Change of Management in the Executive Board
of the Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz Foundation

Twenty-two years after the establishment of the Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz Foundation, a change in the Executive Board took place on November 1st 2008: The economist Professor Eckard Minx, Head of the Research Division "Society and Technology" of the Daimler AG in Berlin, is the new President of the Executive Board. Professor Rainer Dietrich, full professor for Psycholinguistics at the Humboldt University in Berlin, is the second member of the Executive Board. Professor Gisbert Baron zu Putlitz and Dr. Diethard Schade retired from the Executive Board. As founding members, they have decisively shaped the foundation's work. The foundation's purpose is "the support of science and research for clarifying the interactions between man, the environment, and technology".

Members of the Executive Board since the foundation's establishment in the year 1986: Professor Gisbert Baron zu Putlitz and Dr. Diethard Schade.

"Ladenburg Collegia" - named after the seat of the foundation in Ladenburg, North Baden - studied scientific questions in the subject areas of safety in technology, for humanity, and at work, as well as innovations in the Informations- and Communications Technologies in multi-year research programs. A fellowship program for the graduation of young scientists in foreign countries supported more than 700 fellowship holders, many of them from Asia, in particular, from Southeast Asia. A series of bilateral seminars of German scientists with colleagues from Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea, and Burma has intensively furthered the scientific exchange with these up-and-coming nations.

Presenting the portraits of their predecessors in the Board at the farewell ceremony on September 19th 2008 in Haus Huth in Berlin: Professor Rainer Dietrich and the new President of the Board, Professor Eckard Minx. (All Photographs: Matti Hillig)

The new President of the Executive Board, the economist Professor Eckard Minx, has been in charge of the research area "Society and Technology" of the Daimler AG in Berlin and in Palo Alto, California, since 1992, with which he has been associated since 1980. He is a member of numerous panels, among others, in the Strategy Advisory Council for socio-ecological research of the Federal Ministry for Education and Research. Minx has been associated with the foundation for quite a while; he has contributed decisively to the Ladenburg Collegium "Living in the City", between 1991 and 1994. Before his nomination to the Executive Board in the year 2007, he was a member of the foundation's Scientific Advisory Board.

Since 1993, Professor Rainer Dietrich, after teaching and research activities at the Universities of Saarbruecken and Heidelberg, has been full professor for Psycholinguistics at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He is a member of the University Council. From 1996 to 2005, he was a member and - temporarily - speaker of the foundation's Scientific Advisory Board. He has been a member of the Board since 2005. From 1999 to 2004, he chaired the Ladenburg Collegium "Group Interaction in High Risk Environments".