Interview with Prof. Dr. Joachim Block

 

Prof. Dr. Joachim Block, who was also the site manager of the DLR in Braunschweig until January 2020, has been the Chairman of the Board of ForschungRegion Braunschweig e.V. for five years. We spoke with him about fortunate historical coincidences, a sense of community, and what the Expo 2000 in Hanover has to do with the founding of the association.

In brief: What exactly is ForschungRegion? Who or what is behind it and what are its goals?

ForschungRegion is the association of around 30 renowned institutions of science and research in the Braunschweig region. These include the four universities and colleges, the non-university research institutions, scientifically working museums and authorities of departmental research. ForschungRegion is the network of these institutions and their communication platform vis-à-vis the city of Braunschweig, the surrounding regional authorities and the public. The association aims to promote research in the region across institutions and to make it more present in the awareness of the respective target groups and the public.

How did so many different research institutions, universities, museums, etc. come to join forces? Why is the association useful or important?

All these institutions were already present in the Braunschweig region in the 1990s and some even much earlier, but initially had hardly any connections with each other. At that time, today’s partners were all doing their own thing, more or less. However, the city and region of Braunschweig became increasingly aware of their profile as a city or region of science, and with this, the importance of the research institutions for the region became more apparent, while at the same time Braunschweig’s character as an industrial city increasingly faded into the background. The initial spark for the coming together to form ForschungRegion was an exhibition called “fut(o)ur” in connection with the Expo in 2000 in Hanover. The “fut(o)ur” was actually intended to show the profile of the Braunschweig region here in the city to the mass of expected visitors in Hanover. Although not particularly many Expo visitors came to Braunschweig, the exhibition had a major effect of raising awareness among the Braunschweig institutions themselves. The months of preparation led to initial contacts and the realization that, despite all the differences in the research disciplines, they belonged together and jointly shaped the character of this research region. This gave rise to the idea of institutionalizing this association and maintaining contact and cooperation. This ultimately led to the founding of ForschungRegion Braunschweig as a registered association in 2004.

In view of this broad-based regional research landscape, is it even possible for a sense of community to develop? How well do networking and the pooling of expertise work with each other, for example?

The sense of community is based solely on the observation that we are all research institutions in this region and therefore jointly shape its character, even if we all do something completely different in terms of content. This does not require any pooling of specialist expertise; it is much more the sense of community that we as institutions all shape the city and the region with our science and research.

In connection with the Braunschweig region, there is frequent talk of “one of the most research-intensive regions in Europe”. What exactly is behind this? How can this research intensity be described?

This is of course a relative measure that is often misunderstood. Of course, there are more institutes and therefore more scientists in conurbations such as Munich or Berlin in absolute terms. The relative measure we are talking about here describes the per capita expenditure on research, and the Braunschweig region is right at the top. According to this definition, Braunschweig is indeed one of the most research-intensive, if not the most research-intensive region in Europe. But of course, one should always be careful with such superlatives.

How did it come about that so many research institutions settled in Braunschweig of all places? What makes the location so attractive for research?

This is largely thanks to fortunate historical coincidences in the immediate post-war period after the Second World War. Although there was the Technische Hochschule, there was not yet this accumulation of non-university research institutions. One example is the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), whose predecessor, the PTR, was based in Berlin. When the PTB was preparing to become a federal authority of the still young Federal Republic, it recommended that its headquarters be relocated from the beleaguered four-sector city to the western zones; only parts remained in Berlin. The PTB found a new home on the huge and undamaged, but now disused, site of the German Research Institute for Aviation (DFL) in Braunschweig-Völkenrode, as did the Research Institute for Agriculture (FAL), the predecessor of today’s Thünen Institute. When the DFL was allowed to conduct aviation research again a few years later, it was able to move into today’s DLR site at the airport in Waggum, where the highest aviation authority of the Federal Republic, the LBA, also settled through the influence of the then Minister of Transport Seebohm. Without these decisions, there would be no research airport today. And so, more and more research institutions followed in the years that followed. These were all simply fortunate coincidences, nobody had planned it. A collective stroke of luck, one might say.

What exactly is the source of the ForschungRegion’s innovation potential?

The innovation potential stems to a large extent from the combination of basic research on the one hand and industrial research and application on the other. For example, there is the close cooperation of many institutes with Volkswagen, which creates a symbiosis between pure science and industrial application, in which the region’s innovation potential can unfold.

You were Chairman of the Board of ForschungRegion for five years. This year your term of office ends and a new Chairman of the Board will be elected. What is your assessment, both personally and with regard to the network, when you look back on the past years?

When I took over the office five years ago from my predecessor, the then TU President Prof. Dr. Jürgen Hesselbach, the possibilities for action of ForschungRegion were limited to isolated events. This was mainly due to the fact that the contribution income was very low and ForschungRegion was therefore hardly able to provide any major own services. Mr. Hesselbach had then initiated a contribution reform during his term of office, which resulted in a significantly larger budget at the beginning of my term of office. However, it took some time until people understood how to use this budget effectively. For example, we were able to provide significant support for the “Campus in Motion” campaign as part of the TU’s application for the title of “University of Excellence” and we were able to carry out and finance a number of things from our own resources at the 10th anniversary of the “City of Science”. Most recently, we were able to initiate a cooperation with the Haus der Wissenschaft, with whose support we will now further expand our external communication.

Let’s take a look into the future. Where will ForschungRegion be in 10 years?

It is clear that we are in times of massive change. This is becoming even clearer in view of the current corona crisis. When this crisis will hopefully soon be overcome, many things will be seen differently, many weights will be set very differently and this will certainly also have an impact on research. I believe that ForschungRegion as a whole will continue to gain in importance and will learn to use its own resources in an even more targeted manner. I am therefore convinced that ForschungRegion still has a long and promising future ahead of it.