"Sacristy and Martyr's Choir – a journey through 770 years of church history" is the name of a new special public tour that will be offered on Tuesday, February 3 and Thursday, March 19, 2026 at 2 p.m. in St. Mary's Church in Frankfurt (Oder). This tour will focus on the history of the south choir extension from the 13th to the 21st century.

"Messeschlager Gisela", a jewel of the GDR's light-hearted musical theater, is coming to the Theaterhaus Kleist Forum in Frankfurt (Oder). The production by Staatstheater Cottbus can be seen on January 30 and 31. The new production is not a nostalgia show, but a rousing mixture of operetta and musical, with extravagant costumes, a large stage set, slapstick interludes, elaborate choreography and snappy melodies.

Whether gastronomy, social services or healthcare – at JOB Dating you will get to know professions that are meaningful, have a future and require real hands-on work. The aim is to make these "everyday heroes" visible together. Under the motto "Meet everyday heroes", JOB Dating invites you to experience various professions in a very practical way. Instead of just watching, you can get active yourself, try things out, join in and talk directly to people from the field.

On Friday, January 30, 2026 at 3 p.m., there will be a curator's tour of the exhibition "Franz von Gaudy aus/in Frankfurt an der Oder – Zum 225. Geburtstag des Frankfurter Dichters" with Berlin literary historian Dr. Doris Fouquet-Plümacher at Museum Viadrina. The exhibition shows the work of the poet Franz von Gaudy, who stood between late Romanticism and Vormärz, in words and pictures as well as numerous original prints.

The project "Community for Knowledge Transfer OER: Network of Educational Stakeholders (Co-WOERK)" invites you to a workshop day on Thursday, January 29, between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. The hybrid event entitled "Shaping education together with OER" is aimed at teachers, teaching staff, students and anyone interested in the creation and use of freely accessible teaching materials.

What happens when people can no longer manage their own affairs – be it in old age, after an accident or in a personal crisis? This question will be addressed on Wednesday, 28 January at 2:15 p.m. in a special public, practical event on guardianship law as part of a lecture on family law by Viadrina lawyer Prof. Dr. Ulla Gläßer.

Literary scholar and opera dramaturge Prof. Dr. Tina Hartmann (University of Bayreuth) will give a lecture entitled “Patriarchy and the Triumph of the Female Voice: Ingeborg Bachmann's Novel ‘Malina’ – an Opera Libretto for the Bachmann Year” on Tuesday, January 27, at 6:00 p.m.

On Monday, 26 January at 6.15 pm, PD Dr. Christian Dietrich (Institute for Regional History at the Saxony-Anhalt State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeology) will be a guest at the interdisciplinary Jerzy Giedroyc Research Colloquium. In his lecture "Security Mission: Friendship between Nations. State Security, People's Police and Labor and Educational Migration to the GDR (1972–1990)", he will talk about how the GDR authorities dealt with foreign students and contract workers.

Prof. Dr. Gangolf Hübinger and Prof. Dr. Rita Aldenhoff-Hübinger (both Viadrina) will be guests at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) on Monday, 26 January at 6:00 p.m. Together with Academy President Prof. Dr. Christoph Markschies and Stefan Rebenich (University of Bern), they will talk about "Mommsen's Berlin Networks".

On Monday, January 26, 4:15 pm, Dr. Amelie Kutter (Viadrina) will give the lecture "The governmentality of sustainability transition. The case of Peatlands". The case study on the sustainability transformation of peatlands in Brandenburg concludes the English-language lecture series "Beyond Sustainability: Humanities and Social Sciences Perspectives on the Ecological Crisis" from the Viadrina Institute for European Studies.