The Gerda Henkel Foundation is making available 4.4 million euros for almost 60 new research projects. At their spring meeting, the Foundation committees adopted for funding projects by scholars from 27 countries. In history the project “Safety as a Seventh Sense”, was approved, an analysis of road behaviour in (West-)Germany. New insights in the area of art history are promised by a project on Vincent van Gogh as well as one on the network of relationships between artists in Rome. Research on the impact of the corona pandemic and the prevention of future epidemics will be supported in the Foundation’s special thematic focus “Security, Society and the State”.

The Seventh Sense
Road safety education in the era of mass mobility is the subject that historian Dr. Kai Nowak (Leipzig) addresses. Children are taught at an early age how to behave when facing the dangers posed by heavy road traffic. And television programmes also pass on expert know-how, for example in the ARD programme “Der 7. Sinn”. (The Seventh Sense) which was broadcast until 2005. Kai Nowak explores the continuities and changes in road safety education measures, above all in West Germany. He asks about the social concepts of order and the interaction between road safety education, on the one hand, and technology and science, on the other. The timeframe he covers in his research extends from 1900 up until the first years of a reunified Germany when millions of drivers from East Germany had to adapt to Western cars and a changing culture of transportation.

Stories about relationships: Vincent van Gogh; the “Rome artists”
Vincent van Gogh spent the last two months of his life in Auvers-sur-Oisie near Paris, where the collector Dr. Paul Gachet (1829-1909) socialised with and supported a number of artists. Emilie Gordenker and her team from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam will conduct new research on the importance of Dr Paul Gachet (1828–1909) as a collector of 19^th-century art and a patron of Vincent van Gogh’s work. The museum manages the largest Van Gogh collection in the world and is the leading research institute on the life and work of Vincent van Gogh, meaning it is ideally placed to elaborate on the relationship between the Van Gogh and Gachet families in the 20^th century.

The Dresden research programme centres on those artists who worked in Rome between 1792 and 1913. Headed by Prof. Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, art historians are examining the network of relationships of these “Rome artists”. The aim is to map out the life of these artists in the Eternal City. A major focus of the project lies in the competition and cooperation between two foreign groups: In terms of nationality the “German artists” were the larger group. They competed and cooperated with the French artists who had the additional institutional support of the Académie de France à Rome established by France.

Corona: Proteins and Protest
Zoonoses are infectious diseases that can jump from animals to humans. The outbreaks of BSE, SARS and more recently SARS-CoV2 have demonstrated how zoonoses can impact on crisis policy. So as to prevent such epidemics in future, human geographers Prof. Dr. Judith Miggelbrink, Dr. Frank Meyer and Dr. Frank Ingo Müller (Dresden) place their faith in food. Existing studies show that it is important to alter consumer habits and to shift food production to non-animal proteins. Through in-depth research, the project “Protein Matters” is intended to raise awareness for the risks of zoonoses in a world that is becoming ever more densely populated and provide arguments for political decisionmakers.

In his research project, Prof. Akos Kopper (Budapest) also devotes himself to the corona pandemic. According to the political scientist there has not been a comparable crisis since the Second World War. The fact that all countries are affected makes it possible to conduct a cross-cultural study. For Germany, Japan, Great Britain, Sweden and Hungary Akos Kopper examines what legal and normative restrictions the authorities have to face when they introduce emergency measures. He also considers how citizens whose political protests are restricted owing to the pandemic nonetheless develop creative ways of expressing their dissent.

For further information on the Gerda Henkel Foundation visit www.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de/en

Contact:
Gerda Henkel Foundation press office
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