"Less technical input and more time for networking and personal conversations" - that was one of the suggestions following the last alumni event on the topic of start-ups in the fall of 2018. At the same time, during the panel discussions "Students and Culture" and "Students' Hour" in the winter of 2018/2019, the desire to bring the city and the university even closer together was voiced from several sides. So it was not far-fetched to place the next alumni network meeting under the motto "#LUst auf LU?!" and to show former and current students their place of study from a different perspective. Thus, the Alumni Office, the Association of Friends and Supporters of the University and the Ludwigshafener Kongress- und Marketing-Gesellschaft mbH LUKOM invited to a guided city walk on May 17, 2019, followed by a get-together at the dasHaus cultural center.
After the welcome by university president Professor Dr. Peter Mudra and sponsoring association chairman Thomas Bull, the group of around 30 started their tour in the best weather early on Friday evening from the Hotel Moxy opposite the Rheingalerie: Under the expert guidance of Michael Cordier and Yann Fürst from LUKOM, the tour started from the Zollhof and went along the Rhine past the Italian restaurant Tialini, the Werfthalle and the Gelbes Haus in the direction of the Walzmühle. The tour not only focused on the present of the industrial city, but also took a look at the past in the form of old photos from the city archives presented in a contemporary way on a tablet. Among other things, the participants learned that this central location used to be a port area and that a ferry connected Ludwigshafen and Mannheim. The shipyard hall with the still preserved unloading crane, which today houses a notary's office, law offices and a media agency, bears witness to this, as do the rail tracks on the footpath or the 350-year-old anchor stone of the former ferry station. This anchor stone, Cordier revealed, eked out an existence in a depot for decades. Now it marks the new harbor dock for river cruising.
From the harbor pier, the group then turned in the direction of Bismarckplatz, stopping at the provisionally established kindergarten, the example of which Cordier used to vividly explain the unequal distribution of costs for infrastructure projects between municipalities, the state and the federal government. From Bismarckplatz, which with its gaping construction site provided ample food for critical inquiries about urban development on the part of the alumni, the tour then continued past the beautiful buildings of the vocational school through Untere Ludwigsstraße to the highly modern municipal library and the Mayor Ludwig Reichert House behind it, which houses the Ludwigshafen Art Association.
Then it went on to the "tenth largest stage in Germany", the "new" Pfalzbau - the "old" one once stood on Bismarckplatz - and into the Melanchthon Church located next to the Department of Social and Health Services of the University of Applied Sciences. The sandstone-clad church was built as one of 42 emergency churches throughout Germany after World War II, after the Lutheran church on Lutherplatz was destroyed by an American bomber in 1943, explained pastor Susanne Schramm to the group there. The remains of the predecessor institution on the beautifully designed Lutherplatz was then logically the next stop on the tour, before then the Wilhelm Hack Museum with the famous Joan Miró facade and the "Urban Gardening" project of the Hack Museum Garden was headed for, where just one of many cultural events took place.
The stroll through the city was concluded with a guided tour of the dasHaus cultural center and a stop at the Café Hausboot, where drinks and snacks awaited the guests - a good and much-used opportunity to talk further with the other participants. Benedict Eninger, graduate of the Neustadt Wine Campus, for example, took the opportunity to present the idea of his "start-up" while Max Schröder, Marco Endres and Dominica Filipowska, alumni of the East Asia Institute and the Master's program in Business Informatics, respectively, were already discussing the concrete design of possible alumni follow-up events with logistics alumnus Vasily Ostrov.
The alumni team of the university would like to thank the Association of Friends and Sponsors, LUKOM, the cultural office of the city and the crew of the houseboat for their kind support!
The next alumni network meeting is planned for fall 2019, more information about this as well as the application documents for the Association of Friends and Supporters of the University can be found at: www.hwg-lu.de/alumni
More photos are posted on our alumni Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pg/AlumniHsLu/photos/?tab=album&album_id=350600128833049 .
