2025 Summer Festival in Bayreuth – On the trail of Wilhelmine

The Max We­ber Pro­gram's Sum­mer Festi­val in Bay­reuth kicked off on 28 June 2025 with a recep­tion for 196 guests in the Natu­ral Sci­ences Build­ing I at the Uni­versi­ty of Bay­reuth. Right at the start, the new­est MWP mem­ber in Bay­reuth, mas­cot Wil­helmine, was wel­comed. Tobi­as Markl from the Ba­varian State Minis­try of Sci­ence and the Arts was a guest and em­phasized in his wel­com­ing speech the im­portance of young, en­erget­ic peo­ple for the future of sci­ence. The floor was then given to Dr. Anke Dö­rner, head of the Max We­ber Pro­gram. In her wel­com­ing ad­dress, she drew a con­nec­tion to the sum­mer festi­val, which took place in Bay­reuth for the first time, by quot­ing Frie­drich Nie­tzsche, who wrote on a post­card hang­ing in her of­fice: “Someday we will all sit to­gether in Bay­reuth and no longer un­der­stand how we could have en­dured any­where else.”

Final­ly, partic­ipants had the honor of listen­ing to a for­mer Max We­ber Pro­gram scholar­ship recip­ient: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Chris­toph Hel­big, Chair of Eco­logi­cal Re­source Tech­nolo­gy at the Uni­versi­ty of Bay­reuth. In keep­ing with the annu­al theme of “Drive,” his key­note speech was titled “Raw Mate­rials of the Fu­ture: What Drives Us.” Fol­low­ing this, he an­swered ques­tions from the inter­ested audi­ence. Musi­cal ac­com­pani­ment was pro­vided by three mem­bers of the Bay­reuth Uni­versi­ty Big Band on bass, drums, and key­board.

The Bay­reuth schol­arship hold­ers had put to­gether a var­ied pro­gram for the after­noon. Par­tici­pants were spoiled for choice: they could get to know the daily envi­ron­ment of the Bay­reuth schol­arship hold­ers with a cam­pus rally, take a short trip to the greenery of the Uni­versi­ty of Bay­reuth's Eco­logi­cal-Botanical Gar­den, shake a leg with tradi­tional folk danc­ing, or find them­selves with a mind­ful­ness work­shop. Par­tici­pants were able to fol­low in the histor­ical foot­steps of Bay­reuth on a city tour with „Markgräfin Wil­helmine“ her­self, and the topic of sus­taina­bility was ex­plored in a sus­taina­ble city tour.

A hike from the cam­pus through the old town and the festi­val thea­ter to the Victo­ry Tower on Bay­reuth's Green Hill pro­vided an over­view of the entire city, offer­ing a 360° view of the re­gion. The court­ly life of the 18th centu­ry could be ex­plored in the Bay­reuth Her­mitage, com­bined with a crossword puzzle with the solu­tion word – who could have guessed – SOMMERFEST. If you want­ed to look be­yond the city of Bay­reuth and even be­yond planet Earth, a tele­scope workshop of­fered the solu­tion. And any­one who felt like social­izing could strike up a con­versa­tion over homemade cake or play cards to­geth­er.

Text: Anne Hepach (Max Weber Program)