Freiburg:Life Sciences and Regional Development (Satis Shroff)

Life Sciences Are the Engines of Regional Development (Satis Shroff)

Subtitle: OB Salomon Meets Freiburger CEOs and Professors from the Life Sciences

 

 

Auf Einladung von Oberbürgermeister Dieter Salomon und Stiftungsvorstand Bernd Dallmann trafen sich am Mittwochabend (1. August) führende Persönlichkeiten aus Unternehmen und Forschung als Gäste der Technologiestiftung BioMed Freiburg zum diesjährigen Gedankenaustausch Life Sciences im Panorama-Hotel Mercure am Jägerhäusle.

 

Das wichtigste Ergebnis dieser Gesprächsrunde: „Der Life Sciences Standort Freiburg ist hervorragend aufgestellt.“ Zahlreiche Investitionen schaffen neue zukunftsorientierte Arbeitsplätze im Gesundheitsbereich, darunter etwa die beiden Labor-dienst-leister SGS Institut Fresenius und MVZ Clotten oder der US-Medizintechnikhersteller Stryker, der seine Freiburger Produktions- und Entwicklungsstätte erweitern wird. Hinzu kommen Neubauten von Universität und Universitätsklinikum wie beispielsweise die Erweiterung des Universitäts-Notfallzentrums oder das erst im Juni eingeweihte „Signalhaus“ des Zentrums für biologische Signalstudien. Mit dem neuen Universitäts-Herz-zentrum Freiburg – Bad Krozingen wurde bereits im Frühjahr ein bedeutender regionaler Brückenschlag vollzogen.

 

„Der Standort Freiburg ist attraktiv für Unternehmen, Fachkräfte und Studierende aus dem In- und Ausland“, so übereinstimmend die CEOs wichtiger Freiburger Life Sciences Unternehmen. Das renommierte Institut für Immunbiologie und Epigenetik der Max Planck-Gesellschaft, die weiter auf Expansionskurs befindlichen fünf Fraunhofer-Institute, eine exzellente universitäre Forschung und die zahlreichen High-Tech-Unternehmen machen Freiburg zu einem besonderen Think Tank im Bereich Life Science. Gesucht werden risikobereite und finanzkräftige Privatanleger für innovative Start-ups und junge Firmen. Die vor diesem Hintergrund gesuchte Nähe zum Finanzplatz Basel und die gezielte Ansprache kapitalstarker privater Geldgeber sind ein erfolgversprechender Ansatz, der weiterverfolgt werden soll. Hierfür sagte OB Dieter Salomon Unterstützung durch die Wirtschaftsförderung der FWTM zu. Mit Blick auf die Vereinbarkeit von Familie und Beruf investiere die Stadt getragen von einer breiten Unterstützung im Gemeinderat in zusätzliche Betreuungs- und Bildungsmöglichkeiten für Kleinkinder und Schüler. Darüber hinaus werden neue Wohnungsbauprojekte angeschoben, um auch künftig ausreichend und bezahlbaren Wohnraum vorhalten zu können.

 

Die Freiburger Unternehmen im Bereich Gesundheitswirtschaft entwickeln sich gut; auch für die Zukunft rechnen deren Geschäftsführer mit positivem Wachstum. Das Angebot an hervorragende ausgebildeten Universitätsabsolventen ist sehr gut, gesucht werden vor allem qualifizierte Fachkräfte in industrienahen technischen und handwerklichen Berufen wie MTAs, CTAs oder aber Feinmechaniker für die Herstellung präziser chirurgischer Instrumente. „Es bleibt deshalb eine ständige Herausforderung, ausreichend qualifizierte Fachkräfte zu gewinnen, um mit der steigenden Nachfrage nach Freiburger Produkten standzuhalten“, geben insbesondere die Vertreter der medizintechnischen Betriebe zu bedenken.

 

 Inzwischen sind mehr als 21 Prozent der Freiburger Arbeitsplätze im Gesund-heitsbereich angesiedelt; das ist ein Spitzenwert im Land.

 

„Mit seinen Arbeitsplatzeffekten entlang der gesamten Wertschöpfungskette im Bereich Life Sciences und den vielfältigen Aus- und Weiterbildungsangeboten – etwa in Form des trinationalen Studiengangs ‘Bio-technologie (ESBS)’ – ist und bleibt das BioValley ein wichtiger Baustein für die erfolgreiche Entwicklung am Oberrhein“, so das Resümee von Bernd Dallmann, Vorstand der Technologiestiftung BioMed Freiburg und von 2004-2006 selbst Präsident des BioValley Zentralvereins. Das trinationale BioValley zählt weit mehr als 600 Firmen mit insge-samt mehr als 50.000 Arbeitsplätzen, davon rund 300 Firmen im Bereich Biotech/Pharma.

 

Mit der Verlängerung der Förderungen für die „Spemann Gra-duiertenschule für Biologie und Medizin (SGBM)“ und das „Zentrum für biologische Signalstudien (BIOSS)“ sowie dem neu bewilligten Exzellenzcluster „BrainLinks – BrainTools“ wird die Universität Freiburg auch in Zukunft ihren Beitrag für eine weiterhin positive Entwicklung leisten, betonen die Vertreter der Universität. Mit rund 700 Patentanmeldungen sind Universität und Universitätsklinikum gemeinsam nach Dresden bundesweit die patentstärksten Einrichtungen.

 

Aktuell und in naher Zukunft sind weitere Veranstaltungen in Freiburg, bei denen der Austausch zwischen Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft im Bereich Life Sciences im Vordergrund steht:

• Bei dem laufenden „Plant Biology Congress Freiburg 2012“ vom 29. Juli bis zum 3. August 2012 an der Universität Freiburg“, dem in diesem Jahr größten europäischen Kongress der Pflanzenforscherinnen und Pflanzenforscher, geht es in mehr als 600 wissenschaftlichen Beiträgen um grundlegende Fragen des Pflanzenwachstums sowie um angewandte Forschung in der Ernährung, Biotechnologie, Bioenergie und weltweiten Klimaveränderung. Weitere Informationen unter: www.plant-biology-congress 2012.de

 

• Das diesjährige „Forum Biotechnologie Baden-Württemberg“ am 19. September 2012 im Konzerthaus Freiburg richtet sich an Biotech-Unternehmen, Forschungseinrichtungen, Cluster und Verbände, Pharma-, MedTech-, Energie- und Umwelttechnikunternehmen richtet und Gelegenheit für intensives Netzwerken bietet. Der Schwerpunkt Gesundheit deckt die

Pressemeldung Themen wie Antibiotika/Antimikrobielle Substanzen, Lab-on-a-Chip/Point of Care, Personalisierte Medizin und Kunststoffe in der Medizintechnik ab. Der zweite Fokus liegt auf Nachhaltigkeit mit Themen wie Industrielle Biotechnologie/ Bioökonomie, Wassermanagement und biologische Wasserstoffherstellung.

Weitere Informationen unter: www.bio-pro.de

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Creative Writing Critique (Satis Shroff): Fire in the Blood

Creative Writing Critique (Satis Shroff): FIRE IN THE BLOOD

Review: Irene Nemirovsky Fire in the Blood, Vintage Books, London 2008,

153 pages, 7,99 Sterling Pounds (ISBN: 978-0-099-51609-5)

 

Denise Epstein was 13 when her mother Irene Nemirovsky was deported to Auschwitz, where she eventually died in 1942. The daughter is now an octogenarian and was instrumental in helping her mother attain her place in the world literature. Irene Nemirovsky was a writer who could look into the souls of humans and make music with words. Her masterpiece Suite francaise was published in France in 2004 and was immediately awarded the Prix Renaudot.

 

The characters of Fire in Blood are  drawn from a rural French town in Burgundy, a wine-growing area where people are simple and stick together, want to retain their ‘peace’ and don’t like the police and the authorities. A place where all people show conformity and keep their mouths shut. Peace is a synonym for not wanting to be involved in the affairs of other people. The author’s attitude towards the characters has a universal appeal, for it could happen anywhere in the world in a closed-circuit society where outsiders are shunned and not generally accepted. Nemirovsky shows not only what people do to others but also what the passage of time does to us all. The characters aren’t flat and every character bounds into life and you an imagine the world that she creates in her 153 page novel still goes on with its own pace without much changes. The community itself shows a predatory behaviour of extreme cunning.

 

The major theme of Fire in Blood is love, poverty, arranged marriages and extra-marital affairs that lead to complications and new story developments. The protagonist Sylvestre also called Silvio tells the story in the first person singular and recalls stories in front of the fireplace about his beautiful, graceful cousin Helene and her daughter Colette, Brigitte Delos and Francoise, their marriages, happiness and boredom and the seasonal changes of the Burgundy countryside. Silvio speaks about impatient young people and the perfectly balanced older people at peace with themselves and the world, despite the creeping fear of death. The book is replete with the truths, deaths, marriages, children, houses, mills, dowry, haves and have-nots, stinginess, love-affairs, hatred, deception and betrayal.  Nemirovsky is an excellent story-teller and reveals her tale of flaws and cruelties of the human heart in an intricately woven story. She builds up suspense and you feel the catharsis when an innocent-looking protagonist tells her version of how a man was murdered.

 

The theme is traditional and familiar and is psychologically and socially interesting in intent.

 

Silvio tells about his childhood and about children asking their parents how they met, fell in love and married. He also mentions past loves, former grudges, inheritances, law suits and who-married-whom and why in the French provincial setting. The story plot is slow at the beginning but gathers momentum, and the climax is not the murder but how the author unfurls the story of the confession. In the end Silvio confides to the reader how much he still loves his dear cousin Helene, who’s married to Francoise.

 

The intellectual qualities of writing of Nemirovsky are her cheerfulness, sudden twists and power of observation which flow into the story making it a delightful read. She gives you the impression that her tale is linear, only to show you that there’s a twist that takes narration in another direction. Silvio, the Ich-Erzähler, says to Colette, who wants to involve him in her family drama: ‘Tell them you have a lover and that he killed your husband.. What exactly did happen?’

 

wit and humour and there’s rhythm in the tale.

 

Nemirovsky employs the stylistic device of symbolism to characterise the farmers and their hypocritical nature, how they mob people they don’t prefer to have around them and how they indulge in backbiting. A stingy 60 year old farmer marries  a lovely 20 year old woman and the gossips begin. Silvio remembers how Colette had once told him he resembled a faun: ‘an old faun, now, who has stopped chasing nymphs and who huddles near the fireplace.’

 

This is the confession of a man who had once fire in blood, and a meditation on the various stages of life, the passing of time, in which youth and age are at odds. A recurring theme is the seed from which problems grow: ‘Imagine a field being saved and all the promise that’s contained in a grain of wheat, all the future harvests…well, it’s exactly the same in life.’

 

Nemirovsky’s use of dialogue is very effective and takes the story forward.

 

Her literary oeuvre ranges from an extraordinary collection of papers,  Fire in the Blood, Suite francaise, David Golder, Le Bal, the Courilof Affair, All Our Worldly Goods.

 

The Germany titles are: Die Hunde und die Wölfe, Feuer im Herbst, Herbstfliege, Leidenschaft, Die Familie Hardelot, Der Fall Kurilow and Irene Nemirovsky: Die Biographie.

 

* * *

Irene Nemirovsky: COLD BLOOD (Satis Shroff)

Subtitle: Moaning in All Eternity

 

Six decades ago,

My life came to an end,

In Auschwitz.

I, Irene Nemirovsky, a writer

Of Jewish-Russian descent,

Died in Auschwitz.

I live now in my books,

In my daughter’s memories,

Who’s already an octogenarian,

Still full of love and fighting spirit:

For she fights against

The injustice of those gruesome days.

 

I was thirty-nine,

Had asthma,

Died shortly after I landed in Auschwitz.

I died of inflammation of my lungs,

In the month of October.

That very year the Nazis deported

Michael Epstein, dear my husband,

Who’d pleaded to have me,

His wife, freed from the clutches

Of the Gestapo.

They also killed him.

 

My daughters Denise 13,

And Elizabeth 5,

Were saved by friends

Of the French Resistance,

Tucked away in a cloister for nuns,

Hidden in damp cellars.

They had  my suitcase with them,

Where ever they hid,

Guarding it like the Crown Jewels.

To them it was not only a book,

But my last words,

That I’d penned in Issy-l’Eveque.

 

I wanted to put together five manuscripts

In one: Suite Francaise,

That was my writer’s dream.

I could put only

‘Storm in July’ and ‚Dolche’

Together.

I passed away early in August 1942.

Too early.

In my two books I’ve written

About the flight of the Parisians

From the victorious Germans,

The awful situation in an occupied hamlet.

Small people and collaborators,

Who’d go to extremes

To save their skins,

Like ants in a destroyed ant-hill.

 

It’s sixty years hence,

But my work hasn’t lost its glow,

Like the lava from an erupting volcano.

You can feel its intensity,

When an entire nation

Was humiliated and had to capitulate,

Losing its grace, dignity and life.

 

I was born in Kiew,

Fled to Paris via Finnland and Sweden,

After the Russian Revolution.

I was a maniac,

When it came to reading,

Had a French governess,

Went often to the Cote d’ Azure and Biarritz.

I studied literature in Sorbonne in 1919.

Shortly thereafter,

I began to write:

About my Russian past,

My wandering years.

The colour of the literature I wrote

Is blood from an old wound.

From this wound I’ve drawn

The maladies of the society,

Human folley.

 

I was influenced by writers,

From Leo Tolstoi to Henrik Ibsen.

An unhappy childhood,

Is like when your soul has died,

Without a funeral:

Moaning in all eternity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Irene Nemirovsky: COLD BLOOD (Satis Shroff)

This time Satis Shroff’s Zeitgeistlyrik deals with a female writer who was deported to Auschwitz where she died:Nemirovsky who has written Suite Francaise, David Golder, Le Bal (including Snow in Autumn),The Courilof Affair, All Our Worldly Goods is a brilliant story teller with an in-depth understanding of the hidden flaws and cruelties of the human heart. She writes about what people do to us and what time does to people..

* * *

(Germany youth today: chic, well-travelled, multilingual,well educated,tolerant,peaceloving,europe-and world oriented).

Irene Nemirovsky: COLD BLOOD (Satis Shroff)

Subtitle: Moaning in All Eternity

 

Six decades ago,

My life came to an end,

In Auschwitz.

I, Irene Nemirovsky, a writer

Of Jewish-Russian descent,

Died in Auschwitz.

I live now in my books,

In my daughter’s memories,

Who’s already an octogenarian,

Still full of love and fighting spirit:

For she fights against

The injustice of those gruesome days.

 

I was thirty-nine,

Had asthma,

Died shortly after I landed in Auschwitz.

I died of inflammation of my lungs,

In the month of October.

That very year the Nazis deported

Michael Epstein, dear my husband,

Who’d pleaded to have me,

His wife, freed from the clutches

Of the Gestapo.

They also killed him.

 

My daughters Denise 13,

And Elizabeth 5,

Were saved by friends

Of the French Resistance,

Tucked away in a cloister for nuns,

Hidden in damp cellars.

They had  my suitcase with them,

Whereever they hid,

Guarding it like the Crown Jewels.

To them it was not only a book,

But my last words,

That I’d penned in Issy-l’Eveque.

 

I wanted to put together five manuscripts

In one: Suite Francaise,

That was my writer’s dream.

I could put only

‘Storm in July’ and ‚Dolche’

Together.

I passed away early in August 1942.

Too early.

In my two books I’ve written

About the flight of the Parisians

From the victorious Germans,

The awful situation in an occupied hamlet.

Small people and collaborators,

Who’d go to extremes

To save their skins,

Like ants in a destroyed ant-hill.

 

It’s sixty years hence,

But my work hasn’t lost ist glow,

Like the lava from an erupting volcano.

You can feel its intensity,

When an entire nation

Was humiliated and had to capitulate,

Losing its grace, dignity and life.

 

I was born in Kiew,

Fled to Paris via Finnland and Sweden,

After the Russian Revolution.

I was a maniac,

When it came to reading,

Had a French governess,

Went often to the Cote d’ Azure and Biarritz.

I studied literature in Sorbonne in 1919.

Shortly thereafter,

I began to write:

About my Russian past,

My wandering years.

The colour of the literature I wrote

Is blood from an old wound.

From this wound I’ve drawn

The maladies of the society,

Human folley.

 

I was influenced by writers,

From Leo Tolstoi to Henrik Ibsen.

An unhappy childhood,

Is like when your soul has died,

Without a funeral:

Moaning in all eternity.

 

Read Full Post »

Creative Writing Critique (Satis Shroff): Fire in the Blood

Creative Writing Critique (Satis Shroff): FIRE IN THE BLOOD

Review: Irene Nemirovsky Fire in the Blood, Vintage Books, London 2008,

153 pages, 7,99 Sterling Pounds (ISBN: 978-0-099-51609-5)

Denise Epstein was 13 when her mother Irene Nemirovsky was deported to Auschwitz, where she eventually died in 1942. The daughter is now an octogenarian and was instrumental in helping her mother attain her place in the world literature. Irene Nemirovsky was a writer who could look into the souls of humans and make music with words. Her masterpiece Suite francaise was published in France in 2004 and was immediately awarded the Prix Renaudot.

The characters of Fire in Blood are  drawn from a rural French town in Burgundy, a wine-growing area where people are simple and stick together, want to retain their ‘peace’ and don’t like the police and the authorities. A place where all people show conformity and keep their mouths shut. Peace is a synonym for not wanting to be involved in the affairs of other people. The author’s attitude towards the characters has a universal appeal, for it could happen anywhere in the world in a closed-circuit society where outsiders are shunned and not generally accepted. Nemirovsky shows not only what people do to others but also what the passage of time does to us all. The characters aren’t flat and every character bounds into life and you an imagine the world that she creates in her 153 page novel still goes on with its own pace without much changes. The community itself shows a predatory behaviour of extreme cunning.

The major theme of Fire in Blood is love, poverty, arranged marriages and extra-marital affairs that lead to complications and new story developments. The protagonist Sylvestre also called Silvio tells the story in the first person singular and recalls stories in front of the fireplace about his beautiful, graceful cousin Helene and her daughter Colette, Brigitte Delos and Francoise, their marriages, happiness and boredom and the seasonal changes of the Burgundy countryside. Silvio speaks about impatient young people and the perfectly balanced older people at peace with themselves and the world, despite the creeping fear of death. The book is replete with the truths, deaths, marriages, children, houses, mills, dowry, haves and have-nots, stinginess, love-affairs, hatred, deception and betrayal.  Nemirovsky is an excellent story-teller and reveals her tale of flaws and cruelties of the human heart in an intricately woven story. She builds up suspense and you feel the catharsis when an innocent-looking protagonist tells her version of how a man was murdered.

The theme is traditional and familiar and is psychologically and socially interesting in intent.

Silvio tells about his childhood and about children asking their parents how they met, fell in love and married. He also mentions past loves, former grudges, inheritances, law suits and who-married-whom and why in the French provincial setting. The story plot is slow at the beginning but gathers momentum, and the climax is not the murder but how the author unfurls the story of the confession. In the end Silvio confides to the reader how much he still loves his dear cousin Helene, who’s married to Francoise.

The intellectual qualities of writing of Nemirovsky are her cheerfulness, sudden twists and power of observation which flow into the story making it a delightful read. She gives you the impression that her tale is linear, only to show you that there’s a twist that takes narration in another direction. Silvio, the Ich-Erzähler, says to Colette, who wants to involve him in her family drama: ‘Tell them you have a lover and that he killed your husband.. What exactly did happen?’

wit and humour and there’s rhythm in the tale.

Nemirovsky employs the stylistic device of symbolism to characterise the farmers and their hypocritical nature, how they mob people they don’t prefer to have around them and how they indulge in backbiting. A stingy 60 year old farmer marries  a lovely 20 year old woman and the gossips begin. Silvio remembers how Colette had once told him he resembled a faun: ‘an old faun, now, who has stopped chasing nymphs and who huddles near the fireplace.’

This is the confession of a man who had once fire in blood, and a meditation on the various stages of life, the passing of time, in which youth and age are at odds. A recurring theme is the seed from which problems grow: ‘Imagine a field being saved and all the promise that’s contained in a grain of wheat, all the future harvests…well, it’s exactly the same in life.’

Nemirovsky’s use of dialogue is very effective and takes the story forward.

Her literary oeuvre ranges from an extraordinary collection of papers,  Fire in the Blood, Suite francaise, David Golder, Le Bal, the Courilof Affair, All Our Worldly Goods.

The Germany titles are: Die Hunde und die Wölfe, Feuer im Herbst, Herbstfliege, Leidenschaft, Die Familie Hardelot, Der Fall Kurilow and Irene Nemirovsky: Die Biographie.

* * *

Irene Nemirovsky: COLD BLOOD (Satis Shroff)

Subtitle: Moaning in All Eternity

Six decades ago,

My life came to an end,

In Auschwitz.

I, Irene Nemirovsky, a writer

Of Jewish-Russian descent,

Died in Auschwitz.

I live now in my books,

In my daughter’s memories,

Who’s already an octogenarian,

Still full of love and fighting spirit:

For she fights against

The injustice of those gruesome days.

I was thirty-nine,

Had asthma,

Died shortly after I landed in Auschwitz.

I died of inflammation of my lungs,

In the month of October.

That very year the Nazis deported

Michael Epstein, dear my husband,

Who’d pleaded to have me,

His wife, freed from the clutches

Of the Gestapo.

They also killed him.

My daughters Denise 13,

And Elizabeth 5,

Were saved by friends

Of the French Resistance,

Tucked away in a cloister for nuns,

Hidden in damp cellars.

They had  my suitcase with them,

Where ever they hid,

Guarding it like the Crown Jewels.

To them it was not only a book,

But my last words,

That I’d penned in Issy-l’Eveque.

I wanted to put together five manuscripts

In one: Suite Francaise,

That was my writer’s dream.

I could put only

‘Storm in July’ and ‚Dolche’

Together.

I passed away early in August 1942.

Too early.

In my two books I’ve written

About the flight of the Parisians

From the victorious Germans,

The awful situation in an occupied hamlet.

Small people and collaborators,

Who’d go to extremes

To save their skins,

Like ants in a destroyed ant-hill.

It’s sixty years hence,

But my work hasn’t lost its glow,

Like the lava from an erupting volcano.

You can feel its intensity,

When an entire nation

Was humiliated and had to capitulate,

Losing its grace, dignity and life.

I was born in Kiew,

Fled to Paris via Finnland and Sweden,

After the Russian Revolution.

I was a maniac,

When it came to reading,

Had a French governess,

Went often to the Cote d’ Azure and Biarritz.

I studied literature in Sorbonne in 1919.

Shortly thereafter,

I began to write:

About my Russian past,

My wandering years.

The colour of the literature I wrote

Is blood from an old wound.

From this wound I’ve drawn

The maladies of the society,

Human folley.

I was influenced by writers,

From Leo Tolstoi to Henrik Ibsen.

An unhappy childhood,

Is like when your soul has died,

Without a funeral:

Moaning in all eternity.

Read Full Post »