In the heart of a World Heritage Old Town: the MWP Summer Festival 2024

There it is again, that im­per­cepti­ble movement: For a split sec­ond, the eyes leave direct eye con­tact and dart down to chest height, where a name tag in­clud­ing the de­gree pro­gramme is dis­played, before a ques­tion fol­lows with great inter­est. There is hardly an event at which the eyes cover as many miles as at the MWP sum­mer party. After all, the diver­sity of the 250 or so guests from a wide range of back­grounds is par­ticu­larly high here.

‘The true per­fec­tion of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.’ With this quote by the Irish author Oscar Wilde, Chris­toph Wild of the Ba­varian State Min­istry of Sci­ence and the Arts em­pha­sised the im­portance of per­sonal de­velopment in his wel­com­ing ad­dress at the marinaforum in the morn­ing and ap­pealed to the schol­arship hold­ers to make the most of the sup­port pro­vided by the Max We­ber Pro­gram and their poten­tial. Against the back­drop of the cur­rent MWP annu­al theme of ‘’re­nun­cia­tion‘’, which, as usual, was cen­tral to the morn­ing's key­note speech and the wel­com­ing ad­dress­es, there are many things that can and must be re­nounced. ‘But what we can't do with­out, is You,’ said Chris­toph Wild, ad­dress­ing the schol­arship hold­ers.

Dr Anke Dö­rner, Head of the Max We­ber Pro­gram, em­pha­sised in her speech that we are facing mounting prob­lems as a socie­ty. The fact that life is con­tinu­ally get­ting better is not the case for eve­ryone, even in view of the cur­rent year. This is pre­cisely why she hopes that the Max We­ber Pro­gram will pro­vide the space for en­courage­ment and the estab­lish­ment of a mind­set.

The two thought-provoking speeches were rounded off by the keynote speech, which examined the annual theme of ‘renunciation’ from a (behavioural) economic perspective. With his introduction, Professor Andreas Roider from the Chair of Microeconomics at the University of Regensburg created an all-too-familiar mental image for almost everyone present: lots of good intentions, but in the end it's always the realisation that fails. However, he didn't stop at amusing the audience on an individual level. Renunciation was also addressed on a collective level, whereby the institutional framework in particular plays an important role in its effect and must be taken into consideration. ‘Not everything that seems intuitive is also effective,’ he summarised.

The after­noon's spe­cial high­light was un­doubtedly the pas­sionate com­mit­ment of the Re­gens­burg schol­arship hold­ers. The team had spent a year pre­paring for the sum­mer party, which was re­flect­ed not only in the musi­cal enter­tainment but also in the after­noon pro­gramme: from mind­ful­ness work­shops, hikes and the Wal­halla ascent to his­tor­ical city/mu­seum tours and so­cialis­ing on the banks of the Dan­ube, every­thing was in­clud­ed.
As the par­tici­pants moved from one after­noon ac­tivity to the next and en­coun­tered new group dy­nam­ics, Dr Anke Dö­rner's wish inevi­tably came to mind: the Max We­ber Pro­gram should of­fer a plat­form for dis­cussions in which new per­spec­tives can be de­veloped and adopted. Gain­ing new per­spec­tives - this can begin on a small scale. It al­ways re­quires the fa­mous look be­yond one's own nose. Or in this case: the im­per­cepti­ble movement of the eyes to­wards the name tag, suc­ceed­ed by sin­cere inter­est.

Text: Alexandros Mantzaridis, scholarship holder Max We­ber Program Bavaria