Issue 15 / January 2020
Editorial
by Katharina Wiedemann
They say the coffee machine in the Wissenschaftskolleg’s restaurant was deliberately placed in such an unfavorable not to mention impractical location – at the far end of the buffet counter and adjacent a pillar – so that any-one seeking to fill their cup is forced to traverse a narrow passage. And the machine is exceedingly slow. Not just precious seconds but minutes can elapse as the beans are ground and dripped into the cup and then, assuming you have superhuman patience, waiting for the milk to be added as the machine goes through its gyrations accom-panied by that strangulated cacophony known to all espresso contraptions. But our sluggish coffee dispenser and its narrow confines are ideal for a place like the Wis-
senschaftskolleg where almost any means are legitimate in bringing people together in conversation, and the human traffic jams which form here would in fact seem to be part of some master plan.
This same coffee machine creates not only an occasion for interchange but solitary visits. If their research, writing or composing is making no headway then many Fellows find it helpful to briefly abandon their desk for a tea or coffee, maybe taking a detour through the garden or
wandering through the main building in search of some fortuitous human contact.
The photos in this fifteenth edition of Köpfe und Ideen show us just such moments, which, of course, can be observed in every class of Fellows, not just the current one –the research projects described in this issue, though, are wholly unique. You will find portraits of a Chinese literary scholar and an American reproductive scientist as well as interviews with a German expert in civil law, an Iraqi specialist in constitutional law, and a Swiss-German computational social scientist. The quotidian life of a Fellow is a pattern of interchange
and retreat, communication and self-chosen isolation –like an inofficial rhythm of the Wissenschaftskolleg running smoothly in the background like a gently purring engine. But in the second half of the academic year 2019/2020 this workaday rhythm came to an abrupt halt.
Scholarly and social life were necessarily relegated to the virtual world or the four walls of each Fellow’s apartment. At the Wissenschaftskolleg an unaccustomed and uncanny quiet descended while the disquiet of our people in the face of an imponderable situation was increasingly palpable. But life at the Wissenschaftskolleg continues, not just through the research of Fellows in their sequestered rooms but in the institute’s pursuit of collective thought. The chorus of learned voices now hums through the wires of diverse conference systems, and the required social distancing luckily takes only the form of physical distancing.
Leaving only the coffee machine quite lonely.