From right-wing populism to the question of truth

26.03.2026

With a varied program at the Siegen, Olpe and Attendorn locations, the two educational series Wednesday Academy and Hanseakademie of the University of Siegen will continue their tradition of open learning from mid-April.

The Wednesday Academy has been running for 40 years this year. This milestone birthday will be celebrated in style on November 11, 2026, before which the summer semester will be dedicated to joint learning and exchange as usual. The program of the Wednesday and Hanseakademie at the Siegen, Olpe and Attendorn locations includes a total of 19 courses in the 2026 summer semester.

The semester will open on April 22 from 10 a.m. in the auditorium of the Kulturhaus Lӱz in Siegen's St.-Johann-Straße. Prof. Dr. Noyan Dinçkal will give the keynote speech in the Science Year 2026 on the topic of "Medicine of the Future". The Siegen historian's topic is "The future of yesterday: A historical approach to health, illness and medicine".

As usual, the range of topics covered by the Wednesday Academy and the Hanseatic Academy is broad. Prof. Dr. Stefan Kutzner will be dealing with new political movements this semester and in the coming semesters. He will start with the topic "Right-wing populism". In his seminar, Prof. Dr. Michael Bongardt asks the question "What is truth?" Pilate was not the first to ask this question. But his question was made particularly famous by the Bible. It is remarkable that it seems to remain unanswered in the Gospel of John. We today seem to be similarly helpless in the face of this question. Philosophy gives very different, often contradictory answers.

In Olpe, Prof. Dr. Werner Fröhich will be talking about arithmetic and the fact that mathematics can be found everywhere. Did Pythagoras invent the decimal point? Can the root of nine also be minus three? What does a seal want at the equator? Is the smallest prime number even or odd? There are answers to these and many other questions in the seminar.

There are three seminars on offer in Attendorn, one of which comprises ten events and two of which comprise five events each. Dr. habil. Isabel Maurer Queipo is offering a seminar on "Painting and Literature". This seminar is not least about the various text-image relationships such as ekphrasis, a literary and rhetorical technique that vividly depicts a work of art, object or scene in words with the aim of making the reader a "spectator", as it were, through high vividness.

The Wednesday Academy tour of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Siegen and the exhibition "25 Years, 25 Works" will take place on June 11, 2026.

The complete program can be viewed online and is available in printed form in libraries, bookshops, town halls and doctors' surgeries.

Both series of events are aimed at anyone interested in current scientific, cultural and social issues. There are no admission requirements for the Wednesday Academy or Hanseatic Academy. The administration fee is 100 euros per semester. Participants in the Wednesday Academy can apply for guest auditor status at no additional cost. Pre-registration is not required in Siegen and Olpe. Registration lists will be available during the first day of the seminar. Registrations in Attendorn can be made with Ms. Hamm (city administration) or via an online form.