About the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences

What is the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences?

The Heidelberg Academy of Sciences is located in Heidelberg. Heidelberg is located in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg.

It is: The Academy of Sciences of the State of Baden-Württemberg.

She is over 100 years old.

In short, it's called an academy.

Academy means:

A group of professors meets regularly at the Heidelberg Academy.

They are professors from all over Baden-Württemberg.

Professors teach subjects. Just like teachers in schools.

The subjects are also referred to as: sciences.

Examples of sciences include history, medicine, and languages.

Every professor has their own field of study. The professors talk to each other about their fields of study. This allows them to learn about each other's work. And they can understand each other better.

And there are young scientists at the academy.

Young scientists means: They are at the beginning of their scientific careers.

Professors and young scientists come together at the academy. And they can get to know each other.

There are projects at the academy.

Project means:

You work together on a task. The task is big. And difficult. You find out something about the task. Then you write it down.

An example of a project:

The Goethe Dictionary

Goethe:

The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe knew a great many words.

And he wrote a great deal.

For he was not only a famous poet.

He was also a minister in Weimar.

That is why he has written many administrative texts.

Goethe also conducted many scientific experiments.

For example, he was very interested in light and color.

And then he wrote down the results of these experiments.

He also wrote many letters.

All of this has been printed.

Goethe was already very famous throughout Europe during his lifetime.

Dictionary:
Many years ago, it was decided to turn it into a dictionary.

This is the Goethe Dictionary.

All the words Goethe used are listed there.

That's around 90 thousand!

Many people have made lists of all these words.

And they wrote 3 million pieces of paper with the words on them.

These slips of paper are called index cards.

On them you can read: How exactly did Goethe use the word?

You can see one such index card at the bottom of the page.

Goethe lived about two hundred years ago.

Today, we mostly use the same words as Goethe did back then.

But sometimes we mean something else by it.

For example, back then, people sometimes called someone "stupid."

But that doesn't mean he was stupid.

It could also mean that someone had poor eyesight and couldn't see well.

Or: People used to say that someone had "wit." By that they meant that he was particularly clever.

Not that he was particularly good at telling jokes!

The Goethe Dictionary therefore shows that words change.

They do not always mean the same thing.

In the Goethe dictionary, you can also find words that no longer exist today.

Or you can look up difficult words.

The Goethe Dictionary is therefore not only useful for academics.

Anyone can use it if they want to know: What can a single word mean?

And so that everyone can use it, like many other dictionaries, it is available online:
https://woerterbuchnetz.de/ (link to another website)