🇬🇧🇩🇪 24 May 2026. On the Towel Day weekend we had a festival to mark the 25th anniversary of Douglas Adams death: Which of his prophecies have (almost) come true? What do we need to watch out for? How do we best embrace his advice: Don’t panic?

🇬🇧 23 May 2026. Stories about trips to the Moon and to the stars have been told from the very beginnings of cultural evolution — and presently humankind is (back on track) on its way to the stars. On occasion of the SteamPunk festival in Leipzig we explored how art, literature, industrial revolution, and scientific discoveries paved the road in this endeavor — and we contemplated what might come up to us. To finish off, we joined the SteamPunk picnic in the Clara Zetkin Park.

🇩🇪🧒 10 May 2026. On Mother’s Day, we organized a parent-and-child treasure hunt with time for solving puzzles and laughing together, and lots of fun with numbers. We started in the Institute for Veterinary Anatomy, proceeded to the Botanical Garden, and had a third and final stop in the INSPIRATA.

🇬🇧 19 April 2026 was the 225th birthday of the polymath and founding director of the Leipzig Physics Institute, Gustav Theodor Fechner. Tracing his life story, we followed the major structural changes of the university during the 19th century: The transition from a national constitution to a faculty constitution — and the establishment of scientific institutes in the faculties.

🇩🇪 8 March 2026. 235 years ago, author and political activist Olympe de Gouges published the Déclaration des droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne (Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens), and it took almost 200 years for them to be implemented in Western Europe. On the International Women’s Day, we traced the long road to their adoption, and took note of the important contributions made by women in Leipzig — with notable interludes to discussion where we stand today.

🇬🇧 7 February 2026. We explored new research on the benefits of diversity: Learning is enhanced when students tackle new concepts form a multitude of different perspectives. A team comes up with more diverse and better ideas when it involves specialists of many different disciplines. Ecosystems tend to be more resilient to external perturbations when they feature a higher biodiversity. How can our society profit from embracing diversity?

🇬🇧 11 Juli 2026. 200 years ago, Joseph Meyer founded the Bibliographisches Institut in Gotha, and his son moved it to Leipzig in 1874. The publishing house was known for its inexpensive editions of classics, encyclopedias such as Mayer’s Konversationslexikon, and as the publisher of the Duden, Brehm’s Tierleben, and the BI-Hochschultaschenbücher.

🇩🇪 8 August 2026. In 1812 Samuel Hahnemann became a lecturer (“Privatdozent”) at Leipzig University. It was here that he developed his ideas on medicine, and where he gave lectures on homeopathy. He advocated for careful empirical studies of the effects of medications, and opposed the treatments commonly used at the time, such as bloodletting and purgatives. This makes him an important pioneer of modern medicine. In 1833, the first homeopathic hospital was opened in Leipzig, and exactly 175 years ago, on August 10, 1881, the Hahnemann Monument was inaugurated on today’s Richard-Wagner-Platz. In our tour we will explore Hahnemann’s contributions to establishing modern medicine in the 19th century, and we will revisit his sustained influence till the present day.

🇬🇧 12 September 2026. 250 years ago, Goethe and Lessing traveled to Italy, and Seume undertook a walking tour to Syracuse. The next generation of travelers devoted themselves to studying the plants, animals, and geological formations of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. What led to this change? What caused this shift in the focus of travel? Where are researchers heading today?

🇩🇪 31 May 2026. The School Museum is currently hosting a special exhibition entitled “Freiräume für Bildung – Schule und Architektur im Dialog” (“open spaces for education – schools and architecture in dialogue”). We are taking this as an opportunity to venture out on a tour exploring old and new school buildings, as well as classic, still relevant, and brand-new educational concepts.