Amsterdam in 1632: Rembrandt's "Anatomy of Dr.

Tulp" captures a scene that represents the public of science like no other.

At that time, dissections took place in unheated halls and in front of a paying audience during the cold season.

According to the will of the Federal Ministry of Defense, the Helmut Schmidt University of the Bundeswehr in Hamburg is to be converted into a military security area (MSB).

The plan, which severely restricts university life, has now been discussed at a conference.

In his introductory contribution to the topic "University and military security", Klaus Beckmann, President of the Helmut Schmidt University, names three types of objections to the project for a military security area.

The latter has been operated by the Ministry of Defense for five years and has already been partially implemented by means of structural changes.

According to Beckmann, members of the university have a "queasy feeling" at the thought of the immediate compulsion.

In addition, there are concerns about access for external visitors and the possibly more difficult cooperation with colleagues from other universities.

The core question, however, is the different system logics of the military and science.

"If you think of freedom in a very elementary way," says educationalist Olaf Sanders in a sketch of the problem, "then it initially appears as freedom of movement."

This amounts to at least a partial perpetuation of the corona system.

Spontaneity is made impossible, as are visits from people who, for various reasons, do not want to register or have their identity determined.

How big is the threat situation?

Dominik Nitzinger, security officer at the Bundeswehr University in Munich, counters that conflicts between military security and academic life are quickly resolved there.

The military side tries to interfere as little as possible with scientific activities.

With regard to gun use, a mother was reassured when she asked what would happen if her seven-year-old son climbed the university fence.

University teachers who have taught in Munich themselves are not satisfied with that.

Annette Jünemann, Michael Staack and Teresa Koloma Beck point out the difficulty of organizing conferences on the Munich campus.

Also one does not like to put up with a condition

The trainers of the soldiers in the barracks attached to the university and the majority of the students in uniform did not even show up.

There are still free chairs on the "Red Square", as the Auditorium Maximum at the HSU is ironically called.

The few students present in uniform and a few officers hide themselves behind a wall of "despite everything".

One of the officers, who still has the rank of major, openly admits that he is just a cog in the machinery of defense policy, but in this capacity he supports the MSB.

Several conference participants emphasized the lack of willingness to negotiate on the part of the ministry under Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

An alternative proposal, which resulted in a more flexible establishment of the MSB in various areas of the university, was rejected at the time by the Ministry of Defence.

Again and again it is said that Berlin does not play with open cards and withholds information about the assumed threat situation.

Discussions in smaller circles between representatives of the ministry and university teachers have apparently not changed anything.

In general, the lack of transparency in decisions is lamented.

The skeptics find support from almost 4,500 scholars who have signed an appeal against the establishment of the MSB in recent months.

Some professional associations

hope for a change of plan

Meanwhile, it is suspected that the instruction to the MSB goes back to a department head who one day found that all Bundeswehr properties under his control had already been converted into security areas, with two exceptions, of which the HSU was the more important one.

Bundeswehr hospitals are also exempt from the regulation, but they are under a different department.

Little remains of the MSB's alleged merits on the dissection table.

At the end of the day, many contributions raised hopes that the newly appointed ministry would reconsider the situation and tie in with the reform concepts of a time when there was no talk of militarization of the HSU campus.