Cer­emo­nial fare­well for 750 mem­bers of the Elite Net­work of Ba­varia

Around 500 fes­tively dressed guests - excit­ed grad­uates and their proud fami­lies and friends – gath­ered in Kon­gress am Park in Augsburg on 02 De­cem­ber 2022. For them, their active time in the Elite Net­work of Ba­varia came to an end with a fes­tive cere­mony.

In his wel­com­ing ad­dress, Ba­varian State Minis­ter of Sci­ence and the Arts, Markus Blume, ap­pealed to the grad­uates to use their tal­ents for the good of socie­ty: "Ba­varia relies on its best: as alum­ni of our unique Elite Net­work, you are pre­des­tined to an­swer the big ques­tions of our time. Think big and take on re­spon­sibil­ity on the path ahead of you - turn your and our hopes into achievements!"

The Elite Net­work of Ba­varia is a unique model of state sup­port for gifted stu­dents in Ger­many and facili­tates the sup­port of the best stu­dents and young aca­dem­ics from Ger­many and abroad. The five fund­ing lines, the Max We­ber-Program, the Elite Grad­uate Pro­grams, the Inter­na­tional Doc­torate Pro­grams, the Mari­an­ne-Plehn-Pro­gram and the Junior Re­search Groups are com­ple­ment­ed by a wide range of ex­change and net­work­ing op­por­tuni­ties as well as offers for per­sonal de­velopment.

As is cus­tomary, the even­ing’s pro­gram was pre­sent­ed by two of the grad­uates. Viktoria Rossi, grad­uate of the Max We­ber-Program, and Marco Mill­ing, grad­uate of the Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram Ethics of Tex­tual Cul­tures, led through the even­ing in a charming and en­gag­ing man­ner. The audi­ence was quite taken by the song and dance per­for­manc­es by musi­cal stu­dents of the Au­gust Everding Thea­tre Academy and their pia­nist Alan Sokol, who per­formed well-known songs such as "Viva la Vida" or "Auf uns". After the award cere­mony, Vince Ebert, a physi­cist by train­ing and known to many from the ARD pro­gramme "Wis­sen vor acht – Werk­statt”, shed some light on ab­surd phe­nomena of eve­ryday digital life in his key­note speech “Big Dada­ism – Get­ting through digiti­sation with com­mon sense“.

To round off the even­ing, the guests were invit­ed to a buf­fet dinner ac­com­panied by Alan Sokol on the piano, giving them the op­por­tunity to look back on the past years and toast to the grad­uates’ achievements.

Text: Coordination Office of the Elite Network of Bavaria