Whenever Thomas Schmülling looks out his office window, he’s sure to see one thing: plants. The Applied Genetics buildings on Albrecht-Thaer-Weg are located amid fields, forest, and meadows – green as far as the eye can see. It’s wonderful, says Schmülling, head of the department of Applied Genetics and Chair of Molecular Developmental Biology of Plants. Plus, the building is located on historic ground. After all, this is the very site where, in 1922, the Heredity Research Institute (Institut für Vererbungsforschung) of the Prussian Royal Agricultural College (Königlich Preussische Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule) was founded – “the first of its kind in Germany,” Schmülling says.

When she was 18 years old, Jutta Pelz-Bergt was a slave laborer at Auschwitz, and in 1945, she survived one of the series of death marches from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück. With this past, the now 86-year-old Pelz-Bergt calls herself a “discontinued model,” with irony and a certain distance. After all, she was among the younger victims of the Nazi regime, and not many of them are still alive today. The Berlin-born Pelz-Bergt, who is Jewish, was among the more than twelve million people who worked as forced laborers and slaves for the German regime at that time. To preserve the memory of these events and support education in history and politics, researchers and faculty members from various disciplines at Freie Universität Berlin have developed an online archive entitled “Forced Labor, 1939–1945” for academic and educational use, along with digital materials designed specifically for use in elementary and secondary schools.

How are people living with HIV/AIDS treated in Tanzania? What does being sick mean for illegal immigrants in Germany? How do Chinese women living in Berlin experience pregnancy? The field of medical anthropology explores questions like these. At the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology of Freie Universität, a thematic cluster has been established specifically for this field. The cluster made its first public appearance during the Long Night of the Sciences held on June 5.