Frankfurt Lord Mayor Visits Tel Aviv University

Lord Mayor of Frankfurt Peter Feldman recently visited TAU together with a delegation of Frankfurt city council members, business leaders and representatives of youth organizations. The delegation toured the campus, including TAU’s Buchmann School of Music, where they heard performances by students.

In his greetings to the delegation, TAU President Joseph Klafter spoke of TAU’s close ties with German universities, including with Goethe University in Frankfurt. He noted the considerable contribution of TAU benefactor and Deputy Chairman of the Board of Governors Josef Buchmann, who has “worked tirelessly through the years to advance ties between TAU and the city of Frankfurt and its universities, particularly through the Buchmann Doctoral Fellowship Fund.”

With 17 international programs, TAU was fast becoming “Israel’s No. 1 university,” said Vice President Raanan Rein. He noted many German students join the programs because they are seeking out a “first-rate university.”  

Frankfurt Mayor Peter Feldman noted that Frankfurt and Tel Aviv have been twin cities for more than three decades, with the collaboration between TAU and Goethe University an essential part of this. “Such an active partnership thrives on the commitment of dedicated citizens like Josef Buchmann,” he said. Mayor Feldman emphasized that these links form the basis of common research and exchange, as well as facilitating personal ties between individuals, residents of the twin cities and between the German and Israeli peoples. 

President of Goethe University Prof. Werner Müller-Esterl said that “Tel Aviv University is one of our most important strategic partners,” and noted that the two institutions collaborate in the areas of childhood literature, psycholinguistics, history of science, structural biology, biophysics and biochemistry, and in the future, biotechnology. He spoke of the many sources of German funding for these projects including GIF – German Israel Foundation, DIP German-Israeli Project Cooperation – Research Projects, Minerva and others bodies, and said that the Buchmann Fellowships were seminal to these collaborations.