Peace Prize 2020: Raphael Gross and Moritz Helmstaedter complete the Foundation Board

The historian and president of the German Historical Museum in Berlin Raphael Gross succeeds Philipp Blom. Moritz Helmstaedter, physician, physicist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main, takes over from Janne Teller.

Prof. Dr. Raphael Gross headed the Leo Baeck Institute London, the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt and was Director of the Fritz Bauer Institute until 2015. Until 2017, he headed the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture at the University of Leipzig, after which he was appointed President of the German Historical Museum in Berlin. His publications on German-Jewish history are important. Among other awards, he received the Wilhelm Leuschner Medal in 2013.

Prof. Dr. Moritz Helmstaedter has been a scientific member of the Max Planck Society since 2014 and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt. He studied medicine and physics and received his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg before joining the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Munich as a research group leader in 2011. Since 2016 he is also Professor of Neural Networks at Radboud University, Nijmegen. For his work on the structure of neuronal networks in the brain, he has received, among others, the Otto Hahn Medal, and in 2013 he was awarded the Bernard Katz Lecture.

The Foundation Board has the task of nominating the Peace Prize winner(s)* for the year in question. Further members of the foundation board are:    Dr. Ethel Matala de Mazza (specialist in German studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin) and Bascha Mika (editor-in-chief of the Frankfurter Rundschau, Frankfurt am Main). The chairperson of the foundation board is Karin Schmidt-Friderichs (publisher, Mainz), who has been head of the Börsenverein since October 2019 and thus holds the chairmanship by virtue of her office.

The public is involved in the search for candidates: Citizens can submit their proposals until 1 March 2020. In June 2020, the foundation board will announce its decision. The Peace Prize will be awarded at the close of the Frankfurt Book Fair on 18 October 2020 in Frankfurt's Paulskirche.