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On 7th April the opening concert took place in the glass courtyard of the Jewish Museum and on 8th April the opening ceremony was held in the Leibniz hall of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy, in Berlin.
The opening festivities of the German-Israeli Year of Science and Technology started on the evening of 7 April with a concert featuring the Israeli pianist Yael Kareth, accompanied by cello, violin and soprano. The concert took place in the glass courtyard of the Jewish Museum in Berlin. The ensemble played works by German and Israeli composers from different periods, including Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Sasha Argov, Yoni Rechter and Yehezkel Braun.
After the Lied "Widmung" ("Dedication") by Robert Schumann, Minister Annette Schavan welcomed the many guests from science, politics and culture. In her short welcoming address, she gave a brief overview of the first Israeli-German intergovernmental consultations, which took place very recently. She also stressed the great importance of music as the common language of humanity and drew a parallel between music and science, which is equally good at building bridges between different peoples.
In his welcoming address, Galeb Majadle, the Israeli Minister of Science, Culture and Sport, underlined the warm and friendly rapport between himself and Minister Schavan and praised the role of science, art and culture as bridge-builders between the German and Jewish peoples after the Shoah. He said that he felt honoured to have been given the opportunity to meet so many young Jewish, Arab and German scientists that evening.
After the concert, the two ministers had dinner with Hildegard Müller, Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery; Ilan Mor, Minister of the Israeli Embassy; Thomas Rachel, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Education and Research, and various representatives from science and research as well as from both ministries.
The festivities continued on the following day with an opening ceremony in the Leibniz hall of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. Conny Czymoch acted as the master of ceremonies, while the Israeli-German jazz group "Ofrin" provided musical entertainment.
After the speeches by the two ministers, Prof. Israel Pecht and Prof. Wolfgang Frühwald spoke about their personal experiences of scientific cooperation between Germany and Israel.
Dr Pecht, who is professor of physical chemistry at the Weizmann Institute and a member of the Minerva Fellowship Committee, gave a short overview of the history of the Weizmann Institute, which, together with the Max Planck Society (MPG), paved the way for German-Israeli scientific cooperation in the 1950s. Prof. Pecht said that in view of the past, this process had not always been easy and that it had been met with a great deal of resistance in Israel. Pecht, who was born in Austria in 1937 and grew up in Israel, said that he had experienced this at first hand when he decided to go to Göttingen as a visiting scientist in the 1960s. He stated that he himself had often wondered whether he had chosen the right country. However, he said that he had since realized that "it was a good and important decision; we all carry the past inside us, but we must turn our eyes to the future."
The literary scholar Professor Frühwald was president of the German Research Association (DFG) for many years, spent years on the GIF board and is now honorary president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH). In his speech, he addressed the fact that Germany's cooperation with Israel in the humanities and social sciences had started about ten years later than the partnership in the natural sciences and that, compared to the "fast-paced developments" of cooperation in the natural sciences, cooperation in the humanities and social sciences had proceeded relatively slowly. Frühwald believes that the possible causes include different school traditions in Germany and in Isreal, the weight of memories, the susceptibility of the humanities to trends and ideologies, and the dwindling interest in Germany among young Israelis. He said that the German-Israeli Year of Science could trigger new developments in this area. Prof. Frühwald believes that the role that remembrance plays in both Judaism and the humanities would be a unique starting point. He said that what he admired about Israel was the "ubiquity of intellectuality" and the "enthusiasm for learning as a key to development and prosperity." Frühwald appealed to decision-makers from the areas of politics and society to recognize the creative potential of the arts and humanities. Finally, he underlined the fact that research can still build bridges today, and said that the inclusion of Palestinian researchers in numerous collaborative projects was an excellent example of this.
The subsequent symposium was chaired by Prof. Pecht and the chemist Prof. Helmut Schwarz, who is president of the AvH and former vice president of the DFG. It offered young scientists from both countries the opportunity to present their results obtained in bilateral research projects. They covered a very broad range of subjects, including game theory, order and disorder in theatre, and concurring effects in biological systems.
After the symposium, the participants were given the opportunity to put their questions to the representatives of funding organizations and institutions involved in cooperation.