"Less academic input and more time for networking and personal discussions" - that was one of the suggestions following the last alumni event on the topic of start-ups in fall 2018. At the same time, several people expressed the desire to bring the city and the university even closer together at the panel discussions "Students and Culture" and "Student Hour" in winter 2018/2019. So it was only natural to hold the next alumni network meeting under the motto "#LUst auf LU?!" and show former and current students their place of study from a different perspective. The Alumni Office, the Association of Friends and Supporters of the University and Ludwigshafener Kongress- und Marketing-Gesellschaft mbH LUKOM invited students to a guided walk through the city on 17 May 2019, followed by a get-together at the dasHaus cultural center.
After being welcomed by University President Professor Dr. Peter Mudra and Chairman of the Friends' Association Thomas Bull, the group of around 30 people set off on their tour from the Hotel Moxy opposite the Rheingalerie in fine weather early on Friday evening: under the expert guidance of Michael Cordier and Yann Fürst from LUKOM, the tour began at the Zollhof and headed along the Rhine past the Italian restaurant Tialini, the Werfthalle and the Gelbes Haus in the direction of the Walzmühle. The tour not only focused on the present of the industrial city, but also took a look at the past in the form of old photos from the city archives presented in a contemporary way on the tablet. Among other things, the participants learned that this central location used to be a port area and that a ferry connected Ludwigshafen and Mannheim. The shipyard hall with the still-preserved unloading crane, which today houses a notary's office, law offices and a media agency, bears witness to this, as do the rail tracks on the footpath and the 350-year-old anchor stone of the former ferry station. This anchor stone, Cordier revealed, spent decades in a depot. Now it marks the new jetty for the river cruise.
From the harbor jetty, the group then turned in the direction of Bismarckplatz, stopping off at the temporary kindergarten, which Cordier used as an example to illustrate the unequal distribution of costs for infrastructure projects between local, state and federal authorities. From Bismarckplatz, which with its gaping construction site provided plenty of food for critical questions on urban development from the alumni, the tour then continued past the beautiful buildings of the vocational school through Untere Ludwigsstraße to the ultra-modern city library and the Bürgermeister-Ludwig-Reichert-Haus behind it, which houses the Ludwigshafener Kunstverein.
The tour then continued to the "tenth largest stage in Germany", the "new" Pfalzbau - the "old" one once stood on Bismarckplatz - and into the Melanchthonkirche, located next to the university's Department of Social and Health Care. The sandstone-clad church was built as one of 42 emergency churches across Germany after the Second World War, after the Protestant church on Lutherplatz was destroyed by an American bomber in 1943, Pastor Susanne Schramm explained to the group. The remains of the predecessor institution on the beautifully designed Lutherplatz was the next stop on the tour, before heading to the Wilhelm Hack Museum with its famous Joan Miró façade and the "urban gardening" project of the Hack Museum Garden, where one of many cultural events was taking place.
The stroll through the city finally ended with a guided tour of the dasHaus cultural center and a stop at Café Hausboot, where drinks and snacks awaited the guests - a good and much-used opportunity to continue the conversation with the other participants. Benedict Eninger, graduate of the Neustadt Wine Campus, for example, took the opportunity to present the idea of his start-up, while Max Schröder, Marco Endres and Dominica Filipowska, alumni of the East Asia Institute and the Master's degree course in Business Informatics respectively, were already discussing the concrete organization of possible alumni follow-up events with logistics alumnus Vasily Ostrov.
The university's alumni team would like to thank the Association of Friends and Sponsors, LUKOM, the city's cultural office and the crew of the houseboat for their kind support!
The next alumni network meeting is planned for fall 2019, more information on this and the application documents for the Association of Friends and Sponsors of the university can be found at www.hwg-lu.de/alumni
Further photos can be found on our alumni Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pg/AlumniHsLu/photos/
