Thank you and farewell, Martin Mulsow!

To mark the departure of Professor Dr Martin Mulsow, who, as Director of the FZG since 2008, has helped shape and left a lasting mark on the scholarship programmes at the Gotha Research Campus, the Research Centre celebrated the Gotha Scholarship Programmes, in particular the Herzog Ernst Scholarship Programme, which has now been in existence for more than 20 years and has already enabled more than 430 researchers to undertake a stay in Gotha. The conference “Being Social, Doing Knowledge, Connecting Far and Wide” offered former students the opportunity to present their current research and to network.

As part of the alumni conference , a farewell ceremony was held on 18 June for the former Director of the Gotha Research Centre, Professor Martin Mulsow. More than 80 guests gathered in the lecture theatre to pay tribute to Martin Mulsow’s research and his work as director of the Gotha Research Centre. In their welcoming addresses, Professor André Brodocz (Vice-President for Research), Gotha’s Lord Mayor Knut Kreuch, Dr Kathrin Paasch, director of the Gotha Research Library, and Dr Timo Trümper, director of Research and Collections at the Friedenstein Foundation in Gotha, highlighted the breadth of Martin Mulsow’s research interests as well as his inexhaustible curiosity, even regarding minor or seemingly obscure topics.

Following a keynote lecture by the American literary scholar Professor Liliane Weissberg on the topic of “Objects of the Enlightenment” , five of Mulsow’s academic students gave presentations : Dr Asaph Ben-Tov (University of Hamburg), Dr Lucinda Martin (Wetzlar/New York), Professor Alexander Schunka (Free University of Berlin), PD Dr Benjamin Steiner (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) and Dr habil. Riccarda Suitner (Sapienza – Università di Roma) – spoke about how Martin Mulsow had inspired and helped shape their research interests and their personal and professional paths. Dr Markus Meumann, Acting Director of the FZG, pointed out that the five different academic profiles reflected the diversity of Martin Mulsow’s research interests.

This was followed by a summer party in the courtyard of the Research Centre.