Peer Steinbrück, unlike many other German politicians, is considered a good speaker. Steinbrück, who is running for the German chancellorship on the Social Democratic (SPD) party ticket and previously served as Federal Minister of Finance, a cabinet-level position, from 2005 to 2009, has a distinctive rhetorical profile, say literature scholars Nina Peter and Oliver Lubrich. As part of the “Emotions in Economic Crises” research project, the two of them studied the imagery with which policy makers and the media described the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.

Hélène Esnault is considered one of the world’s most important mathematicians. On October 1, 2012, the 59-year-old scholar took up her position as the first Einstein Professor at Freie Universität. With her work on number theory, the university hopes she will expand on a field of mathematics that has not been among the focuses of research in Berlin so far. French-born Esnault also wants to change that. “Berlin, and especially East Berlin, had a long tradition in this field,” she explains.

This research is both fundamental and necessary, if for no other reason than because of the complicated logistics involved. Important manuscripts from the 8th and 9th centuries are kept in libraries in various locations, including Saint Petersburg, the Sinai region, Cairo, Lebanon, Syria – and Berlin. Only a few sources have been analyzed so far, and even fewer have been subjected to scholarly discussion. “We have to fill this gap,” says Sabine Schmidtke. “After all, these are key texts, and they play an important role not only in theological analyses, but also in intercultural studies.”