This year's Margherita von Brentano Prize of Freie Universität Berlin goes to the Work Area Didactics of History and the Student Translation Collective of Romance Studies. 

The Margherita von Brentano Prize 2025 from Freie Universität Berlin will be awarded in equal parts to the Work Area Didactics of History and the Student Translation Collective of Romance Studies. With this biennial award, the university's executive board honors individuals or projects for achievements in gender studies or equality. With a sum of 15,000 euros, it is one of the most highly endowed awards in the field of gender studies or equality in Germany.

Freie Universität Berlin honors the Work Area Didactics of History for its outstanding commitment to raising awareness of gender and sexual diversity, particularly with regard to queer history in academia. In recent years, the Work Area Didactics of History at Freie Universität Berlin has succeeded in making a substantial contribution to the visibility of gender and sexual diversity through its above-average commitment to teaching, research, and early-career support. Innovative formats such as the Queer History Lab teach the subject to prospective teachers. As part of several research projects, including a subproject on the gay rights movement and the legal system of the Federal Republic of Germany within the DFG research group “Law – Gender – Collectivity,” the department has significantly expanded knowledge of queer history and its relevance and communicated it to a broader public with numerous partners in the field.

The Student Translation Collective is being honored for its outstanding commitment to raising awareness of feminicide, its scientifically innovative and international approach to this pressing social issue, and its contribution to feminist knowledge production and memory culture. The translation collective, consisting of a total of 19 people led by Manuela Barney Seidel, a research assistant in Romance philology, collectively translated the short story “Soñarán en el jardín” by Mexican author Gabriela Damian Miravete into German as part of a BA seminar. The student group dealt intensively with the topic of feminicide addressed in the story on a theoretical, literary, and practical translation level and published the jointly developed translation in an attractive book publication including an interview with the author, an extensive and substantial foreword, and graphic designs.

Program

Welcoming

Prof. Dr. Verena Blechinger-Talcott
First Vice Chairwoman of Freie Universität Berlin

Prof. Dr. Gülay Çağlar
Professor of Political Science with a focus on Gender and Diversity, Otto Suhr Institute for Political Science, Free University of Berlin

Awarding of the prize to:

• Work Area Didactics of History  

Laudatio: Prof. Dr. Anita Traninger

• Student Translation Collective of Romance Studies

 Laudatio: Prof. Dr. Hedwig Richter

Musical Closing
N.N.

Reception
from 20:00h 

The Margherita von Brentano Prize, endowed with 15,000 euros, has been awarded since 1995 every two years by the university's Executive Board to outstanding individuals and innovative projects that have rendered outstanding services to the advancement of women and/or gender studies. Previous prizewinners include the student initiative "Medical Students for Choice" (2019), Prof. Dr. Beate Rudolf, the joint research collective "Frauen und Flucht" headed by Prof. Hansjörg Dilger und Kristina Dohrn (2017), the working group Arbeitskreis Historische Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung e.V. (2015), the initiative group for the foundation of a Centre for Gender Studies in Medicine (GiM) (2007) and the Berlin lawyer Seyran Ateş (2006).

The prize's eponym, Margherita von Brentano, received her doctorate from Martin Heidegger in 1948 and became a professor at the Institute for Philosophy at Freie Universität in 1971. In 1970, she was the first woman to be elected vice president of the university. Margherita von Brentano made it her concern to overcome professional discrimination against women at universities and research institutions as early as the early 1960s. She was also active in other social fields: Until her death in 1995, for example, she campaigned for the erection of a Berlin memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.