"20 Jahre klug verbunden" – the Elite Network celebrates its anniversary at the Munich Residence

On Fri­day, 3 May 2024, about 250 mem­bers, friends and sup­por­ters of the Elite Net­work of Ba­varia gath­ered in the Max Jo­seph Hall of the Resi­dence. The guests en­gaged in a lively ex­change over a re­laxed recep­tion be­fore the sub­se­quent cere­mony pro­vided a num­ber of high­lights. At the be­gin­ning, Sci­ence Min­ister Markus Blume point­ed out: "The Elite Net­work is our Ba­varian talent facto­ry. We pro­vide finan­cial, struc­tural and, above all, non-material sup­port. Be­cause we don't just want to train excel­lence, we want to de­velop per­sonal­ities and bring them to­geth­er. In this way, we are con­tinu­ing the tradi­tion of King Max II - and socie­ty as a whole bene­fits from this. Suc­cess­ful founders, award-win­ning art­ists, re­nowned re­searchers: the alum­ni and alum­nae of our net­work are shap­ing the future in Ba­varia for Ba­var­ia!"

In his key­note speech, the Presi­dent of the Ger­man Aca­demic Scholarship Foun­da­tion, Pro­fessor Mi­chael Hoch, sub­se­quently em­phasized the close rela­tion­ship of trust be­tween the Elite Net­work of Ba­varia and the Ger­man Aca­demic Scholarship Foun­da­tion, which over­sees the im­ple­men­tation of the Max We­ber Pro­gram and the Mari­anne Plehn Pro­gram: "We are very pleased to have the op­por­tunity to help shape the Elite Net­work of Ba­varia and to ac­com­pany the scholarship hold­ers per­sonal­ly and indi­vidu­ally on their aca­demic path. We are very grate­ful for the trust placed in the Ger­man Aca­demic Scholarship Foun­da­tion!"

As a spe­cial birth­day sur­prise, the new cor­porate video of the Elite Net­work of Ba­varia cele­brated its debut af­ter­wards: four testi­moni­als from the ranks of the mem­bers share their expe­rienc­es in the Elite Net­work.

The final high­light of the cere­mony was a lounge con­versa­tion host­ed by Pro­fessor Simone Mül­ler, spokesper­son for the Inter­na­tional Doc­toral Pro­gram "Rethinking Environment" and DFG Hei­sen­berg Pro­fes­sor: Four net­work mem­bers with inter­esting ca­reers from very dif­ferent fields had a direct and very lively ex­change about defin­ing expe­rienc­es and new per­spec­tive that re­sulted from being part of the net­work.

The Elite Net­work was also able to rely on in-house tal­ent for the lively musi­cal ac­com­pani­ment to the even­ing: Alex­ander Saal, a stu­dent of the Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram "Physics with Inte­grated Doc­torate Pro­gram", con­tributed to the evening's bril­liance with his band "AMotion and Friends", both at the cere­mony and at the sub­se­quent buffet din­ner. In a great at­mosphere, the guests en­joyed the deli­cious food and drinks as well as the op­por­tunity to re­fresh old ac­quaintances and make new con­tacts.

Dur­ing this in­for­mal part of the cele­bra­tion, the gest could also enjoy a spe­cial feast for the eyes: An exhi­bition on the suc­cesses and mile­stones of Ba­varian sup­port for gifted stu­dents over the last 20 years was spe­cifi­cally de­signed for the event. In addi­tion to the de­velopment of the Elite Net­work, the focus here was on out­stand­ing scholarship hold­ers: the more than 11,000 alum­ni and alum­nae in­clude nu­mer­ous suc­cess­ful per­sonal­ities such as the gen­eral music direc­tor of the Frankfurt Opera Thomas Gug­geis, the mul­ti-award-win­ning writer and jour­nalist Lena Gorelik or the co-founder of the inter­na­tion­ally ac­claimed com­pany IQM Quan­tum Com­puters Dr. Jan Goetz who was named "Founder of the Year" in 2023. They and nu­mer­ous other suc­cess­ful mem­bers of the Elite Net­work were por­trayed in the exhi­bi­tion.

To the official press release of the State Ministry of Science and the Arts

Live stream of the event

Text: Elite Network of Bavaria