Join us for the Opening Ceremony of the 2024/25 Academic Year as we welcome a new cohort of international students to the Hertie community.
The event will also honour Renate Mayntz, Founding Director and Director Emerita at the Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung, and Fritz Scharpf, Director Emeritus of the Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung.
More about the event's honorees
Renate Mayntz
Born in 1929 in Berlin, Renate Mayntz pursued her studies in the USA (B.A. 1950) and at the Free University of Berlin (Dr. phil. 1953), where she also completed her habilitation (1957). Her initial research activities took place at the UNESCO Institute for Social Sciences in Cologne, later as a DFG Fellow and Rockefeller Fellow in the USA. In 1965, she became a Full Professor of Sociology at the Free University of Berlin, then at the University of Administrative Sciences Speyer in 1971, and at the University of Cologne in 1973.
In 1985, she was the Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) in Cologne, serving as Director at the MPIfG from 1985 until her retirement in 1997. For her outstanding scientific contributions, Renate Mayntz received the Prize of the German Society for Sociology in 2006 and the Innovation Prize of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2010. In recognition of her pioneering work in organisational sociology in Germany, she was awarded the Ernst Hellmut Vits Prize in 2008.
Fritz Scharpf
From 1964 to 1966, Fritz W. Scharpf served as an Assistant Professor of Law at Yale Law School and, in 1965, also as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. From 1966 to 1968, he received a habilitation scholarship from the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the University of Freiburg. In 1968, he became a Full Professor (Ordinarius) of Political Science at the University of Konstanz, where he established an interdisciplinary social science program.
Scharpf was a member of the Project Group for Government and Administrative Reform, which developed proposals for reorganising the Federal Government, including the restructuring of the Federal Ministries. From 1973 to 1984, Scharpf was the Director of the International Institute for Management and Administration at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), where he also held a research professorship from 1984 to 1986. From 1986 until his retirement in 2003, he was the Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG). During this period, he held visiting professorships and research stays in Stanford, USA (1987), Florence (1995 and 1999), and Paris (2001).