Diesel medal
The Diesel Medal is an innovation award that goes back to the inventive life achievement of the German engineer Rudolf Diesel and was brought to life in 1953 by Eugen Diesel , Rudolf Diesel's son. It is awarded by the German Institute for Invention (DIE e.V.). The central aim is to give the public appropriate recognition for the achievements of inventors and entrepreneurs and to support their work consistently.
The Diesel Medal honors natural persons and institutions for special achievements in the field of invention and innovation culture.
Prize winners include Gottlob Bauknecht , Carl Benz , Ernst Heinkel , Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen , Hans Peter Stihl , Ferdinand von Zeppelin , the Nobel Prize winners Hermann Staudinger , Ernst Ruska and Manfred Eigen , as well as the SAP founders Dietmar Hopp , Hasso Plattner and Klaus E. Tschira .
Nomination process
The nominations are published after the nomination meeting of the technical-scientific advisory board with the board of the DIE. The proposing members of the technical-scientific advisory board take on the sponsorship of the nomination proposals and are available to the board of trustees for questions about the proposed personalities.
An evaluation grid is used to clarify the individual nomination decisions, which grades the suitability of the respective nominee on the basis of three criteria - qualification of the category, degree of qualification and compatibility with the diesel medal. The criteria are explained below.
The Diesel Board of Trustees selects the winners. It is completely independent in its decisions.
Category qualification
This characteristic is used to assess the nominee's qualification in the respective price category. The categories differ in their content based on the effects of the services to be awarded in the innovation system. The “Most Successful” and “Most Sustainable Innovation Performance” awards are aimed directly at the innovation performance of individuals and their business framework. The awards for funding and media communication aim at the mediating effect of innovation achievements. The requirements of the respective price categories are described below.
- Most successful innovation performance: Success is primarily seen as the entrepreneurial success of an innovation by an entrepreneur. The success of innovation is not usually due to a single person, but there are promoters for innovation who ultimately stand behind the success and have promoted it to a particular degree. Since innovation successes depend on the timing and even need some time for their implementation, the aim here is to observe over longer periods of time and to consider the success retrospectively.
- Most sustainable innovation performance : Such entrepreneurial-innovative performance should count as sustainable innovation performance, which preserve the perspective of use of resources, stability and natural regeneration ability of the influenced systems. In principle, the consideration of innovation as an economically successful innovation under the observable market and competitive conditions applies. Likewise, the observable, practically realized success counts as proof of the innovative performance, beyond the just as observable actual innovation of the means and problem-solving combination.
- Best innovation funding : Innovation funding has many forms, from advice to financing (grants, loans, venture capital, etc.) and start-up support to research support. The category is intended to shed light on this diversity of funding activities as a reflection of the various difficulties, challenges and obstacles in the innovation process. The path from an idea to the enthusiasm of customers in the market can be promoted internally as well as outside of existing companies or institutions. The quality of the funding is characterized by the effect on the innovation system in the selected area of the innovation funding institution. The effect should be observable, targeted, detectable and reproducible. Criteria for such effects can be the critically accompanied encouragement and actual implementation of (cooperation) projects, the acceleration of innovation projects or the technical and economic progress achieved through the supported projects.
- Best media communication: A central concern of the Diesel Medal is to help innovation to attract more media attention and to give the innovators and innovative achievements a face in public. It is precisely personal achievements behind innovations that are often impossible to record for outsiders. Critical-positive, information-oriented and factually well-founded reporting in the most varied of forms should motivate and inspire people to deal with innovations and learn to appreciate innovative achievements. The special achievement in media communication is the conveyance of often complicated content in an entertaining, emotionally touching and factually correct manner. All types of media technology and methods are taken into account in order to reflect changes in media practice in media reality and make them transparent.
Characterization of the qualification
The characteristics of the qualification feature are graded here. In the description of the categories, necessary and gradually scaling quality criteria are listed. The necessary quality criteria lead to a classification quality into the categories. The gradually scaling quality criteria are assessed in this evaluation grid point.
Compatibility with the diesel medal
The more than sixty-year history of the Diesel Medal calls for future award winners to be considered in terms of tradition and compatibility with the values of the German Institute for Invention and the Diesel Medal itself. The core of the Diesel Medal has always been the importance of individual personalities for innovation. The series of decisions can be seen in the diesel medal awards. Every further award winner is seen in this tradition and should be viewed under the critical eyes of these personalities as an ideal continuation of the values, visions, drive and their will to implement.
Diesel medal for the best future idea
In 2019, a fifth category for the diesel medal was created, the diesel medal for the best future idea.
The diesel medal for the best future idea is a prize for students and graduates of engineering and natural sciences. The competition is based on the principles of open innovation and deals with the tasks of German medium-sized technology companies. The participants can find out about the top technologies of the participating companies and decide on one or more tasks to work on. The winners will be determined on the basis of the proposed solutions.
history
For the first time in 1953 an award for inventors and promoters of inventors was given by an inventors' association, which was not directed towards specific subject areas or specific inventor profiles, but more generally to the promotion of invention.
As early as the beginning of the 20th century, the first inventors' interest groups emerged in Germany, including the Nuremberg-based Bavarian Inventors' Protection Association (BESV), which was renamed the German Inventors' Association (DEV), which is still in existence today, in 1952 has been. The BESV has been calling for the state to support inventors since the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949. The establishment of a state inventor's award was one of several demands that the BESV addressed to the Federal Ministry of Justice and the Federal Ministry of Economics.
After these demands remained unheard of for years, the BESV announced the foundation of its own inventor award: the diesel medal. Hans Keller, entrepreneur and inventor, had in the meantime been elected as the first chairman of the BESV, which is now under the new name Deutscher Inventorverband e. V. acted. The foundation of the Diesel Medal was announced on September 24, 1952 at a specially organized celebration in the presence of Eugen Diesel, Rudolf Diesel's only son. Since the Diesel Medal arose from the private initiative of the DEV and in particular from Hans Keller's initiative, it was a pure honorary award and was not provided with a monetary prize, as was originally required by a state inventor's award. This tradition is maintained until today.
The first award of the diesel medal took place on June 7, 1953 on a small scale in the historic Weinstadel of Nuremberg. Hermann Röchling , Christoph Wirth and Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen were among the five first prize winners . With the awarding of the diesel medal to the rocket researcher Hermann Oberth in 1954, DEV gained a long-standing advocate and a committed member of the Diesel Medal Board of Trustees. The scope of the awards ceremony for the Diesel Medal was continuously enlarged under Hans Keller's chairmanship. The number of award winners rose considerably from five in 1953 to over 35 in 1963, thus reaching a high point in the history of the diesel medal. In 1964, the award ceremony took place for the first time in the almost fully occupied Great Hall of the Nuremberg Meistersinger Hall.
On November 7, 1965, the chemist Edith Weyde was the first woman to receive the Diesel Medal for her achievements in the field of photochemistry and photography during the 10th award ceremony .
With the entrepreneur inventor Ernst Heinkel (1954), the MAN mechanical engineer Siegfried Meurer (1956), Claudius Dornier (1961), Gottlob Bauknecht (1963), Wernher von Braun (1968) and Ludwig Bölkow (1969) as well as the Nobel Prize winners Hermann Staudinger (1962) and Ernst Ruska (1968), in the first two decades of the Diesel Medal, in addition to many other successful inventors, several internationally important inventors and researchers were honored.
Since the beginning of the 1960s, Hans Keller had intended to build a “House of Inventors” in Nuremberg, which he wanted to finance through member donations and which was essentially to be devoted to the promotion of invention on a scientific basis. A draft statute for a corresponding Institute of Inventors eV was completed in 1966.
This association formed the basis for the Institute for Invention (DIE) founded in 1969 on Keller's initiative.
The DIE existed as a registered association alongside the DEV and was supposed to deal with scientific questions relating to invention. Responsibility for awarding the diesel medal also passed from DEV to DIE in 1969.
Hans Keller, who turned 71 that year, left the DEV and the newly founded DIE as an active member. The chemist Wilhelm Stürmer, who had received the Diesel Medal in 1965 and who had been a member of the Diesel Medal Board of Trustees since 1968, was elected as the new chairman.
After the transfer of responsibility for the award of the diesel medal to DIE, a statute on the award of the diesel medal was created for the first time in 1972. a. the award of the diesel medal to deceased personalities was abolished. In addition, the award ceremonies, which had previously been pompous according to Keller's ideas, were set in a smaller and worthy setting. Another highlight in the history of the Diesel Medal was the first assumption of patronage over the award ceremony in 1975 by the Bavarian Prime Minister Alfons Goppel and later by Franz Josef Strauss .
The engineer Ulrich Poppe officially took over the chairmanship of the DIE in 1980. In 1982 the Institute for Invention was renamed the German Institute for Invention. In the same year, Ulrich Poppe resigned his position as first chairman and was replaced by the former president of the German Patent and Trademark Office, the lawyer Erich Häußer . In 1984 the scientific lectures published by the DIE appeared in abbreviated form for the first time.
In 1992 the entrepreneur Heinz Hölter was elected to the board of DIE. The previous awarding of the diesel medal in the three categories of gold, silver and bronze was abolished in a general meeting in 1997. From that point on, the diesel medal was only awarded in gold.
In 2000, the former President of the German Patent and Trademark Office, Norbert Haugg , was elected chairman of the DIE. The scientific work of DIE and its commitment to state funding for inventors were intensively continued during this time. In addition, important inventors and entrepreneurs such as Viktor Dulger (2001), Fritz Sennheiser (2004), Reinhold Würth (2004), Anton Kathrein (2004) and the SAP founders Dietmar Hopp, Klaus Tschira and Hasso Plattner ( 2008) as well as many other important inventors and patrons of inventions.
In 2009, Heiner Pollert, Alexander J. Wurzer and subsequently Manfred columnsberger were appointed to the board of the DIE. The Diesel Medal has been awarded every year since then in the categories “Most successful innovation”, “Most sustainable innovation”, “Best innovation promotion” and “Best media communication”. In 2016, the Diesel Board of Trustees was expanded to include over forty technology directors from German, world market leaders to select future award winners.
Web links
- Official website of the German Institute for Invention
- Official website of the diesel medal for the best future idea
- Official website of the Diesel Medal Forum
Individual evidence
- ^ Statutes of the German Institute for Invention. Retrieved March 26, 2019 .
- ↑ Medalist. In: Diesel Medal. German Institute for Invention V., 2008, accessed on April 8, 2019 (German).
- ↑ nomination. In: Diesel Medal. German Institute for Invention V., 2008, accessed on April 8, 2019 (German).
- ↑ The future idea - the competition. In: Diesel Medal Future Idea. German Institute for Invention (DIE) e. V., 2019, accessed on April 8, 2019 (German).
- ↑ Claudia Denise Gatzert: The Diesel Medal [sic: Diesel Medal]: About the origin and development of a private inventor award in the light of the Federal German inventor promotion policy . In: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Ed.): Inaugural dissertation to obtain the doctoral degree in philosophy . Munich 2013, p. 362 .
- ↑ DIE In: Association. German Institute for Invention (DIE) e. V., 2008, accessed on April 8, 2019 (German).