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University Alliance Ruhr Creates Klaus Töpfer Professorship
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Academics with an outstanding international reputation in the field of sustainable development and who can demonstrate extensive experience in transferring scientific findings from research to society are invited to apply. Here, the focus should lie on aspects of the social sciences or humanities that include subject areas such as sociology, economics or cultural studies. TU Dortmund University will host the professorship, which will overarch all departments and profit from a broad network of thematically related professorships in the Ruhr region.
By naming the professorship after Klaus Töpfer, who as a leading politician from North Rhine-Westphalia rendered outstanding services at both national and international level to environmental and climate protection as well as social and economic justice, the UA Ruhr partners are acknowledging his dedication. As Federal Minister for the Environment from 1987 to 1994 during the time of the Bundestag in Bonn, he was responsible, for example, for introducing the ban on CFCs, the Green Dot and Article 20a of the Basic Law on the protection of the natural foundations of life and animals. From 1998 to 2006, he was Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya. From 2009 to 2015, Klaus Töpfer, who held a PhD in economics, was the Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, which is now part of the Helmholtz Association. Among his many roles in an honorary capacity, he was also a member of the board of directors of Welthungerhilfe from 2008 to 2012, one of the largest private aid agencies in Germany, and for around four years (2013-2018) he chaired the “Agora Council for Germany” of the Agora Energiewende, which operates as a think tank. Töpfer’s home remained the Westphalian town of Höxter, where he had spent his school years after fleeing Silesia in the aftermath of World War II. In 2019, the State of North Rhine-Westphalia awarded him the State Prize for his “decades of outstanding commitment to the preservation of Creation”. Klaus Töpfer died, aged 85, on 8 June 2024.
Statements on the Klaus Töpfer Professorship for Sustainable Development
“Klaus Töpfer showed over many decades that environmental and development policy are inextricably linked – at both national and international level. Whether as Federal Minister for the Environment, Director of the UN Environment Program or Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, his dedication set standards. As the child of displaced parents, Klaus Töpfer found a home in North Rhine-Westphalia after World War II and contributed over decades to shaping our state. The new “Klaus Töpfer Professorship for Sustainable Development” is not only recognition of his outstanding lifetime achievements but also reflects our universities’ aspiration to think holistically about issues important for the future. That this professorship is being established in North Rhine-Westphalia is a logical consequence and sends a strong signal.”
“With his commitment to sustainable development, Klaus Töpfer was ahead of his time. In the shape of the UA Ruhr professorship, we are keeping his legacy alive. There can be no better place for it than the Ruhr region. This is where the coal was mined that helped people in the region and throughout Germany to achieve great prosperity. Today, top researchers are working on social transformation in order to protect the natural foundations of life.”
“Sustainable development – economic, social and ecological – is the greatest challenge and at the same time the greatest opportunity facing humanity. Hardly anyone has made this the guiding principle of their political and scientific work to the same degree as Klaus Töpfer,” says Professor Manfred Bayer, President of TU Dortmund University and Chairman of the Appointment Committee. “We in the University Alliance Ruhr have set ourselves the goal of further developing the topic through an interdisciplinary approach and of following Klaus Töpfer’s inspiration academically through the Professorship for Sustainable Development.”
The Töpfer family welcomes this step as a form of remembrance: “My children and I support the establishment of the professorship because we see it as recognition of my husband’s work,” says his widow Mechthild Töpfer, who was married to Klaus Töpfer for around 60 years and with whom she shared three children.
Stiftung Mercator plans to finance the professorship. “Klaus Töpfer was connected to Stiftung Mercator in many ways,” explains Dr. Wolfgang Rohe, Chairman of the Executive Board. Among Töpfer’s many achievements, he helped, for example, to establish Agora Energiewende, of which Stiftung Mercator was a co-founder, says Rohe. “We are delighted that we can make this connection even more visible by supporting the professorship that bears his name.”
All three UA Ruhr partners have nominated representatives for the Appointment Committee, which will be led by Professor Manfred Bayer, President of TU Dortmund University. Committee member on behalf of Ruhr University Bochum is Professor Andreas Löschel, Sustainability Officer. Jens Gurr, Professor of British and Anglophone Literature and Culture at the University of Duisburg-Essen, who examines narratives of climate change in his research, is also part of the Appointment Committee. Representatives of the student body and mid-level faculty working on sustainability issues will take part in the selection process as well. The application deadline is 10 July 2025, and the professorship is in Germany’s highest salary bracket for professors (W3).
Link to the call for applications (in German)