Scientific excellence: Bavaria's centralistic problem

In Baden-Württemberg they have perfected this distribution of roles. Cutting-edge research in the region? Few people think of Stuttgart. There is also a university there. But universities beyond the state capital are outstanding. Anyone who would like to study or teach at an excellent university in Baden-Württemberg can do so across the country. The universities in Konstanz and Freiburg were already at the top, and Freiburg is now doing it again. Karlsruhe stands for cutting-edge research, as does Tübingen and Heidelberg.

A thought experiment: If it were good for Stuttgart as a city, would all the excellence from Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Tübingen and Heidelberg be massed there, in Stuttgart, in the future? Or would a place be in danger of suffocating? And: Would it be good for the country?

Modern Bavaria has always had a more centralized structure than the neighboring southern state. And the state government rightly emphasizes that Munich is the envy of the country for its research conditions and its two top universities. Nevertheless, it is an acute flaw in a large country if scientific excellence can only be developed in a single place.

Don't fool yourself: Of course, this is not least due to the conditions that are created for research. The country is responsible for that. So the Free State.

There is certainly no shortage of traditional places of science in Bavaria. In what is now the Free State, a university was founded for the first time in Würzburg, the fourth oldest on German soil. The city's mayor, Martin Heilig, observed how "attention, love and investments" for Bavaria's universities were later conspicuously concentrated in a single place.

And he is simply right when he states that this “cannot be a situation” in a modern state. While Baden-Württemberg still has four excellent universities, Bavaria has once again failed to have more than the two Munich universities recognized as outstanding. It cannot and must not remain like this.