400 Years of the PLUS

The Rector’s Column | 29.07.2021

The year 2022 will be a time for celebration: it is the 400th anniversary of our University’s founding. A dedicated committee has been working since October 2020 on an exciting programme of events to commemorate this important milestone. It gives me great pleasure to present to you the highlights and key dates for the upcoming festivities.

At the beginning of the year, from 27 January 2022 the exhibition “PLUSpunkte. 400 Years of the University of Salzburg”, organised together with the DomQuartier Salzburg, will be open to the public. The exhibition, housed in the baroque rooms of the North Oratory, will display the PLUS’s rich history since its founding as a Benedictine University in 1622, alongside a multimedia room offering a glimpse into the PLUS’s prospects and future potential. An accompanying book and at the same time catalogue will be published in December 2021 by the Anton Pustet publishing house, which will (also) provide insights into the University’s impressive past, present and future perspectives.

The anniversary year will see another project come to fruition: A children’s book, co-authored by me, will be published by edition riedenburg. In the story, Marie, a distant descendant of Marie Andeßner, explores the PLUS and realises that a University is the best place to ask questions and find answers (particularly on her own).

The Paris Lodron Gala, a fundraising dinner with a stunning programme, will take place on 4 February 2022 in the Carabinieri Hall of the Residenz: The clarinettist Sabine Meyer, the soprano Michèle Crider and the actor Klaus Maria Brandauer are booked to perform for us at this  evening event. The Department of Communication and Fundraising will provide more information on the purchase of tickets at a later date.

Along with the PLUS’s existing event programme, the Panorama:Uni and the Salzburger Vorlesungen, the PLUS will hold its own series of talks in 2022; the “400PLUS Lectures”. The programme for “400 Years of PLUS: Insights and Prospects” will begin in March 2022 and will present the University in its many facets, pay tribute to its historical development and provide an outlook for the future. In addition to speakers from within the University, we made sure to invite speakers with an external perspective on the PLUS.

In May, the PLUS will be working together with the Kaiviertelfest. All members of the University will be able to get together and celebrate from Kaigasse all the way to the (newly designed) Kajetanerplatz. We hope to host a gathering for fellow students to come together. After all, the opportunities to meet and socialise have been too few and far between over the past year. We will be working together with the ÖH to make sure that everyone can have a good time and ensure the safety of all participants.

The programme will also involve events with a focus on research. To name a few examples: a symposium on Stefan Zweig and Thomas Mann (Begegnungen. Stefan Zweig und Thomas Mann), a joint event organised by the PLUS, the German Thomas Mann Society and the Salzburg Festival, the 14th Contemporary Austrian History Day (Österreichische Zeitgeschichtetag) and the conference of the Gender Studies Society Austria. The Life Long Learning offer “Uni 55-PLUS” will also celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2022. The anniversary year will conclude with an academic ceremony on 4 October, the day the University was founded.

For the latest update on the event planning, please visit the Department of Communication and Fundraising’s  intranet page (in German).

I am very much looking forward to celebrating our University and its history with all of you in the coming year and to raising a glass to its future.

Most cordially yours

Hendrik Lehnert