Eating, sleeping and heating – three major projects for Friedensau

At the beginning of September 2024, the Board of Trustees elected me as Chancellor for another five years with responsibility for Friedensau. A good time to look back and forward: The last five years were dominated by external circumstances: Corona was a defining issue for two years. I took another look at the approximately 1,000 pages of documentation on the implementation of the coronavirus rules, which seemingly had been published every two weeks. Forms of study and living together on campus were shaken up. Much of what was previously a ‘good tradition’ has been cancelled, and especially in the social life of the students, not everything that makes the time spent studying together in Friedensau so special has grown back again. Many students were unable to pursue paid employment to the usual extent, which meant that the tuition fee arrears grew – which also meant that the university lacked liquidity.

The temporary admission of over 60 refugees from Ukraine from spring 2022 and the dramatic rise in energy prices led to severe financial bottlenecks and caused strategic projects for the further development of the university to take a back seat.

With the task of introducing a new Master's degree programme for pastors for the entire Inter-European Division from 2022, we were also working to capacity academically. The first students from this programme will graduate in autumn 2024. We would not have been able to meet all these challenges without the support of the Inter-European Division. But your donations have also made a major contribution – just as Friedensau as a whole has only been able to develop over the past 125 years in the way we can celebrate this year with great gratitude thanks to the support of the communities.

After my election, I said that by the end of the next term - in 2029 - I would like to have eaten a meal in the new canteen, slept in the new student dormitory for a night and heated it with sustainable energy for a winter. These three major projects will set Friedensau up well for the coming years and they also need the support of donations.

Unfortunately, the new canteen will not be built as quickly as we had planned. The company that planned the kitchen – and therefore the heart of the canteen – was closed because the owner was unable to find a successor. We therefore have to start again for this area. The ground-breaking ceremony is currently being postponed indefinitely.

At very short notice, a ‘Young Housing’ funding programme was launched in Saxony-Anhalt, which supports the construction of accommodations for trainees and students with 60% public funding. As the expansion of the halls of residence had been pending for some time, we applied for the programme. Our project for a new student hall of residence with 40 spaces was included in the priority list, meaning that we can be relatively certain of receiving funding if we submit the necessary funding application by the end of November 2024. We are currently working at full speed on this. The documents also include securing our own contribution to the construction costs. Thanks to the funding from the Free Church, we ‘only’ need EUR 300,000 of our own funds, which we hope to raise through donations. We have also calculated that we will need to borrow EUR 500,000, i.e. take out a loan. If you are looking for a long-term interest-bearing investment for your money, please get in touch with me. I would rather pay you interest on a loan than a commercial bank. More information on this - and other projects - can be found on our website: https://www.thh-friedensau.de/donate/.

Tobias H. Koch, Chancellor