fiit-broschuere2024 - Flipbook - Seite 42
The International Academic Forum Heidelberg (IWH) was founded
under the rectorate of Professor Gisbert Freiherr zu Putlitz to mark the
600th anniversary of the university in 1986. This occasion coincided
with the blossoming of internet communication and the start of new
forms of international cooperation in science. The German Research
Foundation (DFG) announced Research Training Groups in which,
following two evaluations, twelve to fifteen doctorates and habilitations by young German and international academics could be funded
for up to nine years, and funds were also provided for guest lectures.
Heidelberg theology and religious studies were already successful with
the “Religion and Normativity” framework program in the first funding phase. The systematic theologians Wolfgang Huber and Michael
Welker, the Old Testament scholar Bernd Janowski, and the religious
studies and missiology scholar Theo Sundermeier cooperated wonderfully with the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, the Sinologist Rudolf Wagner, the multiple-award-winning expert on Greek and Latin classics
Glenn Most, and the Indologist Monika Boehm-Tettelbach. We were
frequent guests at the IWH with our doctoral students and postdocs.
Since then, up to eighty symposia, colloquia, and workshops from all
faculties have been held every year at the IWH, this central academic
institution of the university, many of which are both international and
interdisciplinary. A board of trustees, consisting of twelve professors
from the university, the rector, the chancellor, and the director of the
IWH, monitors the quality of the planned events and also ensures that
young academics are involved. The first directors of the IWH were
three theologians: the Swiss Dietrich Ritschl (1986-1996), Michael
Welker (1996-2006), and Jan Gertz (2006-2010).
42