EUR 200.000 granted for the study of the early homiletic works of Johann Gottfried Herder

The Minister of State for culture and media together with the Fritz Thyssen Foundation have given an initial grant of EUR 200.000 to kickstart a new edition project at the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies of the University of Erfurt. The grant supports the editing of Johann Gottfried Herder's early homiletic works for the coming three years.

(Dr Dominik Fugger)

Herder (1744-1803) who spend a life time in Pastoral Ministry, started his theological career 1764 in Riga. The sermons held there until 1769 form the corpus of the new, historical-critical edition. "Herder was a passionate orator," explains project manager Dr Dominik Fugger, junior fellow at the Max Weber Center. "It's a strange as well as significant facet of the history of reception of one of the most important German classics that most of these texts have remained unedited and buried in the archives until today. We are pleased that we have been enabled to unearth the rich material in the next few years and to prepare it and make it available to research." In the framework of the project the Max Weber Center in the future will also act as the network platform for different directions of research in this area.

How to fight corruption in NGOs - New Fellowship in ethics of economics

Fighting corruption, sustainability and social standards are aims that are taken more and more serious by scholars and businesses. How such set of aims and norms are effective in practice is therefore a pressing question in the area of ethics of economics. PD Dr Bettina Hollstein, scholar in ethics of economis at the Max Weber Center, University of Erfurt, has been granted external funding to advertise for a new fellowship in this area.
The new fellow is planned to conduct research in various fields of ethics of economics using a pragmatic approach and look into NGOs practice with a particular interest in questions of corruption, environment and social standard violations. It is intended that the project provides the basis for further and broadened research in these areas which go beyond the NGO spectrum and also encompass any other form of business.
To initiate this research with a new fellowship, Dr Hollstein was given EUR162,000 over three years. 'Corruption is a major challenge for our society, a problem which we want to address with this fellowship', Professor Hartmut Rosa, Director of the Max Weber Center commented on the successful outcome of the grant application.

PD Dr. Bettina Hollstein

Further information

• +49 361 737-2802
• bettina.hollstein(at)uni-erfurt.de

Linien. RaumZeitliche Perspektiven: 8. Workshop der Erfurter RaumZeit-Gruppe in Kooperation mit dem Max-Weber-Kolleg der Universität Erfurt

Datum: Donnerstag/Freitag, 18./19.Juni 2015

Ort:      Seminarraum des Forschungszentrums Gotha der Universität Erfurt, Schloss Friedenstein/Pagenhaus, 99867 Gotha

Veranstalter:
Jutta Vinzent, University of Birmingham / Max-Weber Kolleg Erfurt
Sebastian Dorsch, Universität Erfurt

Deadline: 13. Juni

Im Mittelpunkt des 8. Workshops der Erfurter RaumZeit-Gruppe (ERZ), zum zweiten Mal in Kooperation mit dem Max-Weber-Kolleg der Universität Erfurt (MWK) sowie mit dem Forschungszentrum Gotha (FZG) und der „Laborgruppe Kulturtechniken“ (Erfurt/Weimar), stehen raum-zeitliche Perspektiven von Linien. Linien werden hier als Ausdrucksformen verstanden, die Einsichten in kulturtheoretische Phänomene ermöglichen und so über ihren bloßen Formgehalt hinausgehen. Damit will der Workshop die von Timothy Ingold eingeführte „anthropologische Archäologie der Linie“ weiterführen, indem er die multidisziplinäre Untersuchung von Linien auf deren raum-zeitliche Dimensionen ausrichtet.

Linien, Linearitäten, das Lineare, aber auch deren Negation, das Nicht-Lineare sind als Alltagserfahrung und im Sprachgebrauch präsent; sie spiegeln und prägen auf vielschichtige Weise die raum-zeitliche Welt-Bild-Produktion. So ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass eine Reihe von Disziplinen mit und über Linien und angrenzende Phänomene arbeiten, von der Mathematik, Geographie und Informatik über die Künste und Philosophie bis hin zu zahlreichen Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften. Linien wird oftmals ein räumlich und zeitlich ordnender Charakter zugeschrieben. Als Trenn- oder Grenzlinien haben sie vor allem im Poststrukturalismus Karriere gemacht und sind als differance in die Philosophiegeschichte eingegangen. Auch Netzwerkmodelle bestehen aus Linien, die sich in Knotenpunkten treffen, überschneiden und weiterbilden. Und wie steht es mit dem Verhältnis von Linien zu Punkten: Sind sie „nur“ eine Zusammensetzung von Punkten oder etwas essentiell anderes? Der britische Anthropologe Ingold sieht Linien als „point-to-point connector“ und in ihrer Geradlinigkeit die zentrale Ausdrucksform des Dynamischen und Progressiven der sog. Moderne, „only to be ruptured and fragmented by the dislocations of postmodernity“. In der „Time-Line“ (bspw. Rosenberg/Grafton, 2010) verbindet die Kartographie räumliche und zeitliche Perspektiven. Linien können aufzeichnen und etwas darstellen, was mehr als Linie ist, wie etwa die von Werner Haftmann kürzlich vorgestellte Schlangenlinie, der aufbauende und zerstörerische Kräfte zugeschrieben werden (posthum, 2014); fundamentaler passiert das bei jeder Zeichnung, aber auch bei Schriftzeichen, wo die Linie sogar hinter der Symbolhaftigkeit des Dargestellten zu verschwinden scheint (Butler/de Zegher, 2011). Linien haben aber auch „verleiblichte“ Dimensionen, wie es etwa Richard Long in seiner Land Art anstrebt (z.B. A Line Made by Walking, 1967). Deleuze und Foucault fordern über die Diskussion des gerissenen Fadens das Lineare grundsätzlich heraus (Deleuze/Foucault, 1977; für die Kunstgeschichte: Wulffen bzw. Stingelin, 2001).

Mit multidisziplinären Perspektiven auf Linien, das Lineare und Nicht-Lineare lassen sich somit vielschichtig raum-zeitliche und ästhetische Dimensionen menschliches Handelns reflektieren (insofern ist der Workshop eine Fortführung und Konkretisierung der ersten gemeinsamen Veranstaltung im Sommersemester 2014). Der Workshop versucht nachzuspüren, ob und wie die Betrachtung von „Linien“ in verschiedenen Disziplinen kulturelle Phänomene erklären kann. Konkretisierend geht es uns dabei vor allem um raum-zeitliche Blickwinkel verschiedener Linientypen wie auch -merkmale, um dann auf kulturelle Bedeutung(szuweisung)en schließen zu können.

Donnerstag, 18.06.2015

13.00 – 13.15          Begrüßung & Einleitung: Susanne Rau (Erfurt)

13.15 – 14.00          Sektion 1: Gemeinsame Diskussion von Grundlagentexten

Einführungen in die Texte: Jutta Vinzent (Birmingham / MWK Erfurt) & Sebastian Dorsch (Erfurt)

14.00 – 15.30          Sektion 2: Karten-Linien, Krümmungen und Falten

                              Moderation und Kommentar: Jörg Dünne (Erfurt)

Iris Schröder (Gotha/Erfurt): Karten-Linien und die experimentellen Geometrien des Raumes in der thematischen Kartographie des 19. Jahrhunderts

Angelika Seppi (Berlin): From curvature to fold – Lines of becoming between Leibniz and Deleuze

15.30 – 16.00          Kaffeepause

16.00 – 18.00          Sektion 3: Punkte und Schwellen

Moderation und Kommentar: Sabine Schmolinsky (Erfurt)

Till Boettger (Weimar): Schwellenräume – Linien für Wahrnehmung und Vorstellung

Elisa Rieger (Graz): Marking Uncertainty – Von Punkten, Schmetterlingswahrnehmung und buddhistischer Erleuchtung

Maren Sauermann (Darmstadt): Leben auf der Schwelle – Strategien und Praktiken der Normalisierung des Nicht-Linearen

Möglichkeit zum (gemeinsamen) Abendessen

Freitag, 19.06.2015

9.00 – 10.30            Sektion 4: Linien in Literatur und Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts

                              Moderation und Kommentar: Karin Kröger (Erfurt)

Barbara von Orelli (Zürich): E = mc²: Auch eine physikalische Gleichung bei Henry van de Velde?

Jadwiga Kamola (Heidelberg): Das Monster oder die „perplexe“ Linie

10.30 – 11.00          Kaffeepause

11.00 – 12.30          Sektion 5: Linien in der Land Art und Skulptur des 20. Jahrhunderts

                              Moderation und Kommentar: Christian Holtorf (Coburg)

Samantha Schramm (Konstanz): Linien Sehen – Linien Denken: Ortsmarkierungen in der Land Art

Edward A. Vazquez (Middlebury): Linear Reversals: Spatial
Possibilities and Present Absences in Fred Sandback's Sculpture

ab 12.30                 Abschlussdiskussion

Kommentar und Moderation: Katharina Rieger (MWK Erfurt)

Möglichkeit zum (gemeinsamen) Mittagessen

Im Anschluss: Gelegenheit zum Besuch der Ausstellung Konkret in Thüringen, FORUM KONKRETE KUNST in Erfurt (8.5.-28.6.2015, Mi-So, 10-18 Uhr)

Wir danken dem Forschungszentrum Gotha, dem Max-Weber Kolleg Erfurt sowie der Laborgruppe Kulturtechniken (Weimar/Erfurt) / Jörg Dünne herzlich für Ihre Unterstützung.

Anmeldung bis zum 13. Juni erbeten unter:

Sebastian Dorsch: sebastian.dorsch at uni-erfurt.de bzw. Jutta Vinzent: juttavinzent at gmail.com 

Als Grundlage diskutieren wir Texte von Tim Ingold, Thomas Wulffen und Martin Stingelin. Die Zugangsdaten zu den Texten erhalten Sie nach Anmeldung.

Homepage: https://www.uni-erfurt.de/philosophische-fakultaet/raumzeit-forschung/

'Religion in the Roman Empire' - New journal in the History of Religion

 

 

The first issue of a new journal dedicated to “Religion in the Roman Empire” (RRE) is out. “Individual appropriation in lived ancient religion” is the title of the first issue of 130 pages. The articles focus on methodologies to reconstruct individual appropriations of traditions, religious experiences and communication on religion in different social spaces. Such perspectives, standard in approaches on recent and contemporary religion, are facing serious challenges when addressing the material available for ancient Mediterranean religion. New methods are developed in case studies on Mithraic representations, practices of sacralizing space at Italian Ostia, consumption of religion in Egyptian Karanis or rituals and their literary reflections at Rome. 

The new journal, published by Mohr Siebeck, intends to further and document new and integrative perspectives on religion in the Ancient World combining multidisciplinary methodologies. Starting from the notion of “lived religion” it will offer a space to take up recent, but still incipient, research to modify and cross the disciplinary boundaries of “History of Religion”, “Archaeology”, “Anthropology”, “Classics”, “Ancient History”, “Jewish History”, “Rabbinics”,  “New Testament”, “Early Christianity”, “Patristics”, “Coptic Studies”, “Gnostic and Manichean Studies”, “Late Antiquity” and “Oriental Languages”. The editors, based at European and American universities hope to stimulate the development of new approaches that can encompass the local and global trajectories of the multi-dimensional pluralistic religions of antiquity. The editorial office is based at the Max Weber Center of the University of Erfurt and can be reached via rre@uni-erfurt.de. See also www.mohr.de/rre

New Research Centre for the Study of Ritual Practices in Judaism at the Max-Weber-Centre, Erfurt University

The new research centre at the Max-Weber-Centre, University of Erfurt, will address the dynamics of ritual practices in Judaism. The research project is funded by the Federal Ministry of education and research with over a million euros and will run for five years. The project is run by religion and cultural theorists, theologian and musicologists, Prof. Dr. Benedikt Kranemann, Prof. Dr. Jörg Rüpke, and Prof. Dr. Martin Mulsow, all of the University of Erfurt, and Professor Dr. Jascha Nemtsov from the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar.

"The project enables new trajectories for the study of religious practices and a more intensive international networking for theology and religious studies. The approval of the project is a push to expand the religion-related research in Erfurt even further, explains Prof. Kranemann who is the spokesman of the University’s focus research cluster on religion. Collaboration with institutions for the study of Judaism in Germany and abroad will be expanded in the course of the centre’s work. The project is located at the Max-Weber-Centre in collaboration with the Theological Faculty and the Centre of research at Gotha, University of Erfurt.

Participating scientists and scholars from home and abroad will examine rituals in religious or culturally pluralistic contexts. Also, practice, history, and the interpretation of such rituals will be explored. Liturgies, other rituals such as reading and learning religious texts or dealing with calendars will be available in the Centre. In addition to texts, in particular rituals, music, space and images will be looked at. An innovative edge is given through continuous comparison with other religious traditions present in the groups and institutions. Erfurt scholars expect to discover more than just new insights for their own areas of research, and to broaden the existing interdisciplinarity of the Max-Weber-Centre. Thematic focusses are late antiquity, the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as the period from the nineteenth century to the present, where Jewish rituals, sociology and economics will be studied. A goal of the project is to scholarly reflection upon ritual and religious practice of Judaism, a topic that is often marginalized in the study of religions.

Internationally renowned scientists and scholars will be ask to cooperate as Fellows, interacting with existing and new doctoral students in Erfurt. The participating scholars will publish their research results and also make it available for the broader public. Networking with the various Jewish institutions and facilities in Erfurt is also planned.

More information / contact:

Prof. Dr. Benedikt Kranemann

+ 49 361 737-2566

Benedikt.kranemann(at)uni-Erfurt.de

Roman religion – religions of Rome - an Interview with Professor Jörg Rüpke

Roman religion – religions of Rome

-interview with professor Jörg Rüpke -

Szabó Csaba

University of Pécs, HU

szabo.csaba.pte@gmail.com

Jörg Rüpke (1962) is one of the leading scholars of Roman religious studies. Chair of the Comparative Religion at the University of Erfurt since 1999 and fellow of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, since 2000 he chaired numerous international projects and grants, many of them dealing with various aspects of the Roman religion. With more than 20 individual monographs and 38 edited volumes, his work became unavoidable in the field of religious studies. Taking an overview or an account of his work and activity, we can have a broader view on the actual state of the Roman religious studies – a discipline in continuous formation and transformation.

You have learned Latin and theology in various universities in Germany and abroad, but formed as a scholar in Tübingen, one of the most important center for religious studies with a rigorous tradition in theological studies.  Why you choose the study of Roman religion and who influenced you in the beginning of your carrier?

In the very beginning of my studies I was interested in religions of Asia and classical antiquity too. I learned also Hebrew and Sanskrit, but after a short time I have realized that I’m much more interested on religious studies. In Bonn I had as a mentor, prof. Karl Hoheisel (1937-2011) editor and one of the authors of the Reallexikons für Antike und Christentum, the only person at the faculty who had special interests in Roman religion. Than in Tübingen I met Hubert Cancik and Burkhard Gladigow, who had an important role in my formation as a scholar.

Your Ph.D. thesis dealt with the religious aspects of the wars in Roman times[1]. In the 1990’s your interests will focus especially on the historiography of the Roman religion and the Roman calendar[2] followed after 2005 by your studies on religious rituals of the individuum and the communities[3]. How you choose a topic for a research program?

I don’t really choose a topic or research program, as a predefined plan. Usually they are born from my earlier works. For instance, my Ph.D. topic was chosen by professor Gladigow. I planned a detailed chapter on Roman festivals in military context, which wasn’t published finally in the Domi militiae. I spent all my summer of 1992 writing this chapter, on which I was very fascinated at that time. Actually, in 2-3 months, I wrote the basics of my habilitation work on Roman calendars. In the 1990’s working on so called “imperial religion” my interest turned increasingly on regionalism and local aspects of the Roman religion, which influenced my project on regionalism, provincialism and individualization too.

During this 25 year while you became a leading scholar in the study of Roman religion, the methodology of the religious studies generally – but especially in the Römische Religionsgeschichte – changed radically. Some of the scholars - like C. Robert Phillips or Carl Orson – talked even about a crisis in the methodology[4]. Is it true?

I would not affirm that we are facing now a real “crisis of the discipline”, because there is in fact, no united discipline of Roman religious studies. We are facing the flourishing of Isiac studies or Mithraic studies but having many neglected aspects too. Historicizing Roman religion is still lacking: a unified view on Roman religion or even, about ancient religion generally. Christianity and Judaism is still not integrated in the study of the ancient religions. Theology deals separately with them, as “church religion” and the religious studies too. Similarly to this, Judaism are often missing from such project, which deals with ancient Magic and religion. Important synthetizes are missing from the current research. We tried to reduce this gap in the research with the Companion to the Roman Religion[5]  and now we are working on the Companion to the archaeology of religion in the ancient world, which hopefully will also contribute for shaping the discipline[6].

One of your major works deal with the priests of the city of Rome, collecting all the sacerdotal personae from Republican time to Late Antiquity[7]. We see there hundreds of names – many of them remarkable persons of the Roman history – with different roles from the typology of Joachim Wach: founders of religions, diviners, magicians, priests…What was the impact of these people in Rome and in a smaller area, like a provincial city?

They were not so important as it seems to be. It was not like in the case of ancient Egypt or the Mesopotamian city – states, where priests had much more power and influence.  They are part of the everyday life, but the official religion is transmitted mainly by the magistrates. Priesthood had a second meaning in this social structure. Religion is set free for individual engagement and self representation in an imperial structure, which had large free spaces – in ideological and religious terms – for these functions and the dynamics between different social and religious levels and manifestations. We must analyze the priesthood of the Roman Empire strictly in connection with the imperial ideology and the concept of the empire.

Another book of you – translated in many languages, even in Korean – deals with the Roman calendar[8]. The number of the sources and the variety of the different urban Fasti are stunning, but can we reconstruct by these analogies the religious calendar of a Roman individual too? Or the religious Fasti of a provincial city?

Some of the intellectuals and the literates surely had personalized calendars. We know this from ancient sources, like Ovid or Petronius that some of the Romans had scrolled calendars or marked the black and white days with nails on a wall. It was a symbol for personal beliefs. In the case of cities, we must highlight the difference about East and West. In the Near East, the Julian calendar was introduces lately, because most of the urban centers had their own specific fasti.  However, even in the West, the local calendars and religious holydays – known mainly from the Hispanic municipal laws and some fragmentary preserved urban fasti[9] – were very diversified, with few common festivals, like the Saturnalia or the imperial holydays.  It is important to mention, that the monumental marble calendars are disappear even from Rome after the time of Tiberius, which suggest that the new Julian calendar – and the fasti itself – became an integrated part of the Roman society.

Dealing with the faith of the ancient man is a risky job. We know some puzzles from different periods, times and places about the faith and individual acts, feelings, cloths, places and instruments of religious manifestation. It is like reconstructing the life of a star by astronomers: you need analogies. What do we know about Roman religion in fact?

About the feelings and direct, religious experiences of the Roman people we have very few information. But we can ask also, what do we know the religious experience of our generation? We had almost the same lack of information about the religiosity of the people from the beginning of the XX^th century. With the exception of some personal journals, short remarks, poems and interviews we don’t know how they interacted and lived their religion. It is the same with the Romans: we have mainly the official façade of the religiosity, the self expression and representation of the people, with some laconic sources of personal religiosity, mainly from literary and epigraphic texts.

You are a member and coordinator of many international projects. Some of them, like the “Religiöse Individualisierung in historischer Perspektive” (second project: 2012 – 2017) has already a great echo in the international literature[10]. What are the perspectives and main ideas of this project?

In this project we are working together with theologians, historians, archaeologists and historians of religions mainly from Europe, but having also collaborators from India, China and New Zeeland.  Our main aim is to bringing together discernable patterns, mainly focusing not only one society, but the transfer of different agents of religion in and outside of a group. We also want to analyze some historiographical aspects, redefining also the term of “religion” in the frame of this new perspective of the individual.  As a perspective for this project, we will organize small workshops and conferences on the topic.

Another project is entitled “Lived Ancient Religion (2012-2017)”[11]. In this work we can find many young scholars also, dealing with some particular aspects of ancient religion like the small sanctuaries, the religious life of Ostia or Karanis. Why this project was founded and what are the main tasks of it?

The project is aiming to present the “lived religion” not as a supplementum or alternative for “cults” and “polis religion”, but as a perspective of it. Using the methodology of Meredith McGuire on embodied practices of the contemporary religion only as a starting point, the project’s aim is not to recreate a methodology of this kind for ancient societies and individuals, but more to use as a starting point for new perspectives. Having already organized important workshops and conferences, the research group will meet next time at Copenhagen in May, 2014[12].

Beside publishing books and articles on Roman religion, religious studies and historiography, you are also a very dynamic culture diplomat, elected in 2012 as a member in the German Council of Science and Humanities. How do you see the future of classical studies in Germany and generally, in Europe? What are the main problems or tendencies and how could we change it?

Classical studies as a privilege of the intellectual bourgeois is in disappearance even in Italy, Germany or Switzerland.   However, it is still easier to find financial support for project in the Western countries. Many of the studies are focusing on “globalization” in Roman world or on the relation of Rome and China – as a postmodern, actual topic. But this is only what the professionals see. For the rest of the world it is very important to present to Roman Empire and it’s heritage in Europe, the Near East and North Africa as an opportunity to share, making international projects and collaborations.

Bibliography

Phillips, R. 2007. Approaching Roman religion: the case for Wissenschaftgeschichte. In: Rüpke J. 2007. 12-25.	Rüpke, J. 2011. Time and festival. A Cultural history of the Calendar. Seoul.
Rives, D. 2010. Graeco – Roman Religion in the Roman Empire: Old Assumptions and New Approaches. In: Currents in Biblical Research 8, 240-299.	Rüpke, J. 2012. Lived ancient religion: questioning „cults” and „polis religion”. In: Mythos 5, 191-204.
Rüpke, J. 1990. Domi militiae. Die religiöse Konstruktion des Krieges in Rom. Stuttgart.	Rüpke, J. 2013. (Ed.) The individual in the religions of the Ancient Mediterranean. Oxford.
Rüpke, J. 1993. Religion bei Eduard Norden: die ’Altrömischen Priesterbücher’ im wissenschaftlischen Kotext der dreissiger Jahre. Magdeburg.	Rüpke, J. 2014. (Ed.) A Companion to the archaeology of the ancient world. New York (forthcoming)
Rüpke, J. 1995. Kalender und Öffentlichkeit: die Geschichte des geschichtlichen Bewusteins und seiner Verschiftlichungsformen in der Antike. Potsdam.
Rüpke, J. 2001. Religion der Römer: eine Einführung. München.
Rüpke, J. 2005. Fasti sacerdotum. Prosopographie der stadtrömischen Priesterschaften römischer, griechischer, orientalischer und jüdisch – christlicher Kulte bis 499 n. Chr. Stuttgart.
Rüpke, J. 2007. (Ed.) A Companion to Roman Religion. New York.

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[1] Rüpke 1990.

[2] Rüpke 1993, Rüpke 1995.

[3] Rüpke 2001.

[4] Phillips 2007, Rives 2010.

[5] Rüpke 2007.

[6] Rüpke 2014.

[7] Rüpke 2005.

[8] Rüpke 2011.

[9] About the urban calendars see: Rüpke 1995, 95-165, Reeves 2004.

[10] Rüpke 2013.

[11] Rüpke 2012.

[12] Workshops of the project: Presence of death in lived religion. 11^th EASR Annual Conference 2012 „Ends and beginnings”, Södertörn University, Stockholm, 23-26 August, 2012;  Archaeology of Lived Religion in Antiquity, Rome, 5-7^th November, 2012; “Sharpening the knife”: making religion effective in everyday life. Erfurt, 11-14 June, 2013; The role of objects-creating meaning in situations. Eisenach, 9-11 October,2013; Stories told and memories uttered – Ettersburg/Weimar, 29-31 January, 2014, 

Professor Dr. Carsten Herrmann-Pillath appointed “Distinguished Visiting Professor of Schwarzman Scholars at Tsinghua University” 2015-2017

Professor Dr. Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, Fellow for economics at the Max-Weber-Centre, University of Erfurt, working on „China’s Economic Culture“ has been appointed „Distinguished Visiting Professor of Schwarzman Scholars at Tsinghua University” for the years 2015–2017. Tsinghua University, Bejing is an international place of research with the Schwarzman Scholarships supporting scholarly exchange between leading Western scholars and China; the university campus hosts the famous Schwarzman College where like at Oxbridge, Harvard or Yale advanced studies are registered and, together with the fellows, enjoy the interdisciplinary international scholarly exchange.
Professor Dr. Hartmut Rosa, the director of the Max-Weber-Centre together with all its fellows and members is pleased about the nomination of one of its fellows, and sees in it a further strengthening of the contacts between the Max-Weber-Centre and China.