At First

January 31

Many of you are familiar with our magazine Köpfe und Ideen. It appears annually, usually in the early summer. The forthcoming issue will be the ninth to date – so it seemed that the time was rife for a little diversification!

Once a month, beginning with this e-mail, we will be sending you a text that is to appear in the magazine’s coming issue. In electronic form, and adaptable to the electronic gadget of your choice, there will be a German and an English version, a list of future pieces as well as links to Fellows and events at the Wissenschaftskolleg. In this way, at regular intervals, you will receive glimpses into the current academic year.  

This first text is about the focus group “Quantification,” written by the science journalist Jürgen Kaube.  

But we have not completely succumbed to the cultural decadence of the Internet Age – the printed word lives. We will have the bound version of Köpfe und Ideen available to you in the summer of this year. Whatever form you prefer – online or in print – I wish you much reading enjoyment.

Greetings from all!

February 28

The second installation of Köpfe und Ideen this year is dedicated to Wolf Lepenies, former Rector and now Permanent Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg. And it is high time we finally thanked him for the title of our magazine! We stole it from him. He was the person who originally proposed it for an in-house publication that then ultimately assumed another name.

A large audience of readers knows Wolf Lepenies for his wide-ranging ideas and political analyses. Gunter Hofmann describes him in the following portrait.

Greetings from the Kolleg!

March 31

Janina Wellmann is a historian of science and a fellow of the current academic year. She is interested in the epistemological status of images around 1800, especially series of images that describe repetition and variation as a rhythm within a timeframe.

For this next Köpfe und Ideen-installment, which we are sending towards your screen, she was interviewed by Katharina Teutsch.

Very best wishes from Berlin!

April 29

The fourth installment of Köpfe und Ideen in 2014 is a portrait of the historian Yuri Slezkine and his current project. Slezkine approaches the failure of the Russian Revolution by way of a thick description. To him Moscow’s “House of Government” is a microcosm of Russian Bolshevism. He investigates the physiology and psychology of this social utopia and its demise in the Great Purge.

Gerd Koenen, a historian himself and an expert on communism, introduces Yuri Slezkine and his take on the subject.

As always, best wishes from the Kolleg!

May 28

Laurenz Lütteken, a musicologist in Zurich, came to the Wissenschaftskolleg with a project on the Berlin years of Richard Strauss. After he had started walking the streets of Strauss he quickly expanded his forays into the circles of other great composers who had left traces in the city. In his “Letter from Berlin” he speaks of these walks and finds himself wondering about the Berliners.

Greetings from Grunewald! 

July 2nd

Today’s installment of Köpfe und Ideen will be the last of this academic year. In an interview with Julia Spinola classicist Kathleen Coleman talks about the staged violence in Roman gladiatorial combats and makes us think about our own time and its want for brutal imagery.

Have a beautiful summer!

All best wishes