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"Poetics Of Water"-Seminar

In July, the PhD stu­dents of the International Doctorate Program "Re­think­ing Envi­ron­ment" were intro­duced to the many facets of water in Augsburg. A joint intro­duc­tion on the prem­ises of the WZU was fol­lowed by a guid­ed tour through the city forest and a walk along the Au­wald. In addi­tion, the par­tici­pants were intro­duced to the dif­fer­ences be­tween drink­ing water dur­ing a water tast­ing ses­sion.

Water as a natural element, food and resource

The field semi­nar “Wa­ter: Given and Gift” was all about in­spir­ing the PhD stu­dents of the International Doctorate Program (IDP) "Re­think­ing Envi­ron­ment" to think about water in a com­pre­hen­sive sense. The first step was an online panel dis­cussion ti­tled "Who owns the wa­ter?" PhD stu­dents were pre­sent while ex­perts, in­clud­ing IDP mem­bers PD Dr. Jens Soentgen and Prof. Dr. Kerstin Schlögl-Fli­erl, dis­cuss­ed issues relat­ed to water as a re­source, rang­ing from usage claims to envi­ron­men­tally friendly man­age­ment. The actual field semi­nar con­sisted of a first, theo­reti­cal part, in which par­tici­pants dis­cuss­ed a text from Astri­da Nei­manis' book Bod­ies of Wa­ter. The event took place at WZU under the direc­tion of Jens Soentgen and IDP PhD stu­dent An­ne-So­phie Balzer. In the sec­ond, prac­tical part, Norb­ert Pantel from the “Landschaftspflegeverband” guid­ed a tour of the city for­est. The focus here was on the his­tor­ical im­portance of water for the city of Augsburg. Mov­ing along the many streams, Pantel led the par­tici­pants through the Sie­ben­tischwald forest to the old town and ex­plained the ori­gins of Augsburg's spe­cial water ecol­ogy, whose histo­ry goes back far into the Mid­dle Ag­es.

An­other ses­sion was led by PD Dr. Si­mon Meissner (WZU), who, in his ca­pacity as a certi­fied water som­me­lier, con­duct­ed a water tast­ing. The ses­sion fo­cused on dif­ferent com­posi­tions and tastes of min­eral water. In a blind tast­ing, the par­tici­pants noted the taste and con­sis­tency of a selec­tion of table and me­dici­nal wa­ters and tap water from Augsburg. Sur­pris­ingly, the latter was the win­ner for a ma­jority of the par­tici­pants; ex­pen­sive me­dici­nal and spring wa­ters came in last. On the same day, par­tici­pants visit­ed the river Lech works in Gersthofen. Engi­neer and asset man­ager Ralph Klocke gave a guid­ed tour on power gen­era­tion, renatura­tion, and spe­cies pro­tec­tion on and around the river Lech.

Finally, the par­tici­pants were invit­ed to a lec­ture held by PD Dr. Jens Soentgen. It took place as part of the theme day "Wa­ter & Sound" dur­ing the "Fes­tival of Cul­tures".

 

Text: Felix Burzler, IDP "Re­think­ing Envi­ron­ment"