About the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
What is the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities?
The Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities is in Heidelberg.
Heidelberg is in the German state of Baden-Württemberg.
The Academy belongs to the state of Baden-Württemberg.
It is more than 100 years old.
People often call it simply:
the Academy
What is an Academy?
Professors meet regularly at the Academy.
The professors come from all over Baden-Württemberg.
Professors teach at universities.
They teach different subjects.
For example:
history
medicine
languages
These subjects are called sciences.
Each professor works in one science.
The professors talk to each other.
They talk about their work.
This helps them learn about each other's work.
It also helps them understand each other better.
Young scientists
There are also young scientists at the Academy.
Young scientists are people who are at the beginning of their work in science.
Professors and young scientists meet at the Academy.
They can get to know each other.
Projects at the Academy
The Academy has many projects.
A project is a task that people work on together.
The task can be big and difficult.
The researchers try to find new information.
Then they write down what they have found.
An example: The Goethe Dictionary
Who was Goethe?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a famous German poet and writer.
He knew many words.
And he wrote a lot.
But Goethe was not only a famous poet.
He was also a minister in the city of Weimar.
So he wrote many texts about the work of the government.
Goethe also did many scientific experiments.
For example, he was very interested in light and colour.
He wrote down what he found in his experiments.
He also wrote many letters.
All these texts were printed.
Goethe was already very famous in Europe when he was alive.
The Goethe Dictionary
About 200 years ago, people decided to make a dictionary.
The dictionary contains the words that Goethe used.
It is called the Goethe Dictionary.
There are about 90,000 words in the dictionary.
Many people worked on the dictionary.
They made lists of Goethe's words.
They also made about 3 million cards.
These cards are called index cards.
The cards contain information about the words.
For example:
How did Goethe use this word?
Words can change
Goethe lived about 200 years ago.
We still use many of the same words today.
But sometimes a word had a different meaning in Goethe's time.
For example, people sometimes used the German word “blöd” for a person.
Today, “blöd” usually means stupid or silly.
But this was not always the meaning.
In Goethe's time, “blöd” could also mean:
The person could not see well.
Another example is the German word “Witz”.
Today, a “Witz” is a joke.
But in Goethe's time, “Witz” could also mean:
The person was very clever.
The Goethe Dictionary shows us:
Words can change.
A word does not always have the same meaning.
The Goethe Dictionary also contains words that we do not use anymore.
You can also use the dictionary to look up difficult words.
The Goethe Dictionary is not only for scientists.
Everyone can use it.
You can use it if you want to know:
What can this word mean?
The Goethe Dictionary is also available on the internet.
You can find it here: