Our picture of the week shows an impression of the new permanent exhibition "Demokratie - Jetzt oder nie!" ("Democracy - now or never!") at the Lindenstraße Memorial in Potsdam, designed by the Potsdam Museum and the Leibniz Association's "Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung" (Centre of Contemporary History). "Democracy - now or never" was the demand voiced at the biggest demonstration in Potsdam on 4 November 1989. The exhibition covers the background and course of the peaceful revolution in the Potsdam district, the protagonists, the founding of the opposition movement and parties in autumn 1989, and the end of East German State Security up until the first free elections in 1990. The site of the exhibition was used by the Nazis to intern members of the opposition and resistance. The former GDR Ministry of State Security used the building, in common parlance the "Lindenhotel", as its detention centre, where thousands of inmates were subjected to prison conditions and interrogation methods in contravention of human rights. Basic information on the Memorial under http://www.zzf-pdm.de/site/649/default.aspx...

The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Scientific Community, known as the Leibniz Association, is the umbrella organisation for 86 institutions conducting research or providing scientific infrastructure. Some 6,500 scientists and scholars work in the humanities and social sciences, economics, spatial and life sciences as well as in mathematics, the natural and engineering sciences and in environmental research. Altogether, ca. 14,000 people are employed at Leibniz Institutes, which have an annual budget of more than a billion euro.

Characteristic of the Leibniz Association is the enormous diversity of themes addressed by the institutes as well as its decentralised organisational structure: by far the majority of institutes are scientifically and organisationally independent. They conduct strategic, theme-based research and constantly strive for academic excellence and social relevance.

In this way, the Leibniz Association makes direct reference to its eponym, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who was the epitome of a great universal scholar. It is in this spirit that the non-university research institutes and the service facilities adopt an interdisciplinary approach. They provide scientific services and the relevant infrastructure and cooperate with universities, institutions belonging to other science organisations and commercial enterprise.

In a word:
Theoria cum praxi: science for the benefit and good of humankind.

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