrastructure available to INATECH is worth a total of around half a billion euros, says Oliver Ambacher, professor for performance electronics at INATECH and academic dean of the new department. The physicist served until 2016 as director of the Fraun- hofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) in Freiburg. Ambacher is convinced that engineering can not just raise awareness for sustainability issues but also “lead to a more sound basis in fact,” which is often called for in such discussions. For example, he dismisses the frequently advanced idea of switching to electric cars in the space of just a few years as unrealistic. The electricity available in Germany would only be enough to power 15 million electric cars. That is just one-fourth of the number of automobiles on the road in Germany today. “And even that would only be possible if we used all of the available electricity for nothing else and also imported a lot of electricity from French nuclear power plants.” Stefan Glunz: Spurring technical development in photovoltaics. Photo: Fraunhofer ISE enced by the market. Today, mobile phone trans- mitter stations have “the energy efficiency of a traditional light bulb,” explains Ambacher. They only convert ten percent of the power they consume into energy, while the remaining 90 percent is turned into heat. “This can be improved, but currently not at a price the mobile network operators are willing to pay.” The rate of technical development is also influ- An Immediate Success Enhancing the performance of solar cells to support the energy transition in Germany is a research goal of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE). Photo: VioNet/Fotolia

8 SU RV E Y Cover Story uni‘alumni 2018 Testing and Optimizing Engineers at the Department of Sustainable Systems Engineering (INATECH) are pursuing the question of how to develop components combining high performance with low resource consumption. Three project heads explain what this involves specifically in their area of responsibility. I M E r e f o h n u a r F : o t o h P e t a v i r p : o t o h P I M E r e f o h n u a r F : o t o h P Dr. Malte Kurfiß Crash Center Group Leader, EMI Thomas Kisters Battery Safety Project Head, EMI “Crash tests are always exciting. When we begin our tests, everything needs to run smoothly. Otherwise, expensive vehicles are ruined without producing a result for us. Strictly speaking, the interesting phase takes place in a mere 100 milliseconds. Up to now we have then taken a close look at the crashed structures to determine how crash-resistant the cars are and how accurately our computer simulation predicted it. We could even use high- speed cameras to study the actual deformation process, but we were never able to actually look into the structures themselves. That has now changed. With our dynamic x-raying instruments, we can take sharp pictures from inside the crash structure within the 100 milliseconds. This is only pos- sible with special, very strong x-ray sources and extremely fast detectors. With great research eﬀ orts and many years of experience with high-speed x-ray techniques, we are now, after nearly three years of development, in the position to reliably provide the manufacturers of vehicles this highly revealing information. Together with Daimler, our anchor partner at the Sustainability Center Freiburg, we have now succeeded in verifying the quality of this new technology. Pin- sharp images show us precisely how reliably vital components function in a crash – and thus whether the overall system is resilient.” “Lithium-ion cells are currently a hot topic of discussion and are in use in technical applications for everyday devices in an unbelievable array of shapes and sizes. But what makes them so well known is not just their versatility but unfortunately also sen- sational accidents like the deadly ex- plosion of batteries in a Tesla Model S. In principle, lithium-ion batteries are built into cars in such a way that they easily pass all crash tests rele- vant for licensing. However, strong deformations of the charged cells can still occur in real crashes. We have been studying these so-called abuse situations for several years at Fraun- hofer EMI. Together with colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), we are conducting static and dynamic testing and mod- eling of battery cells, particularly in their charged state. This is where the actual challenge lies. In contrast to uncharged cells, charged cells some- times react by exploding. That can even lead to the destruction of an entire is what happened to us in one of our first tests. We are now prepared for such events and are studying in detail what happens during the deformation and the explosion – always in search of solutions to guarantee even more safety in the use of lithium-ion cells, even under conditions of abuse.” test block, which Dr. Jan Christoph Goldschmidt Novel Solar Cell Concepts Group Leader, ISE “The silicon technology opened up a mass market for photovoltaics. In many countries, we have already achieved electricity production costs equal to those of conventional means of generating electricity. Since most of the remaining costs scale with the area, an increase in efficiency is the most effective lever for further reduc- ing electricity production costs. How- ever, pure silicon photovoltaics is reaching its limits here. To push these limits, the research project ‘PersiST’ is developing perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells. Perovskite solar cells can make much more efficient use of the high-energy blue and green light than silicon solar cells. For their part, silicon solar cells use the red and infrared light, which perovkite solar cells are incapable of. By combining these ef- ficient individual cells, we want to achieve efficiency levels above the so-called Auger limit of 29.4 percent. The use of silicon for the lower solar cell is so attractive because it allows us to use the established and inex- pensive production technology used for silicon solar cells, and the per- ovskite solar cells can also potentially be produced at low cost.”

Cover Story uni‘alumni 2018 9 A potpourri of nationalities: Students from many diﬀerent countries come together in the Sustainable Systems Engineering (SSE) master’s program. Photo: University of Freiburg. pare the educational backgrounds of candidates from different educational systems and judge them fairly,” says Eva Otto. However, there have only been very few dropouts so far among students who have started the program. Environmental and sustainability issues are now at the top of the agenda in countries like India and China. Accordingly, the students say that that their mo- tivation for enrolling in the SSE program was to do something against climate change and air pollu- tion. SSE student Muhand Mahmoud from Sudan, for example, says that his professional goal after earning his degree is to help develop electric cars and live to see the day when “all cars on the street have zero emissions.” The SSE master’s students want to become good engineers, says Academic Dean Ambacher, “but all of them also want to make the world a better place.” Stefan Glunz concurs: “That’s what makes our students special.” Verena Adt » www.tf.uni-freiburg.de/inatech » www.leistungszentrum-nachhaltigkeit.de Oliver Ambacher: Giving the sustainability discussion a sound basis in fact. Photo: University of Freiburg Ambacher likes having his students work out such calculations, thus confronting them with ideology-free realities. The master’s program SSE was an immediate success. The department already had almost 300 applicants to select from in the first year, and this figure rose to 500 in the second year. A corresponding bachelor’s program is set to be launched in a year. Program coordinator Eva Otto, who supervises the master’s students from the first day on, is already preparing the launch. The student body at INATECH is a potpourri of nationalities. The Germans constitute only a small minority but are very active on sustainability issues. Around 85 percent of the SSE master’s students are from non-European countries. The largest group hails from India, followed by Bangla- desh, Pakistan, and Iran. “It’s no easy task to com- ACTIVE FOUNDATIONS A named or endowed professorship or donations made by companies, foundations, or private indi- viduals make an important contribution to the de- velopment of the Department of Sustainable Systems Engineering (INATECH). INATECH and the Sustainability Center Freiburg have already received support from numerous donors: Gips-Schüle Foundation (www.gips-schuele-stiftung.de): Amount: 500,000 euros | Period: 5 years, 2016–2020 | The funding supports the Chair in Sustainable Technical Systems at INATECH (Stefan Hiermaier: www.inatech.uni-freiburg.de/ de/professuren). Eva Mayr-Stihl Foundation (www.stihl.de): Amount: 1 million euros | Period: 10 years, 2018–2028 | The funding supports the Chair in Intelligent Networks at INATECH. In addition, there are also foundations supporting the Sustainability Center Freiburg: The Georg H. Endress Foundation (www.ch.endress.com) is providing 2.5 million euros for a period of 10 years (2017–2027) for the Chair in Smart Systems Integration (www.tf.uni-freiburg.de/fakultaet/BV/smart) at the Faculty of Engineering. According to the agree- ment with the foundation, this professorship will contribute to the Sustainability Center Freiburg. The Georg H. Endress Foundation has also made a donation of 720,000 euros to support a research project at the Sustainability Center Freiburg (Innovative Sensing for Sustainable Food Production, InnoSens) which runs until 2020. Contact: Harriet Falkenhagen, Abteilung Beziehungsmanagement, Phone: +49 (0)761/203-6953, Email: harriet.falkenhagen@zv.uni-freiburg.de

10 Alumni Network uni‘alumni 2018 P O R T R A I T “Constant Noise is Deadening” Former Caritas Secretary General Georg Cremer urges participants in the debate on poverty to keep a level head ity will ultimately play into the hands of populist currents,” he fears. If one constantly maintains that the welfare state is failing and that everything is getting worse and worse, “the people might one day begin to ask why we’re maintaining something so expensive at all.” And yet there have been improvements, such as a minimum wage, reforms to aid for the disabled, and an ex- tension of maintenance payments for single parents. These are of course gradual changes, “but more just isn’t politically feasible.” Cremer was born in Aachen, and one can occasionally still tell by his accent that he’s a Rhinelander, although he moved with his parents to Freiburg as a teenager. “I come from solid middle-class circumstances, from a liberal Catholic family,” he says. He began exploring the topic of social injustice early on, getting involved at the Freiburg foreign aid organization “Aktion Dritte Welt” at age 17. He also concentrated on devel- opmental aid policy while studying economics at the Univer- sity of Freiburg and in his doctoral dissertation. He initially found the ordoliberal “Freiburg School” less fascinating: “I was no ardent supporter as a student,” he says with a laugh. From 1986 to 1989 Cramer supervised a development project in Indonesia – a formative period in his life: “My experi- ences in a regime without legal security and without predictable politics taught me why a regulatory framework was so important for the thinkers of the ‘Freiburg School.’” After returning to Germany, Cremer began working for Caritas Inter- nationalis, assuming responsibility for emergency relief in Asia and social programs in Eastern Europe. He also wrote a habilitation thesis on the labor market in Indonesia. Since 1999 Cremer has served as an adjunct professor at the University of Freiburg. “I have always taught courses on topics related to my work, for instance on control of corruption in development work or on social services.” The 65-year-old aims to continue teaching such courses even after his formal retirement. “I also plan to remain closely involved in the debate on the welfare state,” he says. Cremer demands that more be done to prevent poverty from becoming chronic or even being passed on to the next generation, giving people a fair chance to bring their abilities to bear: “We need to do more for the education, early occupational orientation, and social counseling of disad- vantaged children and youths.” Thomas Goebel The economist Georg Cremer, secretary general of the welfare organization Caritas until mid 2017, calls for a social policy with a solid basis in reality. Photo: Anke Jakob/DCV T he debate on poverty in Germany is doing nothing to help the poor,” says Prof. Dr. Georg Cremer. A clear, sober statement – with unmistakable overtones of irritation. The economist served until summer 2017 as secretary general of the German national agency of Caritas Internationalis – the country’s largest welfare organization, headquartered in Freiburg – where he was responsible for social policy. “You can’t avoid the issue there,” he says. Last year Cremer, who earned his PhD at the University of Freiburg, wrote a book about poverty in Germany – “out of growing frustration over a debate that never gets beyond outrage without consequences.” Cremer refuses to scandalize social conditions in the way he sees several interest groups representing the socially dis- advantaged as doing: “Constant noise is not inspiring but deadening.” This does not mean that Cremer does not see any problems: He finds it wrong that retirement benefits count fully toward the minimum level of income for low-income earn- ers, he considers the level of benefits for the long-term unem- ployed to be 80 euros too low, and he thinks too little is being done for the low skilled and the long-term unemployed. However, the social policy expert demands that interest groups and politicians take a closer look and draw more distinc- tions. “Ritualized outrage that is completely divorced from real-

11 BET WEEN THE LINES: SOPHIE PASSMANN Award-Winning Slam Poet In August 2017, Sophie Passmann was the object of a shitstorm. She had told a self-depreciating joke with a side- swipe against the injustice of the gender wage gap. It provoked a veritable deluge of insults and threats, which she man- aged to get through using a combination of dissociation and quick-wittedness. “Humor is a terribly eﬀ ective way to deal with such attacks,” she says. “It is as if I had to start by proving I’m a real person.” Born in 1994, Sophie Passmann is a trained radio personality and may be heard regularly on DASDING, the youth radio program of the Südwestrundfunk regional broadcasting corporation. She participated in her ﬁ rst poetry slam at the age of 15 and has also performed successfully as a stand-up comedian. Punch lines and highly condensed texts are her bread and butter. Still, she was surprised when she won the 2017 Grim- Sophie Passmann participated in her first poetry slam at age 15 and was a radio journalist before taking up a course of study in political science in Freiburg. She still works as a radio personality and is also an actress and author. She received the Grimmelhausen sponsorship award in 2017 for her text collection Monologe angehender Psychopathen (“Monologs by Beginning Psychopaths”). Photo: press melshausen sponsorship award for po- etry for her 2014 book Monologe angehender Psychopathen (“Monologs by Beginning Psychopaths”): “I regard the word ‘poet’ as something very seri- ous. It seems to ﬁ t me about as well as the word ‘pole-vaulter.’” Two weeks after the incident described above, Passmann succeeded in sparking oﬀ the positive counterpart of a shitstorm: a viral hit. On Instagram she parodied the genre of the “unboxing video” with a piece showing her unpacking her absentee ballot and commenting on it as if it were a lifestyle product. The video was shared by politicians, celebrities, and news sites. Sophie Passmann’s combination of politi- cal commentary and humor provokes her audience in a positive and a negative sense. “My major was a good choice,” she says. “Political science is a life hack for everyone working in media.” She is now in the ﬁ fth semester of her degree program and is writing her bachelor’s thesis. In 2017 she won the Freiburg Cabaret Award, which is endowed by Alumni Freiburg e.V. M Y STA R T- U P: FI F T Y2 T ECH N O LO GY Watching How It All Flows Does the hood of a car protect the engine even when it rains for hours on end? How does the water run off of active windshield wipers? Is a car watertight from below when driving through water? Jens Cornelis and his partners Michael Ihmsen and Andreas Henne from Fifty2 Technology GmbH have an answer to all of these ques- tions. The three Freiburg computer scientists founded their start-up company in 2015 and promptly won a sponsorship award from FAIM, a trade as- sociation for applied computer science and information technology. Their business idea was to develop a new liquid simulation program fo- cusing on rain and water in general. “Automobile manufacturers need to ensure that their vehicles are watertight and function even in heavy rainfall,” explains Cornelis, managing director of Fifty2. “That is becoming even more important due to the increasing amount of electric cars.” To make such predic- tions, the computer scientists depict the liquid in the form of particles. Various forces act on these particles: Adhesion, cohesion, and surface tension result in corresponding behavior. “We produce physically correct results,” says Cornelis. The water simulation program works great, the young entrepreneurs have a lot of customers, and their company is growing fast – so fast that they are already setting their sights on the next topic, also focused on the automobile industry: oil. “That will be exciting, because oil has a much higher viscosity than water. We’ll need to do several things differently here,” says Cornelis. Claudia Füßler Automobile manufacturers can use simulations like this to determine how water- tight critical parts of a car are when passing through water. Photo: FIFTY2 Technology

12 Ready for Berlin-Kreuzberg: Gundula Bavendamm standing in front of the former Deutschlandhaus, in which the foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation will present a permanent exhibition following renovations. Visitors can also view books, accounts by contemporary witnesses, and historical records. Photo: Hans Martin Sewcz been a part of our identity as Germans, especially here in Berlin. There were a lot of arguments over the painful history of German refugees and displaced persons at the end of the Second World War. This history is only now receiving the attention it deserves. But I like changing the perspective. It’s also only natural to align oneself with the coordi- nate system of a new task with every fiber of one’s professional being. You took on a controversial task just after assuming your new post, namely the conception and imple- mentation of a permanent exhibition to be shown at the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin. How are you approaching this task? The permanent exhibition is a historically and politically charged affair because we are preparing for display and histori- cizing a facet of German history that has only seldom been shown and that was until recently controversial. I am guided in my work by the foundation’s mission statement, which was adopted in 2012 and which I find convincing. It is only possible to tell the history of the flight and expulsion of Germans at the end of the Second World War in its his- torical context. This includes the part Germany played in the war of extermi- nation in the East and the Holocaust on the one hand and the history of forced migration in the 20th and 21st centuries in Europe and further afield on the other. That is part of the foundation’s DNA, and it is the path we are pursuing. It is the path of understanding and reconciliation. You have a space of around 3000 square meters at your disposal in the Deutschlandhaus. What are you planning to do with it? About half of the space will be reserved for the permanent exhibition and the main oﬀ ering of our museum, but we want to I NT E RV I E W Story without an Ending As the new director of the foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation, Gundula Bavendamm is raising public awareness of an important facet of German history I s it permissible to also see the Germans, the eternal perpetrators, as victims of the Second World War? Since 2016 Dr. Gundula Bavendamm, director of the foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconcilia- tion (SFVV) in Berlin, has been preparing an exhibition about millions of people who were driven out of their homeland. The historian is an experienced cultural management expert: She has served among other things as curator of the Museum of Communication in Frankfurt/ Main and the German Historical Muse- um in Berlin and as director of the Allied Museum in Berlin. Rimma Gerenstein spoke with the foundation director about how sees her task, what visitors of the exhibition can expect, and what the con- cept of homeland means for her. uni’alumni: Ms. Bavendamm, did your change in jobs to the foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation also involve a change in perspective? Gundula Bavendamm: Yes, it has been an adjustment for me. As the director of the Allied Museum I communicated a history based on a consensus: from en- emies to friends. This narrative has long

Alumni Network uni‘alumni 2018 13 oﬀer the visitors more. For example, we have a reading room where visitors can view books, accounts by contemporary witnesses, and historical records. This includes letters and diaries of displaced persons. Moreover, we will present new special exhibitions and organize events at regular intervals. It is important for me that the horizon extends beyond Germany. Why shouldn’t it be possible to organize an exhibition on the partition of India in 1947, the tide of refugees from Syria, or contemporary ethnic cleansing campaigns? You deal with people who have been forced to leave their homeland for one reason or another. What does “homeland” mean to you – or do you consider the term outdated in our postmodern world? No, not at all. I would make a distinction between homeland and home, however. My homeland is Reinbek, a town near Hamburg, where I was born. That surely has a lot do with the fact that my parents live there and my grandparents are buried there. And then there’s my home, Berlin, where I have been living and working for the past eight years. Freiburg was also my home for a long time. I would be a dif- ferent person in general without this city, but it was only by chance that I wound up there. German reunification, which I basically followed on television from the sunny southwestern tip of Germany. But I didn’t go to Berlin to secure a piece of the Wall. I have to admit I did not ex- perience the debates from the front line. You initially started studying law in Berlin, right? For a semester, but that came to noth- ing. It wasn’t the right field of study for me, and this enormous, wintry, separated Berlin of the 1980s was just too much for me. When I visited friends in Freiburg, the city captivated me right away – the great weather, the magnificent architec- ture, and the beautiful Black Forest. Sometimes I miss having those lovely mountain ranges on the horizon here in Berlin. What debates marked your time as a student in Freiburg? I still have clear memories of the histori- ans’ quarrel on the significance of the Holocaust and the controversy sur- rounding the Wehrmacht Exhibition. And then there was of course the What do you know today about designing exhibitions that you had no idea of back then? I would express it differently: I used to underestimate what effect history as a discipline can have when it is brought out into the public sphere. Exhibitions tell stories that shape people’s conscious- ness, and they do so more strongly than any scholarly work ever could. I am very aware of the responsibility this involves. I try in every exhibition I organize to make the relevance of the topic as a whole clear for people of different edu- cational backgrounds, perspectives, and sensibilities. At the same time, I have to live with the knowledge that I will never be capable of telling the complete story – no matter whether I have 500 or 5000 square meters to do so. M Y CO U RS E CE R T I FI CAT E: J ES S J O CH I M S E N Graffito with a Semicolon that For a long time I was unshakably convinced the most pointless course certificate I ever earned at the university was one from an undergrad- uate seminar titled “On the Use of the Semicolon in Philosophy.” No way will I ever need this, I thought, as I walked my feet off on a hike along the Martin Heidegger Path in Todnauberg (required for the course) and provoked an interminable private lecture by the professor with the ill- considered remark: “Hiking is the con- tinuation of expulsion from one’s homeland by other means.” “You will think of me one day,” he concluded his tirade, “me and the semicolon!” He was right, as it turned out, be- cause years later in Hanover, the capi- tal of standard German, I came across the following graffito on the wall of a building: “Die Revolution ist großartig; alles andere ist Quark” (“The revolution is great; everything else is rubbish”). As Rosa Luxemburg (to whom this sentence is attributed) was not a topic of discussion in the seminar back then, I didn’t know how much importance she attached to the use of the semicolon, but I couldn’t help but imagine the noc- turnal act: Had the young spray artists discussed the punctuation beforehand? “Wicked line, dude, but doesn’t it need a comma? – No, man, it’s much cooler with a semicolon!” Aside from the fact that even a revo- lution wouldn’t help things in Hanover ... this is what I thought: A graffito with a semicolon is the end! Thinking has finally caught on. Jess Jochimsen, born in 1970 in Munich, lives as an author and cabaret artist in Freiburg. He recently published the novel Abschlussball (“Graduation Ball”). He studied German studies, political science, and philosophy at the University of Freiburg from 1991 to 1997. Photo: Britt Schilling

14 The alumni team: Diana Sack, Martin Gutry, Dr. Cornelia Staeves, Rudolf-Werner Dreier, Ilona Schmidt (from left). Photo: Sandra Meyndt I NT E RV I E W Giving the University Something Back The alumni organization is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2018 On a trip to the USA, Rudolf-Werner Dreier, director of the University of Freiburg’s Oﬃ ce of Public Relations, was impressed by the close contact leading US universities maintain with their former students and by the great commitment of the alumni to their alma mater. His wish to transplant this idea to Germany led in- itially to an alumni plan and ultimately, in 1996, to the establishment of a university- wide alumni organization. He succeeded in winning the support of the rector at the time, Prof. Wolfgang Jäger, who was very enthusiastic about the idea. The subse- quently founded booster association Alumni Freiburg e.V. is celebrating its 20th anni- versary in 2018. Rudolf-Werner Dreier recalls the beginnings of the association and also takes a look at the future in an interview with Verena Adt. Where did the idea for founding the booster association come from? Were there examples to model it on at the time? When I had the opportunity to visit several renowned universities in 1991 – Harvard, Berkeley, Yale, and universities in Chica- go and New York – I was very interested in the alumni work being done at these institutions. I brought back home the ba- sic idea of universities maintaining close contact with their former students and alumni giving something back to their university and then used it to develop my own concept for the University of Freiburg. Were there German universities that already had alumni associations at the time? No. Even the term “alumni” was more or less unknown and was established by us here in Germany. The idea of culti- vating a bond with former students and also getting them involved in supporting the university had not yet taken root in Germany. In Freiburg we founded what was probably the ﬁ rst alumni organization for a full university in 1996. Dr. Cornelia Staeves helped me set it up and is still with us today as head of the Alumni De- partment. The only contact the univer- sity had maintained with alumni before that was at the departmental level, in economics. The important thing for us was that the association should be set up to be international from the begin- ning. The first alumni clubs had already been founded in Japan and South Korea, and Margret Böhme established close contact with them as the associa- tion’s 2nd chair. A key point is that the rector of our university, Prof. Hans-Jochen Schiewer, is very committed to the alumni idea and passes this enthusiasm on to our alumni during visits with alumni clubs in Germany and abroad. He is also the 1st chair of the alumni associa- tion, whose executive board of directors also includes DAAD Secretary General Dr. Dorothea Rüland and me as manag- ing director. What was the main goal in founding the association? Our goal at the beginning was “friend- raising,” not fundraising – meaning that we wanted to make friends first and only ask for donations later. And it worked! Membership in the booster association

Alumni Network uni‘alumni 2018 15 increased rapidly. We want to create a bond – first by means of information, such as with a newsletter, a blog, and social media, and then through the regional and international clubs and also our biennial alumni meetings in Freiburg. We invite all of our former students to a weekend reunion at their old university and organize an attractive program for them with around 50 events. How many members does the asso- ciation have today? It is necessary to make a distinction: First there is the alumni organization run by our Alumni Department, which includes all former students who have studied here for at least one semester. That is currently around 250,000 people, and we have managed to get 120,000 of them on our database to date. Then there is the booster association Alumni Freiburg e.V., where former students are involved more closely. They pay an an- nual membership fee of 55 euros and provide active support to the university and its students. It has around 2000 members. More generally, however, an- yone who speaks positively of the Uni- versity of Freiburg and supports it is important for us. How, in concrete terms, are the alumni organized? We now have 18 clubs around the world. Some of them are nationwide clubs, like those in Korea, Japan, USA, and Cameroon. The German clubs are generally established at the level of states. Some cities also have their own chapter – referred to as a “Stammtisch” in German. In addition, every alumna and every alumnus can be a ambassador for the university in her or his country. There are former Freiburg students in practically every country on earth – even in Greenland and Vatican City. In New York we established an office three years ago, which is developing rapidly and is run by our liaison officer Dr. Markus Lemmens. For work at the clubs, much depends on the personal involve- ment of the people who act as their driv- ing force. We have highly motivated and active club presidents who organize wonderful programs of events. ing refugee women and girls here in Freiburg how to ride a bicycle to help them overcome cultural and social iso- lation. In addition, we support the faculty graduate ceremonies through alumni prizes for the best degree theses and a very popular information stand where the graduates can have their photo- graph taken in a gown and with their diploma in hand. In the future we also plan to develop a mentoring system in which alumni serve as a coach to indi- vidual students. It will take a lot of work to bring together suitable mentoring pairs. Still, it is very fulfilling for me to see these people getting involved and this network thriving. We accomplish this with a very small and committed team that is passionate about this task: besides Cornelia Staeves, it includes Ilona Schmidt, Martin Gutry, and, for the booster association, Diana Sack. What are alumni donations used for – and how much do alumni donate? We receive around 150,000 euros in donations per year. If we also include individual donations by alumni that go directly to the university rather than to the association, the annual donations now amount to several million euros. That is of course not comparable with the amounts raised in the USA, but for us every euro counts, and so does every volunteer! At the Office of Press Work and Public Relations, the Alumni Office works closely with the Public Relations Department to plan and organize fund- raising activities. The donations are used to support a wide range of pro- jects. For example, alumni donations have gone to projects like the renova- tion of the Peterhof and the Uniseum or the construction of an alumni pavilion to serve as a classroom for the University House on Schauinsland. Moreover, the university’s day care centers have also beneﬁ ted from alumni donations, as have student initiatives for refugees or cultural student groups. And how does the booster association help current students? Mainly with the “Deutschlandstipenium” scholarship program, which has met with a very positive response among our former students, and through a co- financing of individual projects. Plus, we award the “Alumni Prize for Student Involvement” each year. In 2017 it went to two students who have initiated unu- sual projects. One of the projects is a scholarship program designed to enable gifted students in Malawi to complete their schooling. The other involves teach- The booster association supports students – on ﬁ eld trips, at the Faculty of Medicine’s Clinical Trials Unit, in the University Big Band, and in working toward their doctorate. Photos: Patrick Seeger, University of Freiburg

16 Alumni Network uni‘alumni 2018 A LU M N I PR I Z E FO R SO C I A L I N VO LV E M E NT Alumni Help Students to Help Others Helping people to get a foothold is the goal of the two student initiatives that received the Alumni Prize for Social Involvement from the booster association Alumni Freiburg in 2017. The sports science student Shahrzad Mohammadi and the medical student Philipp Müller split the prize, each receiving one half of the 2000 euros in prize money. It was the sixth time the Prize for Social Involvement had been awarded. Shahrzad Mohammadi launched the project Bike Bridge in Freiburg, which provides bicycle lessons for refugee women and girls. By learning how to ride a bicycle with a tandem partner, going on bicycle tours in Freiburg and its environs, and attending accompany- ing language lessons, refugee women experience the freedom of mobility during the three-month course and also improve their social and cultural integration as well as their language skills. Philipp Müller, who did volunteer work at hospitals in Malawi for several years and became aware of the misera- ble state of the school system in this Southeast African country, started an aid project for school children. Estab- lished in 2011, the Duwa Lofunga Schol- arship enables gifted school children from poor families to attend private schools. The hopelessly overﬁ lled public schools in Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, only oﬀ er rudimentary instruction that makes it nearly impos- sible to earn a regular secondary school diploma. With the help of the three-year Shahrzad Mohammadi. Philipp Müller. Photo: private Photo: private scholarships, these children can finish their schooling and then go on to com- plete vocational training. » https://bikebridge.org/ » https://duwalofunga.wordpress. com/ueber/ More mobility and integration: Bike Bridge gets refugee women out on bicycles. More opportunities for a school education: Duwa Lofunga awards scholarships for private schools. Photos: Philipp Müller Photo: Peter Herrmann BO O ST E R AS SO C I AT I O N An Email Address for Life Members of Alumni Freiburg e.V. will never again need to have new calling cards printed due to a change in their email address. Former students who support the booster association can register for a personal email address that they can keep for the rest of their lives: Firstname.Lastname@alumni. uni-freiburg.de The alumni email address is linked to the user’s own email address, allowing messages sent to the alumni address to be forwarded directly to his or her regular private or business mailbox. It is of course also possible to use the alumni email account itself to write and send or receive and read messages, and having a calling card with a univer- sity email address is a very good way to make an impression. » Registration form: www.alumni-foerdern.uni-freiburg.de/ content/pdf/Anmeldeformular_Alumni- Mail.pdf

17 No idealization of the past: Astrid Fritz keeps close to reality in her historical novels. Photo: Andrea Diefenbach P O R T R A I T Immersing Herself in the Past The writer Astrid Fritz pieces together unwritten histories in her novels and detective stories A strid Fritz is something of a time machine. She whisks readers off to the past and describes people, places, and things in such a compelling way that one feels as if one has actually been transported into the Middle Ages or the Early Modern Period. Being able to immerse herself in the past keeps her work exciting, she says. The author attaches special importance in her historical accounts to keeping things as close as possible to reality rather than romanticizing them: “Life back then was strenuous and hard, and that is also important for the story.” Fritz discovered her love of history early on, at school in her native town of Pforzheim. The reason was because it did not consist only of boring numbers and facts, she explains, but also the his- tory of everyday life. “When you look at how people used to live, you discover your own roots. You establish a new connection to traditions and begin to un- derstand how our cultural area devel- oped into what it is today.” Called Back to Freiburg It was thus fitting that she ended up studying German and Romance studies in Freiburg, a city that – as she puts it – “breathes history.” Astrid Fritz has many good memories of her time as a student in Freiburg: warm summer evenings in the beer garden, studying on the bank of the Dreisam or at the Lorettobad swimming pool – a laid back lifestyle. Although she has lived in a number of German cities and three years in Chile, Freiburg is still a special place for her. “In spite of the interruptions, I’ve spent more time in Freiburg than anywhere else,” she explains. The city on the Dreisam River has always called her back. Many of her books are set here, first and foremost her debut novel, Die Hexe von Freiburg (“The Witch from Freiburg”). Fritz stumbled on the novel’s protagonist, Catharina Stadellmenin, while doing research for Unbekanntes Freiburg (“Unknown Freiburg”), a city guidebook she wrote together with Berhnard Thill. Like many of the characters in Astrid Fritz’s novels, Catharina is a historical figure, and her story is by no means pure invention. “Women only have a very small place in the official history writings, apart from exceptions like Catherine the Great,” the author explains. “We know relatively little about the reality of women’s lives, especially in the Middle Ages.” The author thus set herself the task of piecing together the unwritten his- tories of these women in her novels. The Start of a Journey Freiburg was not just where Fritz met her life partner, with whom she later started a family, but also where she discovered her love of popular fiction. At the end of the 1980s, she wrote her degree thesis on the new German detective novel. Many years later, when she started writing her own first novel, she often found herself thinking back on this time. “I think that this thesis played its part in making me into the writer I am today. It motivated me to start look- ing at popular fiction from an analytical perspective.” Fritz sees writing as a journey on which is always something new to discover and which should never end. She has a lot of ideas for detective and historical novels, and one day, “when I’m approaching retire- ment,” she says, she would perhaps like to try her hand at other genres or at stage plays. there Julia Dannehl

18 A LU M N I A N SW E R In Diplomatic Circles A number of the 150 ambassadors currently representing the Federal Republic of Germany abroad studied in Freiburg. We asked several of these alumni to relate striking or unusual encounters they have had while working in diplomatic circles. Dr. Gabriela Guellil, Ambassador to Chad Fields of study: Islamic Studies, Economics Years: 1978 – 1985 In 2011 I was supposed to be transferred to Sanaa, Yemen, to serve as ambassador. It was in the ﬁ nal months of the presidency of Ali Abdullah Saleh, after 27 years in office. I had learned Arabic in Freiburg and dreamed of a trip to the land of the Queen of Sheba. The transfer was broken off due to the incipient crisis, and so I ended up as ambassador in divided Cyprus, learned a bit of Greek, and brushed up on my Turkish, which I had learned the rudiments of at the Univer- sity of Freiburg and which had served sity of Freiburg and which had served me well in three positions in Istan- bul and Ankara. Cyprus was in Cyprus was in crisis in 2013. crisis in 2013. According to the According to the next plans, I was next plans, I was supposed to be supposed to be sent to Bangladesh, sent to Bangladesh, but things turned but things turned out diﬀ erently. After dry, hot months I am dry, hot months I am now experiencing now experiencing my first rainy sea- my first rainy sea- son in N’Djamena in Chad, whose pres- son in N’Djamena in Chad, whose pres- ident has been in oﬃ ce for 27 years. In the jargon of the Foreign Office, this is a crisis post. Very exciting. In addition to French, Arabic is an official language so I can use it when I meet Chadian public figures, like when I presented my credentials – I’ve come full circle some- where in Africa after 30 years in the foreign service. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Heimsoeth, Ambassador to Sweden Fields of study: History Philosophy, German Studies Years: 1971 – 1977 The years I The years I spent at the spent at the University of University of Freiburg, from Freiburg, from the beginning the beginning of my studies of my studies in 1971 to the in 1971 to the defense of my defense of my doctoral dis- doctoral dis- sertation in sertation in 1987, gave me 1987, gave me such a firm such a firm foundation in my native Photo: private country that I have never regretted the “vagabond lifestyle” of the diplomat. The wide range of memorable experiences in all corners of the world I’ve since had would be enough to fill seven lives. Leading Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl through the Moscow Metro, warding off Soviet attempts at spreading “kompromat,” preparing Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker’s visit to a Somali refugee camp, or a car ride with Angela Merkel in New York traffic – anecdotes for my grandchildren. What was no doubt unique, however, was that I had to arrange a dinner for the royal couple at the resi- dence only days after taking up my post as ambassador in Stockholm. My Swed- ish was poor; I was worried about the deep “a.” And so it was that I bungled an account of my first meeting as a school student with Crown Prince Carl Gustaf: A big thing turned into a big shock. Royal amusement. Joachim Freiherr Marschall von Bieberstein, Ambassador to Ecuador Field of study: Law Years: 1972 – 1979 As a political advisor at our permanent mission to the United Nations in New York, I supervised the numerous visits of Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. During one of these visits, it was in the year 2003, Fischer asked me, visibly exhausted from a night flight, to get him an espresso. Reminding the minister that it was forbidden to enter the as- sembly hall with food or drink of any kind was out of the question on account of human compassion. A helpful UN protocol officer showed me the way to protocol officer showed me the way to the new es- presso machine, which had been purchased at the request of the then Rus- sian Ambassa- sian Ambassa- dor and current dor and current Foreign Minis- ter Sergey Lav- rov. She also advised me to roll up the cof- roll up the cof- fee cup in the Security Council agenda. Security Council agenda. The cup camouflaged in this way, I then passed the frowning UN guards at the entrance to the hall. They luckily failed to notice the small cloud of steam rising from the paper. Even high politics occa- sionally have a humorous side. Photo: El Comercio e t a v i r p : o t o h P

Alumni Network uni'alumni 2018 19 Dr. Renate Schimkoreit, Ambassador to Senegal until mid 2017 (also responsible for Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde) Fields of study: Political Science, Islamic Studies, Economics Years: 1973 – 1982 “Goalball” – a team sport for the team sport for the blind and visually blind and visually impaired, a sport impaired, a sport that is played internationally, for internationally, for which European and world cham- pionships are held, and which is also a Paralym- is also a Paralym- pic discipline – was as unknown to me as it was to Photo: Auswärtiges Amt to me as it was to most Kazakhs. It was only through the contact the German Association for the Blind established with Kazakh nongovern- mental organizations that I learned of the magnificent opportunity to promote this sport for the disabled in Kazakhstan. Together with the Association for the Blind, I succeeded in getting disabled athletes interested in the sport and equipping them with the necessary gear. Goalball is a pretty rough game. Teams of three attempt to throw as many balls as they can into the opponent’s goal and keep their own goal clean. Since the players are blind, they react to bells in the balls. They have to react very quickly to the bells and can only stop the ball by throwing themselves with all their might towards where they assume it is located. It is not rare for the players to collide with each other and also injure themselves. The country has established association structures with German support, and coaches are being trained to soon enable Kazakh “goalballers” to participate in international competitions. Dr. Peter Wittig, Ambassador to the USA Fields of study: Law, History Political Science Years: 1973 – 1982 Not often but from time to time one encounters politicians who possess both analytical intelligence and a sense of humor. Barack Obama is one example. My family will never forget the sunny day in May 2014 when we were invited to the White House for the presentation of my credentials. The event is festive, dignified, and dictated by a strict protocol. When we were led into the elegant waiting room, President Obama swept by on his way to the Situation Room. After an hour’s delay, he finally greeted us at the door to the Oval Office. The topic soon turned topic soon turned to the Ukraine conflict, until our six-year-old daughter Felice spoke up. “Mr. President, do you President, do you have a dog?” “I have two dogs, and you?” “No, but I’d like to have but I’d like to have one.” He looked at one.” He looked at me. “Mr. President, me. “Mr. President, this question is the topic of difficult negotiations.” We winked at each other. “Felice, if you get a dog, you have to pick up his poop and take him for walks.” But the little one held her ground. “Mr. President, I promise to take the dog for walks, but I won’t pick up his poop. Too yucky.” Our daughter ended up winning the negotiations – on all counts. The am- bassador takes the dog for walks and picks up his poop. Just like the president willed it should be. Photo: private a i l o t o F / v e y a g o m o p : : n o i t a r t s u l l I Michael Grau, Ambassador to Ivory Coast Field of study: Law Years: 1979 – 1982 1979 – 1982 My encounter was with Manfred Brockmann, long- Brockmann, long- time provost of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Russian Far East. His vital- Far East. His vital- ity and faith in God have the pow- God have the pow- er to convince even nonbelievers. even nonbelievers. He breathed new life into the parish life into the parish of the neo-Gothic St. Paul’s Church in Vladivostok, which had previously been misused as an army museum, provides spiritual guidance even in the most remote settlements of Magadan, plays and com- poses for violin, goes ice swimming in the Paciﬁ c, and is always ready to help in all situations. We still get the parish newsletter, long after our departure from Siberia in 2006. When one has left one’s alma mater only possessing the tools of the trade, such encounters with one’s better self in strange places are fulﬁ lling and encouraging. These people do not stand in the limelight; they share their riches with others. Photo: private

20 P O R T R A I T “A Direct Relation to People” The pharmaceutical manager and adjunct professor Hagen Pfundner seeks interaction with students Prof. Dr. Hagen Pfundner knew from the beginning of his time as a student of pharmacy that he didn’t want to be- come a practicing pharmacist. He set his sights initially on a career in research, but then he ended up working in the pharmaceutical industry, where he could combine research with business acumen. Since 2006 he has pulled the strings as managing director at Roche Pharma AG in Grenzach-Wylen. The company has succeeded during his time at the helm in developing many groundbreaking new drugs. The manager is always guided in his work by the question of how he can help make people’s lives better. Hagen Pfundner still regards it as a stroke of luck today that he decided to study pharmacy in Freiburg. He thinks back fondly on the small row house in the Mooswald neighborhood he shared with a classmate. He is still in contact with that classmate today, and also with his former landlord. He also remembers the conditions for studying as being ideal. “There were 40 pharmacy students in my graduating class, and we all knew each other. I really appreciated that,” he says. His 30th class reunion is just around the corner. “70 percent of my former classmates still come to the re- unions today,” he remarks. He found his dissertation supervisor in Freiburg as well, Prof. Dr. Bernd Clement, whom he followed to Marburg after completing his degree. “He told me he would take me on as a doctoral candidate if I got top grades on my final exams.” He passed the test: Pfundner wrote his doctoral dissertation on drug metabolism, in the field of chemistry of antibodies. “Funda- mental research is important, but the key point for me was that the topic had a direct relation to people,” he says. His research also led to a better under- standing of how to tailor dosages to the individual patient. Hagen Pfundner regards it as a stroke of luck that he decided to study pharmacy in Freiburg. Photo: Roche Pfundner began his career at the pharmaceutical corporation Hoffmann- La Roche Germany right after finishing his doctorate, then he moved on to a po- sition in Switzerland. Following stints in Canada, Sweden, and again in Switzer- land, he returned to Germany in 2006 and accepted the post of managing di- rector at Roche Pharma AG. “In my 11 years in Germany, we have opened up new areas of treatment, for instance in the areas of oncology and autoimmune diseases,” he says. The issue of how innovations find their way into the com- pany is crucial for Pfundner. Partnerships with research institutes are absolutely essential. “I’ve spent a lot of time giving talks and building up networks at univer- sities, also in Freiburg,” he says. And so it happened the University of Freiburg offered him an adjunct profes- sorship in 2017, which Pfundner accepted upon careful consideration. He has vivid memories of the first class session he taught in the “Academia Meets Industry” lecture series. “The temperature outside was 36 degrees Celsius, but still there were 300 students in the lecture hall,” he says with a grin. He was impressed by the students’ motivation and receptive- ness. “We had a very open discussion about ethical issues and controversial topics facing the pharmaceutical industry,” says Pfundner. It is important for him to give the students an idea of what it means to work in the industrial sector from an unbiased perspective. that On the other hand, he also wants to learn something himself from discussions with young students. He has always given careful thought to the ethical issues inherent in his area of work. “This field of tension is a part of my life, and I ask myself in all situations: What is the larger context of this issue, and can I justify my stance on it?” he says. Pfundner lives with his family in Lörrach, but he also has a close affinity to Berlin, “an exciting and crazy town.” Since he is closely involved in professional associa- tion work, most of which requires him to be in Berlin, his family has a second home there. When his schedule allows for it, he enjoys the diverse cultural offerings of the colorful metropolis. Petra Völzing

Rector Hans-Jochen Schiewer appoints Lya Friedrich Pfeifer as an honorary senator. Photo: Patrick Seeger Alumni Network uni‘alumni 2018 21 MY RECIPE: HANS-ALBERT STECHL “Soul food” from France Fields of study: Law, Sociology Period of study: 1968–1973 Current position: Attorney, chair of the administrative board of the Südwestfunk broadcast- ing corporation, and author of numer- ous columns and cookbooks My hunger was great, my budget small, and my interest in France enormous even during my time as a student. Where did you satisfy your hunger along the endless routes nationales on the long way from Freiburg straight through our neighboring country to the Atlantic or Mediterranean coast? At the “Les Routiers” restaurants, where else? At those legendary roadside taverns where you knew that more truck drivers parked outside meant better cooking. And the prices were reasonable to boot. There was steak frites with a ballon rouge ordinaire—a culinary revelation for a law student born in the Black Forest in 1949. What they also had was hachis parmentier. It consists of ground meat spread over a fireproof dish, covered with a thick layer of mashed potatoes, sprinkled with cheese, and then browned in the oven. The term “soul food” was unknown at the time, but I sensed it: A dish that A LU M N I CLU B N O R T H A M E R I CA Transatlantic Friendship The fundraising campaign organized by the Alumni Club North America and the University of Freiburg Liaison Oﬃ ce in New York has notched up a great success: The Max Kade Foundation has agreed to provide 600,000 US dollars to ﬁ nance the renovation and expansion of the University College Freiburg’s (UCF) two lecture halls in the Old University. Headquartered in New York, the Max Kade Foundation fosters academic exchange between the US and Ger- man-speaking countries. What Dr. Lya Friedrich Pfeifer, president of the foun- dation since 2003, ﬁ nds fascinating about the UCF and its English-taught bachelor’s program in Liberal Arts and Sciences is the way it combines “com- prehensive German training with the possibility of an academic specializa- tion in ﬁ elds for which Freiburg is known and which qualify the students for a wide variety of professional activities.” She sees the liberal arts model common in the Anglo-Saxon world as providing a bridge of understanding between the countries. “There is no better way to achieve international understanding than to learn with and from each other.” In September 2017 the University of Freiburg appointed Lya Friedrich Pfeifer as an honorary senator. The distinction acknowledges her outstanding personal commitment on behalf of the UCF as well as her longstanding support of German-American relations and the students of the University of Freiburg through the Max Kade Foundation. Although she is not an alumna herself, Lya Friedrich Pfeifer is one of the promi- nent members of the Alumni Club North America and is actively involved in the “Friends of Freiburg University” network. Markus Lemmens French food for the soul: Hachis parmentier. Photo: private is so hearty and gives you a lasting feeling of pleasurable satiation will always be popular. I liked eating it throughout all my years as a student. There was no less expen- sive and simpler way of cooking for all of your roommates while at the same time garnering the highest possible praise. And I still like eating it today. Hans-Albert Stechl in action. Photo: private It is of course permitted to substitute finer products for the traditional basis of ground meat. Plus, the satiating layer of mashed potatoes can be made thinner in favor of the fine lower layer. For example, thick slices of monkfish under a slim layer of mashed potatoes tastes delicious. But the basic recipe is always the same: You butter a fireproof dish. You spread whatever you have an appetite for evenly over the bottom: well-seasoned ground meat, finely cut leftover roast, pieces of fish, a vegetable potpourri. Then you top it with a thicker or thinner layer of mashed potatoes and grated cheese. You bake it in the oven for a half an hour at 200 degrees Celsius, turning on the grill towards the end. Make a salad to go with it, and you’re ready to eat!

22 The infrastructure needs to be sufficient everywhere: Medical Director Friedhelm Beyersdorf. Photo: Medical Center – University of Freiburg I NT E RV I E W “Striving To Become the Number One in Germany” Friedholm Beyersdorf has ambitious goals for the University Heart Center Freiburg–Bad Krozingen P rof. Dr. Friedhelm Beyersdorf was the ﬁ rst surgeon in Freiburg to transplant a heart, the first in Baden-Württemberg to perform a heart–lung transplant, and the first in Germany to implant the per- manent artificial heart “Jarvik 2000” into a patient. He is the medical director of the University Heart Center Freiburg– Bad Krozingen (UHZ), which was founded in 2012 as the result of a fusion between the Heart Center at the Freiburg University Medical Center and the Heart Center Bad Krozingen. The highly decorated heart surgeon spoke with Jürgen Schickinger about professional and medical challenges as well as his private plans. uni’alumni: Mr. Beyersdorf, what are the special strengths of the UHZ? What can it do better than other heart centers? have an outstanding reputation. Another indication of this is that more and more good specialists are coming to work here. What goals do you have for the UHZ? I want us to become the number one in Germany. I want people to say that the nation’s most important facility for treating cardiovascular diseases is in Freiburg–Bad Krozingen. We have the potential, but it is only possible to enhance quality and efficiency by increasing your size. That’s why a concentration of hos- pitals is happening at the moment. The UHZ also needs to establish larger net- works and cooperate very closely with the university. Even more important is an improvement of our infrastructure. Where are the problems? Friedhelm Beyersdorf: We offer the entire range of treatments for cardiovas- cular diseases – for all patients, from newborn babies to centenarians. That is unusual! The UHZ is one of the three largest and best heart centers in Germany. We are top ranked in many areas and In the past 25 years, nothing has been accomplished in Freiburg as far as infra- structure is concerned, because we re- ceive too little support from the State of Baden-Württemberg. Our old surgery building doesn’t even have air condition- ing. We even still have patient rooms without bathrooms. The situation has improved with our new surgery building in Bad Krozingen. However, the question of where patients go is often, apart from medical considerations, a matter of where there are free beds. So we need to have sufficient infrastructure everywhere. Only then can we improve our position and meet the increasing demands. What is leading to increasing demands? Cardiovascular diseases are the most common cause of death and are be- coming even more prevalent. We are getting more patients, and they are sicker. It used to be that people died of a heart attack at 60. Today people are living longer thanks to medical advances but are also developing diseases like Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and kidney problems, some- times in combination. Pretreatments, operations, and aftercare involve more effort and expense. At the same time, the time patients are staying at the hos- pital is getting shorter and shorter. The insurance companies are paying less. This has led to gaps in several areas.

University News uni‘alumni 2018 23 The situation with personnel is also a cause for concern. have less and less doctors and nurses? At some point things come to a head. Do you have any great ambitions outside of medicine? Due to the great strain? What structural tasks are you responsible for? The strain has increased immensely, but we have a lot of luck with our employees. They are very motivated and are willing to put in a lot of effort. A large part of the UHZ’s quality is thanks to them. However, our personnel often has to deal with problems in their working environment, due to the miserable infra- structure. That is an unnecessary addi- tional burden. To make matters worse, new regulatory requirements are con- stantly being introduced. Now every department needs representatives for fire, x-rays, and so on. In principle, that is alright – we want to do things better and better. However, our employees are sometimes no longer able to shoulder the great amount of work any more, since funding has not increased in spite of the increased requirements – on the contrary, it has even decreased. That prevents us from creating more posi- tions. Part-time work is on the rise. But who is supposed to take on the tasks if we I have to keep operations running, which involves things like creating a clear hospital structure for our employees. We need to set up their working environ- ment in such a way that they enjoy working. They need to receive further training. We all need to be open to new requirements and up to the task of meeting them. Another of my responsi- bilities is to ensure that the staff does not get pessimistic. How do you keep your own heart healthy with all of these responsibilities? I try to keep my daily work routine – and that of my employees – as stress-free as possible. I want to motivate them but not place undue pressure on them. My greatest source of relaxation is my family. It is important for me to spend a lot of time with them. Ten years ago I was in the Himalayas in Nepal with four colleagues. We spent a night at an altitude of over 5000 meters and climbed summits of up to 6100 meters, all in a three-week vacation. The moun- tains, the altitude, the culture – that is wonderful and fascinating. I would love to travel to the Himalayas again. UNIVERSIT Y HEART CENTER The University Heart Center Freiburg–Bad Krozingen (UHZ) is the result of a fusion between the Heart Center at the Medical Center – University of Freiburg and the Heart Center Bad Krozingen. They are equal partners in UHZ GmbH, which completed its first large-scale project in 2015: the construction of a new heart and vascular surgery building in Bad Krozingen. The UHZ has a total of 377 beds. In 2016 the UHZ treated more than 22,000 inpatients and around 44,000 outpatients. The UHZ has approximately 1600 employees, including around 260 doctors and 670 nurses. » www.herzzentrum.de M Y T W E E T: R A LF R ES K I Photo: Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies Mosses on the Web In the Antarctic, where freezing temperatures, poor soil quality, and a lack of moisture and sunlight make it very difficult for other plants to survive, there are hundreds of different moss species. How they cope with these conditions and what influence climate change will have on the plant life of the polar region are among the questions the biologist Prof. Dr. Ralf Reski inves- tigates in his research. He has been studying the metabolism and the func- tions of mosses for more than 30 years, and the results of his research are freely available on his Twitter channel “ReskiLab.” As mosses spread throughout the primeval continent Pangaea 450 million years ago, they raised the oxygen con- tent in the atmosphere and reduced Reski began using the social media service Twitter to exchange ideas with colleagues in 2009. He now has more than 2200 followers. He uses the platform not just as a “loudspeaker,” as he terms it, but also to gather informa- tion for his research. “It allows me to learn of new scientific methods or find- ings very quickly.” Another intention of his tweets is to bring out the personal side of his research, which is why he also contributes to political discussions and comments on media phenomena. “It is my responsibility not just to talk about science but also to show who is behind it.” Sonja Seidel » https://twitter.com/reskilab the carbon dioxide content, thus estab- lishing the conditions for human and animal life. Since these times, the form of these plants has hardly changed at all. Reski uses the moss species Physcomitrella patens as a model organism to reconstruct the evolution of rooted plants initiated by moss. At the start of 2017 he entered into a partner- ship with the Korea Polar Research Institute in South Korea that has the goal of understanding previously unknown survival strategies of mosses in inhospi- table regions like the Antarctic.

24 Elisabeth Cheauré sees the new Zwetajewa Center for Russian Literature as the crowning achievement of her career at the University of Freiburg. Photo: Marie-Elisabeth Weiher woman like her, but the tiny Catholic village she grew up in attempted to impose its conservative views about women on her as well. “It took a lot of effort to free myself from that.” Personally Affected The fact that gender research became her second area of specialization is also a result of her having been “personally affected” by the topic. She has started up a gender studies degree program, supervised mentoring programs for young female researchers, and promoted the idea of gender equality as women’s rep- resentative, first at her faculty and then for the university as a whole. One can hardly imagine a gender equality repre- sentative being regarded today as a “nuisance,” as she was in the beginning. Elisabeth Cheauré was “incredibly glad” to receive the Order of Merit of the State of Baden-Württemberg from Minister President Winfried Kretschmann in 2014 as “political recognition for my gender equality work.” When the university elected a new rector in 2008, Elisabeth Cheauré was also on the ballot (like in 2003), because she felt that it was “not a bad idea” to have a women at the helm for once after 550 years. She was not elected. Instead of going off in a corner somewhere to sulk, however, she says that she then re-intensified her work for the university, for instance as head of the “Leisure” collaborative research center. And she accomplished all of this “not in spite of but thanks to my children,” says Cheauré. “They have brought me forward in life.” She considers it a great privilege to have been able to become a mother one more time at the age of 45. Taped to her laptop is a tattered children’s drawing of a guardian angel – a gift from her now 18-year-old daughter. Anita Rüffer » www.zwetajewa-zentrum.de P O R T R A I T A Woman of the World The Slavic studies professor Elisabeth Cheauré is at home in three countries and in several academic fields O n this fall day, Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Cheauré is sitting in her cozily fur- nished attic office at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures putting the final touches on the program for the “Russian Culture Days,” which is to begin shortly. It is a huge project, but she is used to these things. If one takes the time to browse through her curriculum vitae, one will ﬁ nd the names of numerous institutes, centers, and research project in which the woman with the short brown hair served as a driving force. It isn’t just cozy attics that she floods with her energy. One of her sons reportedly once warned a friend: “Never say you’re bored. My mom always thinks of some- thing to do.” The latest project she has initiated in Freiburg is the Zwetajewa Center for Russian Culture – which she refers to as “the crowning achievement of my career at the University of Freiburg.” In Moscow at Age 14 She has felt drawn to Russian culture since her school years. She was in Moscow for the first time at the age of 14, to take a language course. Her parents found it good for someone to understand the language of the “enemy” in the times of the Cold War. After all, one of her grandfathers had – according to a family story – managed to keep Russian soldiers from looting in his village at the end of the Second World War thanks to his Russian language skills. He had cultivated an affinity for Russian culture during his time as a Russian prisoner of war after the First World War. He must have passed on something of this affinity to his grand- daughter. And now, after the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine, the time is again ripe for a cultural mediator like her, with professorial qualification in Slavic studies and a doctorate in German studies, who can communicate an image of Russia in society that goes beyond mere idealization or demonization. The fact that she succeeded in launch- ing a research training program with the University of Moscow for joint doctoral training speaks for itself. The attentive listener isn’t taken in long by her – married – French name. Her soft intonation betrays her immedi- ately as an Austrian. Along with Austria and Germany, Russia is one of her three homelands, as she says. Elisabeth Cheauré accepted a professorship in Freiburg in 1990, at the age of 35. She actually wanted to study medicine, she reveals, “but people talked me out of it.” It is difficult to imagine in the case of a

University News uni‘alumni 2018 25 P O R T R A I T No Fear of Long Distances Dieter Speck often needs patience as director of the University Archive I f Prof. Dr. Dieter Speck had listened to his parents, he would presumably not have become what he is today – director of the University Archive and the University Museum of the University of Freiburg. “Learn a proper profession!” is what they told him. His father was an accountant, his mother a tailor, and he a boy who spent afternoons losing himself in Gustav Schwab’s Legends of Classical Antiquity, was determined to learn Latin, and went alone to the various sections of the Badisches Landesmuseum in his hometown of Karlsruhe. His parents found his behavior odd, remembers Speck. No matter. He studied Protestant theology and history, first on a teacher education track. He did not enter the teaching profession, however, but instead wrote a doctoral dissertation on regional history. That of course also involved doing archival research. He realized quickly: “That’s where I want to stay.” He completed his practical training at the Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe, also taking classes at the Archives School Marburg. In 1991 he took on the newly created post of chief archivist at the University of Freiburg. In 2004 he additionally became director of the university museum, the Uniseum, which illuminates the history of the university. A 100-Year Backlog Why archives? Due to a love of order? He says he is very pedantic when it comes to his profession, but not privately: “At home I tend to let things heap up.” Speck sees himself as a generalist. He likes constantly delving into new subject areas, sifting through material, system- atizing. Before he took over as director of the University Archive, it had been managed by various professors along- side their regular duties. No one had bothered organizing the administrative documents in decades. As a result, he had to start by clearing a more than 100-year backlog. Even as late as the mid 1990s, 500 meters of shelf space a year passed through the hands of the archive’s employees – and had to be sorted, indexed, and preserved. “It was brutal,” says Speck. Today the archive processes only around 130 meters of shelf space a year. transport Unlike other universities, the Univer- sity of Freiburg does not have a central facility for its archive. This complicates the work, because it involves having a courier files back and forth daily between the archive’s three facilities in Collegiate Building I, in the Herder Building, and on Hebelstraße. It also means more work for the archivists, because they are the ones who have to handle the boxes of records sent from one facility to another. High Ceiling Loads The entire University Archive encom- passes seven and a half kilometers of shelf space. That might sound harmless, but it is much too much weight for a nor- mal office building to support. Paper is heavy. “We in the archive can take a ceiling load of one and a half tons per square meter. The maximum ceiling load in a regular office building is only around 250 kilograms per square meter.” Speck is a doer, even when things take a while to get done. He spent a full 15 years integrating a single collection of records from the Rectorate into the holdings of the University Archive. Perhaps the ability to wait is typical of archivists. “We think in other temporal categories.” But perhaps it is more a personal ability of Speck himself, who enjoys swinging into the saddle of his racing bike and riding through the Alps or the Pyrenees in his free time. He is not afraid of long distances. On the contrary: He finds them stimulating. Nearly all of the holdings at the University Archive have been indexed. If a document can be viewed, then it has also been indexed and is not just lying around in the form of a dusty bundle of paper. Speck has digitalized whatever he could. The database has been expanded Pedant by profession: Dieter Speck is director of the University Archive and the University Museum. Photo: Klaus Polkowski continually and now includes around 600,000 records. The 60-year-old is now working on the planned integration of seven university archives in Baden- Württemberg, which will involve entering all of their records into a common data- base. In July 2017 the university received 350,000 euros in state funding for the project, most of which will be invested in two new positions. “That was one of my remaining professional goals,” says Speck. He has reached it, at least at an organizational level. Now all that remains is the doing, and Speck knows how to get things done. Stephanie Streif » www.uniarchiv-freiburg.de

26 I NT E RV I E W Contributing to Progress Margit Zacharias supports the transfer of research findings Margit Zacharias and her team have developed an overall concept for strengthening the culture of entrepreneurship at the University of Freiburg. Photo: Patrick Seeger A s a researcher Prof. Dr. Margit Zacha- rias deals with materials with nano- structures that give them new properties, and as vice president for innovation and technology transfer she sees to it that scientific findings have an impact on society. Her second term as vice presi- dent began on October 2017. Nicolas Scherger asked her about her goals. uni’alumni: Prof. Dr. Zacharias, the term “transfer” is very popular at the moment. What does it involve? Margit Zacharias: Research at a univer- sity should always also make a contribu- tion to social and technological progress. We have a responsibility to transfer our knowledge to society. This involves not just technology transfer, although that is an important part of it, but also the task of communicating scientific findings and transferring them to society, cultural in- stitutions, trade and industry, and poli- tics. Formats we currently have for this task include our Studium Generale pro- gram, our “Freiburg Horizons” lecture series, or the Freiburg Science Fair. of “hidden champions,” unknown world market leaders – in close collaboration with all relevant actors in the city and the region. We aim to develop coherent strategies for enabling students and re- searchers to start their own businesses. How do you plan to accomplish that? We have developed an overall concept under the term “Entrepreneurship Center.” First of all, it includes teaching and con- tinuing education: The people don’t just need knowledge about their innovation; they also need knowledge about how to implement their business idea. We want to teach them that knowledge from the undergraduate level on. Second, we need scouting, coaching, and utilization advising so that we can identify ideas that can be translated into a patent or a startup early on. Third, we plan to offer entrepreneurship advising and business development support: Together with the University Medical Center we run Cam- pus Technologies Freiburg (CTF GmbH), through which we participate in startups and help them register for patents in return. What do you plan to tackle in your second term as vice president? According to rankings, the Univer- sity of Freiburg is particularly strong in the area of innovation. Energy as part of the “EXIST – University- Based Start-Ups” program have improved their position on the relevant rankings. For example, we were listed in the top quarter among German universities for the first time in the most recent edition of the Stifterverband’s “Start-Up Radar” and received special mention as a dynamic rising star in this area. Such results confirm that we have made headway on the culture of entrepreneur- ship in the past years. What role can alumni play in the task of building bridges between research and society? We have a lively culture of entrepreneur- ship at the university, but we don’t have a professorship on the topic yet. I could imagine instead establishing a named professorship: An existing chair that is involved in questions of entrepreneur- ship, for instance in economics, engi- neering, or law, could be named after a donor and be endowed with additional funds – generally 100,000 euros a year for ten years in such cases. That would enable us to develop entrepreneurship projects in research, teaching, and con- tinuing education systematically and take them to a new level. We are in the running for the Excellence Strategy competition, and one of my goals is to help initiate the next generation All universities receiving funding from the Federal Ministry of Economic Aﬀ airs and » www.uni-freiburg.de/innovation

University News uni‘alumni 2018 27 CO NT I N U I N G E D U CAT I O N: I NT E LL I G E NT E M B E D D E D M I CRO SYST E M S Startup Financing for Industry 4.0 The combination of industrial produc- tion and modern information and com- munication technology, often termed “industry 4.0,” presents many companies with a wide range of new challenges. With the in-service continuing educa- tion program Intelligent Embedded Mi- crosystems (IEMS), the University of Freiburg has already been supporting specialists and managers from industry for ten years now. Originally planned as a regular master’s program, IEMS also began oﬀ ering certiﬁ - cate courses on specific topics in 2009. They generally run for one semester and provide more profound insight into the world of embedded systems. “In this way, companies also have the opportunity to react quickly and purposefully to market changes by providing their employees with additional qualifications,” explains Dr. Tobias Schubert, head of the contin- uing education program. “The range of topics includes everything from micro- systems design, machine learning, and software development methods to project management.” Whereas eligibility for admission to the full master’s program is limited to those with a bachelor’s degree in a related field and one year of work experience, anyone and everyone can enroll in the certificate courses. In order to take full advantage of the program, participants should have previously ac- quired technical know-how and basic skills in mathematics and computer science. Apart from one to three required class sessions, the certificate courses are designed to be completed without an on-campus phase. In addition, the course material is available in digital form at any time, allowing the participants to complete it at their convenience. Partici- pants are awarded a university certiﬁ cate for passing a final examination. Tobias Schubert is in charge of the continuing education program Intelligent Embedded Microsystems (IEMS), with which the University of Freiburg assists companies on digitalization issues. Photo: Patrick Seeger an attractive price in comparison to other oﬀ erings,” says Schubert. Besides, many employers are ready to pay part or all of the participation fee. Lars Kirchberg Participation in an individual certiﬁ cate course costs around 2000 euros. “That is » www.masteronline-iems.de FR E I BU RG N O B E L L AU R E AT ES: H E I N R I CH OT TO W I E L A N D The Best Years in Freiburg A native of Pforzheim, Heinrich Otto Wieland studied chemistry in Munich, Berlin, and Stuttgart and earned his PhD in 1901 in Munich. In 1921 Wieland switched from the Technical University of Munich to the University of Freiburg. He considered the four years he spent in Freiburg to be “among the best of my scientific career.” In this time he laid the foundation for his important work on the structural elucidation of the bile acids, a class of steroid that also in- cludes cholesterol and vitamin D, the sex hormones, and synthetic contraceptives. In 1927 Wieland, now a professor at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for his investigations of the constitution of the bile acids and related substances.” Due to the great value of his findings for the production of new drugs, he continued working on the bile acids, although the area avowedly bored him. In the years of National Socialism, Wieland concentrated most of his eﬀ orts on the development of drugs and the Heinrich Otto Wieland employed victims of political persecution during the period of Nazi rule. Photo: Universität Freiburg production of the ﬁ rst antibiotic, penicillin. He employed numerous scientists at his lab who had actually been expelled from the universities on account of the Nuremberg race laws. The idea was that they could take their examinations with him and have them legalized after the end of Nazi rule. The fact that his work was important for the war effort made Wieland immune to denunciation. In 1943 he hired lawyers for members of his department and testified in their favor in court. However, he didn’t succeed in preventing his student Hans Leipelt from being sentenced to death for distributing fliers of the “White Rose” resistance group or others from being sent to prison or concentration camps. Heinrich Otto Wieland died on 5 August 1957 in Starnberg, Upper Bavaria, at the age of 80. Martin Jost

28 The Rolling Stones collection includes The Rolling Stones collection includes numerous gems of popular culture and numerous gems of popular culture and music. music. Fotos: Max Orlich Campus Bulletin Bulletin Expanded Website, New Newsletters The home page of the University of Freiburg website has been trans- formed into a multimedia online maga- zine, including up-to-date information, background stories, and entertaining perspectives. It offers readers interest- ing, informative, and entertaining fea- tures and press releases on topics from all over the university – in texts, images, and videos. All content is available in German and English. The editorial articles presented on the home page are divided into six catego- ries. One newsletter per category keeps readers informed about newly posted articles. » www.uni-freiburg.de Newsletter subscriptions: » www.pr.uni-freiburg.de/newsletter The Rolling Stones in Freiburg The University of Freiburg’s Center for Popular Culture and Music (ZPKM) has acquired a collection that is likely one of a kind: The “Reinhold Karpp Rolling Stones Collection” encompasses more than 15,000 records, audio cassettes, and compact discs as well as a multitude of books, newspaper clippings, fan letters, and merchandising products ranging from baseball caps and toys to clocks, telephone cards, and a pinball machine. The family of the collector, who passed away in 2012, has placed the collection at the disposal of the ZPKM for an initial ten years. “It is quite valuable from a cultural history perspective, precisely because it doesn’t just include records but also these many objects of popular culture that may seem odd at first glance,” says Dr. Dr. Michael Fischer, managing director of the ZPKM. Evi Zemanek Wins Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize House of Literature Opens Evi Zemanek, junior professor for modern German literature and intermediality studies at the University of Freiburg, has received the 2017 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize. It is regarded as the most important award for early-career researchers in Germany. Zemanek was recognized for her comparative studies on European literature and her intermediality research focusing on the rela- tions between literature and visual art. In 2012 she received a grant to establish a research network called “Ethics and Aesthetics of Literary Represen- tations of Ecological Transformations.” On account of this network and further interdisciplinary and international joint projects she has initiated, she is seen as a pioneer of ecocriticism in Germany. Her most recent work focuses on the literary-artistic reception and popularization of ecological knowledge. Evi Zemanek gilt als Weg- bereiterin des „Ecocriticism“ in Deutschland. Photo: private The newly opened Freiburg House of Literature aims to encourage dialogue between cultural institutions, researchers, and citizens. It is located in rooms at the Old University, is operated by the association “Literatur Forum Südwest e.V.,” and will be developed into a center for literary expertise for the city and the region. “I’m absolutely certain that common topics and cooperation with faculties and university research centers, with student theater troupes, Freiburg cultural institutions, and national and international partners will open up enor- mous potential for all involved,” says Rector Prof. Dr. Hans-Jochen Schiewer.

University News uni‘alumni 2018 29 Center for Quantum Physics Nicolas Schoof erfreut zwei Ziegen mit einem Leckerbissen. Photo: Jürgen Gocke The Georg H. Endress foundation will provide up to ten million francs over the next ten years to support the “Quantum Science and Quantum Com- puting” project at the Universities of Basel and Freiburg. The new center of excellence under the umbrella of Eucor – The European Campus will consolidate the pioneering role of the two universities in quantum physics. This research area promises revolution- ary new technologies like the quantum computer – with far-reaching conse- quences industry and society. “Epoch-making advances in the experi- mental control and theoretical understanding of complex quantum systems are making it feasible to develop concrete applications – from new materials to big data,” says Prof. Dr. Andreas Buchleitner from the Uni- versity of Freiburg’s Institute of Physics. for the Wolfgang Kehr Starts New Foundation Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Kehr, former director of the Freiburg University Library (UB), has established a new foundation with an endowment of 150,000 euros. The annual proceeds will go to maintain the UB’s historical collections. Kehr served as director of the UB from 1967 to 1994. He has a close attachment to the historical collections: “When I took up my work in Freiburg, the collections of manuscripts and incunabula were in poor shape. We indexed them, restored them, and added printed books from the 16th century from the Upper Rhine cultural area,” says Kehr. “It is therefore to continue very supporting the future with a foundation.” these collections important for me in Sheep and Goats on Schlossberg There is a unique new park on Freiburg’s Schlossberg. It is roughly one and a half hectares in size, half of which is a meadow, the other half forested. In the summer months it will soon be the home of three sheep and ﬁve goats. In cooperation with the Continuing Education Academy of the German Caritas Association, which owns the land, the University of Freiburg’s Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources has launched a grazing project in the park. “The project not only combines research, teaching, and nature conservation but also creates a new outdoor adventure area for the guests of the Continuing Education Academy and all citizens of Freiburg and the region,” says Nicolas Schoof, the doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources responsible for initiating the project. Protecting Scholars at Risk The University of Freiburg has joined the “Scholars at Risk” network. This will involve inviting several research- ers threatened by war and political persecution in their native countries to come to Freiburg as visiting scholars each year. “Researchers in many coun- tries around the world are particularly at risk of suffering political repression on account of their critical views,” says Rector Prof. Dr. Hans-Jochen Schiewer. “We are taking on responsibility for colleagues at risk and making a clear statement concerning the non-negotia- bility of the freedom of research and teaching.” So far, the University of Freiburg has raised enough funding to invite three scholars at risk to Freiburg. Wolfgang Kehr is supporting the historical collections at the Freiburg University Library. Photo: Thomas Kunz

30 Fritz Keller, president of SC Freiburg, is looking forward to good neighborly relations with the university. Photo: Patrick Seeger I NT E RV I E W Building a New Home SC Freiburg President Fritz Keller is looking forward to a new stadium with an outstanding atmosphere and clear contours F ritz Keller, 60, really gets around. He works as a hotelier, a restaurateur, and a vintner and serves as president of the soccer club SC Freiburg, as a mem- ber of the supervisory board of the Ger- man Soccer League, and as a member of the University of Freiburg Advisory Council – to name just a few of the tasks and roles the busy man puts his heart and soul into. Alexander Ochs spoke with him about the mammoth project of building a new stadium for SC Freiburg. uni’alumni: Mr. Keller, are there parallels between making wine and building a stadium? This must be new territory for you. Fritz Keller: Well, I do know how to build things. We’ve already done that at our winery in Vogtsburg-Oberbergen (laughs). Both projects are designed to be sustainable, and you have to think in historical dimensions. Only if you do that can you have visions and design something that is still good in ten or twenty years. The old saying “form follows function” has a lot of significance for me. We want to build a new home at the sta- dium – and in doing so, we don’t want to lose touch with where we come from, namely the Schwarzwaldstadion with its outstanding atmosphere. And it isn’t an arena but rectangular, just like a soccer field. So why should I build an oval around it? The idea is to get the specta- tors as close as possible to the action on the field. Many new stadiums are built with a facade around them. But why? It has no function. The group of architects listened closely to us devel- opers and designed a stadium that is marked by a wonderful simplicity and is in my opinion individual and timeless. Besides, up to now we have been a poor host, literally leaving our visiting fans standing in the rain in the current stadium. Do you understand critics who dismiss the rectangular plan by HPP Architects as conservative or boring? Of course. Art nouveau fans also find Bauhaus buildings boring. Fans of music in C major find minimal music or jazz boring. We don’t need a stadium that looks like an inflatable raft and then in- cludes all manner of colors, sweeping lines, and wave shapes. In Freiburg we are getting great value for our money with this stadium. I find that it has very clear contours, and with a bit of imagi- nation you can make out the firs and spruces of the Black Forest in the stabi- lizer bars. New stadium, new neighborhood: What does that mean to you? We are proud of our great university and looking forward to moving in next to the Faculty of Engineering and the new building of the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques (IPM), whose cornerstone ceremony I had the pleasure of attending. You know, SC Freiburg is specialized in training young soccer players, and several members of our management staff – like our head coach or our marketing director – stud- ied at the University of Freiburg. We will be happy to keep holding the orientation day the new SC stadium. With all due modesty, the SC and the university are part of the same brand. Let me add something for the students in conclusion: My years abroad, especially in France, had a very strong influence on me. I can only recommend for everyone to broaden their horizons. for beginning students at SC FREIBURG’S NEW STADIUM The new stadium will be built in “Wolfs- winkel,” a plot next to the airfield and the convention center. It will accommo- date the club’s offices and will be the home of its professional and U23 teams. It will hold 34,700 spectators, a third of them on terraces. A special feature will be the home stand on the south side, which will consist of a single terrace and serve as a “red and white wall” – similar to the “yellow wall” at Borussia Dort- mund’s stadium. It will cost 76 million euros to build. It is scheduled for com- pletion in 2020.

City Life uni‘alumni 2018 31 SCH LO S S B E RG Nice View The best view of Freiburg can now be enjoyed again: Following two years of renovations costing around 200,000 eu- ros, the observation tower on Freiburg’s Schlossberg is now again open for visitors. Erected in 2002, the tower was closed in May 2015 because its six Douglas ﬁ r support beams were infested with fungi and insects to the point where they were unable to be saved. It was no longer possible to ensure the safety of visitors to the tower. The new 33-meter- long beams are made of steel for more durability. The renovation was contro- versial: Hubert Horbach, the architect of the Schlossberg Tower, referred to his copyright and demanded that the sup- port beams be made of treated wood. The City of Freiburg argued that steel was a more permanent and cost-eﬃ cient K RO N E N B RÜ CK E New Bridge for Trams One of the oldest bridges in Freiburg, the Kronenbrücke, is being rebuilt to support trams. The decision to run a new tram line from Kronenstraße to the city center via Kronenbrücke and Werthmannstraße was made many years ago, but then technical studies revealed that the old bridge was not strong enough to support the weight of trams. Alternative proposals – such as building an additional bridge over the oval-shaped gap between the two sides of the bridge, known popularly as the “elephant’s toilet” – were shot down by negative expert opinions from civil engi- neers. Moreover, the bridge was in dire need of repair, although it had already been repaired once in the 1960s. In the end, it was decided that the most eco- nomical solution would be to tear down the bridge entirely and build a new one. solution and prevailed with this position. Horbach announced his intention to take legal action against the decision. The new steel support beams are not built to last for all eternity: Like most steel constructions of this kind, they are protected by a multilayer zinc coating. Such coatings grow thinner over time and eventually wear off entirely from constant exposure to the elements. How long this takes depends on the initial strength of the coating. Zinc corrodes naturally at a rate of 0.5 to 0.8 micro- understand and allow the bridge to be smaller. The bridge will still have a gap in the middle, but it will be more rectan- gular than oval in shape and much small- er than the old one. It will also provide better lighting conditions for pedestrians and cyclists passing under the bridge. Moreover, a straight bridge is simpler to construct than an oval-shaped bridge. The bridge has lost its characteristic shape: The egg-shaped street layout has been replaced by a straight one. According to the City of Freiburg, this layout will be easier for road users to A temporary bridge was installed east of the Kronenbrücke, allowing pedestri- ans and cyclists to cross the river during the construction phase. The new bridge is The beams supporting the observation tower on Schlossberg are now made of steel instead of wood. Photo: Thomas Kunz meters per year in the Freiburg region. The zinc coating protecting the pylons of the Schlossberg Tower is 85 microme- ters thick. They should therefore be pro- tected for an estimated 100 to 170 years. They are also resistant to wind: Accord- ing to statistical calculations the tower should be able to withstand storms with force 12 winds – that would be enough to resist a storm like Lothar, which caused severe damages in Western and Central Europe in 1999. Visitors can easily decide for them- selves whether the new tower lives up to its promise: The walk from Kanonen- platz to the Schlossberg Tower takes a mere 15 minutes. Claudia Füßler The bridge has lost its characteristic shape. Photo: Thomas Kunz scheduled for completion in late 2018, half a year later than originally planned. The delay had two reasons: A high-pressure gas pipeline in the bed of the Dreisam ﬁ rst had to be secured, and the planners originally miscalculated the capacity of the bridge at 1100 instead of 1800 cubic meters. The new bridge will be 40 by 40 meters in size and will not be made of pre-stressed concrete like its predecessor but of reinforced concrete with a steel substructure with cast steel nodes. Claudia Füßler

32 City Life uni'alumni 2018 Children cool down in the fountains. Researchers explain how airborne wind energy systems work during a public demonstration. On the go: Skaters perform their tricks on the square. M E E T M E I N FR E I BU RG ... Freiburg’s New Center Wooden benches, platforms made of granite blocks, a fountain, and a pool that traces the ground plan of the synagogue that stood here until it was destroyed in 1938: The redesigned Platz der Alten Synagoge now forms an urban center between the collegiate buildings, the University Library, and the Municipal Theater. Thomas Kunz captured scenes showing how people use the new square with his camera.

34 Calendar 2018 Dies Universitatis Wednesday, 13 June 2018, 7:15 p.m. Paulussaal, Dreisamstraße 3, 79098 Freiburg Alumni Meeting Friday, 13 July, to Sunday, 15 July 2018 University of Freiburg and City of Freiburg Beginning Student Day with “Market of Possibilities” Alumni Meeting 2016: Tour of the Univer- sity Library Photo: Thomas Kunz Friday, 12 October 2018, 2 p.m. Schwarzwald-Stadion Schwarzwaldstraße 193, 79117 Freiburg Official Opening of the Academic Year Wednesday, 17 October 2018, 10:15 a.m. Audimax, Collegiate Building II, Platz der Alten Synagoge, 79098 Freiburg Alumni Services Newsletter » www.alumni.uni-freiburg.de/service/newsletter Blog » http://alumni-blog.uni-freiburg.de Social Networks » www.alumni.uni-freiburg.de/service/socialnetworks Alumni-Clubs » www.alumni.uni-freiburg.de/alumni_netzwerk Continuing Education Freiburg Academy of Continuing Education: » www.weiterbildung.uni-freiburg.de Studium generale: » www.studiumgenerale.uni-freiburg.de Language Teaching Center: » www.sli.uni-freiburg.de University Library » www.ub.uni-freiburg.de University House on Schauinsland » www.pr.uni-freiburg.de/go/uni-haus Contact Alumni Office Haus “Zur Lieben Hand,” Löwenstraße 16, 79098 Freiburg Phone: +49 (0)761/203-4283, Email: alumni@uni-freiburg.de And don’t forget to visit us at our website: » www.alumni.uni-freiburg.de Opening of the Academic Year 2017/18 Photo: Patrick Seeger Freiburg University Library Photo: Sandra Meyndt Haus “Zur Lieben Hand” Photo: Thomas Kunz

Masthead uni’alumni, the magazine for former students of the University of Freiburg, is published once a year. Publisher Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, der Rektor, Prof. Dr. Hans-Jochen Schiewer Publisher Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Rector Prof. Dr. Hans-Jochen Schiewer Responsible for Content Rudolf-Werner Dreier, Director of the Oﬃ ce of Public Relations Editorial Staﬀ Verena Adt (Head Editor) Dr. Cornelia Staeves Nicolas Scherger Rimma Gerenstein Sonja Seidel Address of Editorial Staﬀ Presse- und Öﬀ entlichkeitsarbeit Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Fahnenbergplatz, D-79085 Freiburg Phone: +49 (0)761 203-4229 Fax: +49 (0)761 203-4288 Email: unialumni@pr.uni-freiburg.de Print Run 6,000 copies English Translation Dr. David Heyde Cover Photos Anke Jacob, Amin Akhtar, Medical Center – University of Freiburg Design, Layout, Production Kathrin Jachmann Advertisements Gregor Kroschel Phone: +49 (0)761/203-4986 Email: gregor.kroschel@zv.uni-freiburg.de Printing and Production Burger Druck, Waldkirch Distribution Oﬃ ce of Public Relations Yearly Subscription Rate 4 euros uni’alumni is available free of charge for members of Alumni Freiburg e. V. ISSN 2193-5572 This magazine was printed climate neutrally on 100-percent recycled paper. The paper is certiﬁ ed with the “Blue Angel” environmental seal. © Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. All rights reserved. Reproduction, also of excerpts, only with permission from the editors. Articles indicating the author’s name do not necessarily reﬂ ect the opinions of the publisher or the editors. The editors reserve the right to edit or abridge articles sent in by contributors. uni’alumni is available online at www.alumni.uni-freiburg.de/magazin