I’m sure that many of you have been watching the matches and I hope that you are all getting caught up in the happy atmosphere we are seeing in the stadiums, as well as in the streets and squares. At any rate, I find it very fitting that your annual meeting is taking place here in Berlin during EURO 2024. After all, just as this tournament demonstrates that sport can unite people across borders, the international Humboldt family stands for the unifying force of science. All of you, ladies and gentlemen, are united by science!

Almost 600 outstanding researchers from 70 countries are here in this beautiful park today, many accompanied by their partners and children. Most of you will be researching in various locations around Germany in the coming months, engaging in exchange across borders and disciplines, making useful contacts and friends.

All of you are beacons of hope at this truly difficult time of wars, crises and change. For you are helping to build bridges and you are showing us that we can shape a better future if we work together across the globe. I’m pleased that you are with us – a warm welcome to Germany, to Berlin and to Schloss Bellevue Park!

Alexander von Humboldt – who, by the way, also visited this palace, admittedly quite a few years ago – was a pioneer of globalised science. His belief that everything in our world is interconnected is perhaps more pertinent today than ever before. Global warming and species loss, pandemics and diseases, hunger and poverty, displacement and migration – all of these are crises and problems whose causes and consequences transcend borders. And all of them are crises and problems which we can only tackle and resolve if we look at things from different perspectives and cooperate internationally, in science but also in business, society and politics.

I am – and will remain – convinced that only free, internationally networked and responsible science which observes the rules of fair play can produce the insights and innovations which we need in society and politics to shape a bright and viable future on this our planet. However, everyone here knows, some of you from you own painful experience, that the freedom of science and research is not only regarded with hostility and contempt in an increasing number of countries around the world but is also massively restricted in many places.

We see authoritarian regimes imposing political conditions on science. Although this doesn’t make excellent research and technological advances impossible, it regularly results in ethical and social consequences being neglected. We see authoritarian regimes denying facts, falsifying or suppressing research findings, spreading conspiracy theories, churning out disinformation on an industrial scale. Not least, we see scientists and researchers in many countries being harassed, locked up, driven away or even murdered.

I am very, very grateful to the Humboldt Foundation for protecting and supporting researchers who are under threat or being persecuted in their own countries, some of whom have found refuge here. It is this very solidarity with the persecuted and oppressed which we continue to need, not only in science!

It also remains important that we defend the freedom of science in liberal democracies against attacks from within. Art and scholarship, research and teaching shall be free, it says in the German Basic Law, whose 75th anniversary we are celebrating this year. This sentence constitutes a mission for policy-makers and society: it’s up to us to respect, time and again to facilitate and to protect science as an open-ended process.

Scientists and researchers are not obliged to pursue political objectives in the research process. Nor are they obliged to adhere to an ideology of any kind. Nor do they have to orientate themselves towards the prevailing opinion and feeling, as John Stuart Mill once described it. The necessary democratic debate only starts when it comes to drawing practical conclusions from certain scientific findings.

However, this freedom that we have to protect does not relieve scientists and researchers from their responsibility for the world they explore, for the society in which they conduct research, as well as for humanity and nature in general. On the contrary, this freedom brings with it responsibility. The two are interdependent. And this responsibility also means that scientists have to stand up as citizens for freedom, democracy and the rule of law. I firmly believe that this is more important today than it has been in quite some time.

Not only the freedom of science is under threat today. International cooperation is more difficult now, and in some cases it has even become impossible. Wars and conflicts are undermining the international order. Political forces that advocate nationalistic self-isolation are gaining support in many countries. Authoritarian regimes are trying to make other countries dependent on them, are engaging in scientific espionage, are stealing intellectual property or using research findings for military purposes. We cannot allow ourselves to be uncritical or unconcerned at a time like this when it comes to scientific cooperation. We need clear rules to really protect intellectual property and ethical standards.

Above all, however, it remains crucial that scientists and researchers from different countries are able to meet in person and to regularly exchange ideas. This is the only way to foster trust and understanding. Particularly at a time when we in Germany want to forge closer links in order to become more resilient and less vulnerable, we need equitable partnerships based on mutual respect with countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, especially in the scientific sphere. We must do more to involve researchers from poorer countries who have to operate under difficult conditions there and yet are doing excellent work. I am very, very grateful to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for adopting this approach.

Mr Schlögl, I want to thank you and all staff members of your foundation today for working tirelessly in these difficult times to promote the freedom of science and cross-border exchange. It’s always a pleasure to see your staff’s dedication in helping guest researchers, to see everything they do to ensure that the guests can live well and work well in our country for the duration of their stay. Your foundation is an outstanding ambassador for our outward-looking and future-oriented nation of science – and for that I thank you very much.

Guest researchers, naturally my very special thanks today go to you. I thank you for being here, for choosing to come to Germany to research. I thank you for enriching our country with your experiences, your knowledge and your ideas. And I thank you for showing us what we can achieve together, in Germany, in Europe and around the world. To be frank, you all foster optimism at a time when it’s not easy for anyone to be optimistic. Because you all strengthen what connects us – here in Germany, in Europe and around the world. For that, a very special thank you.

I wish you every success with your research projects. But I also hope that you will have an opportunity during your stay to discover our beautiful and diverse country, that you will meet inspiring people – in the archive and in the laboratory, as well as in the bar in the evening watching football. Many guest researchers of the Humboldt Foundation maintain their ties with Germany once they return home – and I think that is the best possible compliment for our country!

I look forward to meeting you, to our conversations and encounters, and I wish you and all of us a lovely summer day here in Schloss Bellevue Park.

Once again, welcome! And my sincere thanks to you all!

 

• - https://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Reden/EN/Frank-Walter-Steinmeier/Reden/2024/240628-reception-Humboldt-Foundation.html