The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Preis is awarded every year by the German Research Foundation, the DFG. It has existed since 1986 and is called the most important research funding prize in Germany. Each winner receives 2.5 million euros. Winners can use the money for their research for up to seven years, nach ihren eigenen Vorstellungen und ohne bürokratischen Aufwand, according to their own ideas and without bureaucratic effort. Up to ten prizes can be awarded per year. The ten winners for 2026 were chosen from 144 proposals. By December 2025, twelve Leibniz winners had later received a Nobel Prize.
science
Ten Years for One Drift
On 20 September 2019, the German research icebreaker Polarstern set out on the MOSAiC expedition. The plan was to let the ship freeze into the Arctic ice and drift with it for a year. The federal government described the departure in one sentence: Nach zehn Jahren der Vorbereitung war es soweit, after ten years of preparation, the time had come. The expedition cost 140 million euros. About 600 scientists from different fields took part. Six icebreakers were to supply the ship, and a runway for supply aircraft was to be built on the ice floe. On 4 October 2019, the ship was frozen into a floe and its main engines were switched off. From then on, it moved only with the ice, inside a drift corridor that had been calculated in advance.
Ehrlich’s Four Gs
Paul Ehrlich, Nobel laureate in medicine, searched systematically for a drug against syphilis. His team made hundreds of compounds and tested them one after another. His assistant Sahachiro Hata tested them methodically on infected mice. Compound number 606 worked. It was introduced in 1910 as Salvarsan. Ehrlich liked to say that success in research needs four Gs: Geld, Geduld, Geschick und Glück. Money, patience, skill and luck.
Eleven Months for a Vaccine
In 2020 BioNTech, the company of two doctors from Mainz, ran Projekt Lightspeed. Within only 11 months its COVID-19 vaccine went from the laboratory to a conditional approval. The speed had to be explained. On 21 November 2020 the newspaper taz interviewed Klaus Cichutek, president of the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, which shares responsibility for approving vaccines. The interviewer began: normalerweise dauert es Jahre, bis ein Impfstoff entwickelt ist. Jetzt sind es Monate. Normally it takes years to develop a vaccine. Now it is months. Cichutek answered: Ich kann Sie beruhigen. Wir handeln nicht nach Bauchgefühl, sondern mit dem Kopf. I can reassure you. We act with our heads, not our gut. He added that the clinical trials had more test persons than usual. On 9 December 2020 he told an online symposium of the medical journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt: Wir haben beim Zulassungsprozess für die Impfstoffe nichts unterlassen, was nötig und üblich ist. We left out nothing in the approval process that is necessary and customary.
Here speed won acceptance once it was shown that no step had been skipped.
Every Author Answers for the Paper
The German Research Foundation’s code of good scientific practice of 2019 says of the authors of a publication: Sie tragen für die Publikation die gemeinsame Verantwortung, they bear joint responsibility for it, unless stated otherwise. Honorary authorship is not allowed. A leading position alone does not make anyone a co-author. The Deutsches Ärzteblatt called the affair around the researchers Herrmann and Brach the largest German forgery affair. Several hundred co-authors were checked. In 2002 the foundation excluded the Freiburg professor Roland Mertelsmann for five years as a reviewer and applicant because of serious flaws, and two other co-authors for two years each. The foundation’s president, Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, told the Ärzteblatt: In der Wissenschaft ist das die Höchststrafe. In science, that is the maximum penalty.
Three Years, Then Three More
A junior professor at the University of Hamburg is first appointed for three years. An interim evaluation follows. If it is successful, the appointment is extended by three more years. On tenure-track posts, a second evaluation follows after six years. A candidate who passes it is appointed to a permanent professorship without a public call for applications and without the usual appointment procedure. A joint federal and state program funds 1,000 additional tenure-track posts of this kind, with one billion euros over 15 years.
The Chair as a Principality
At many German universities the basic unit is the Lehrstuhl, the chair. A professor holds it, and its staff work in dependence on that professor. In 2018 the sociologist Peter Ullrich described the system in the Tagesspiegel as Feudalverhältnisse, feudal relations, in which resources are divided between konkurrierenden Fürstentümern, competing principalities. On 28 January 2026 the Bundestag’s research committee held a hearing on department structures. One expert said that in Germany the chair model often applies. Another said that his institute had already left it behind. A third warned that department structures must not be imposed from above.
Critical Discourse as a Duty
Since 2019 the German Research Foundation (DFG) has had a binding code of good scientific practice. Its first guideline obliges researchers alle Ergebnisse konsequent selbst anzuzweifeln, to consistently doubt all their own results. They must einen kritischen Diskurs in der wissenschaftlichen Gemeinschaft zuzulassen und zu fördern, allow and promote critical discourse in the scientific community, and keep strikte Ehrlichkeit, strict honesty, about their own contributions and those of others.
No Name Without a Contribution
The code of good scientific practice of the German Research Foundation (DFG), in force since 2019, sets the rules for authorship. An author is a person who has made a genuine and traceable contribution to the content of a publication. Eine Leitungs- oder Vorgesetztenfunktion begründet für sich allein keine Mitautorschaft. A leading or supervisory position does not by itself justify co-authorship. Eine Ehrenautorschaft, bei der gerade kein solcher Beitrag geleistet wurde, ist nicht zulässig. Honorary authorship, without such a contribution, is not permitted.
Both Exist for Science
Around 1810 Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote a memorandum on the organization of the higher scientific institutions in Berlin. Humboldt led the founding of the new Berlin university in 1810, and the text reflects his idea of it. Das Verhältniss zwischen Lehrer und Schüler wird daher durchaus ein anderes als vorher. Der erstere ist nicht für die letzteren, Beide sind für die Wissenschaft da. The relationship between teacher and student therefore becomes entirely different from before. The former is not there for the latter. Both are there for science.