Freie Universität Berlin has its own apiary: At the Institute of Biology, scientists and master beekeepers study and tend to colonies of bees and produce honey. They also offer courses and training for student groups and teachers and for beekeeping hobbyists and professionals.

The forest between the villages of Glienick and Gross-Schulzendorf is inhabited only by stalks of grain and little deer. Well, not the whole forest, actually: A team of archaeologists from Freie Universität have set up a tent there and begun digging up the ground. Layer by layer, the archaeologists, led by Markolf Brumlich, have dug back in time to a few hundred years before Asterix and Obelix – down to the pre-Roman Iron Age, which spanned from the 6th to the 1st century BC.

The ban on construction of minarets in Switzerland, the “head scarf debate” in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, co-ed sports in schools – Schirin Amir-Moazami had barely had time to get settled in her new office at the Institute of Islamic Studies located on Altensteinstrasse on the Dahlem campus before she became a sought-after contact for the media. The focus of her research, Islam in Europe, is one of the major social themes of our era.