Dear colleagues,

On behalf of the entire Göttingen organizing team, it is with great anticipation that I invite you to the 108th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Pathology in Leipzig. After intensive discussion, we decided to hold the congress in Leipzig again instead of Göttingen due to the excellent conditions there. However, we will do our best to convey some of the rich and vibrant scientific culture of Göttingen in our program. Do you know what the Göttingen Nobel Prize miracle is all about, or the mysterious suitcase that is kept at the Institute of Mathematics and is said to contain the solution to all problems?

In addition to these certainly important questions, we also want to position ourselves politically in Leipzig. Our motto “expect the extraordinary” also alludes (among other things) to the question of how we, as a professional association, will continue to ensure in the future that not only the more common, but also rare diseases are diagnosed correctly and according to the latest international knowledge, and that our patients receive optimal care. In this area of tension between broad-based care and specialization in individual cases, digitalization and new technological processes (one of the other main topics of our conference) can certainly make an important contribution. Nevertheless, I am firmly convinced that in the future, too, lively specialized knowledge can only be acquired through the idea of the unity of research and teaching, as formulated by Wilhelm von Humboldt, that is, through applied scientific activity and the transmission of knowledge in teaching. For this reason, we want to address the topic of teaching at this conference for the first time in a long while – what significance does teaching have for the future of our field? How much importance do we attach to it in the training of our own young academics? What expectations do students have of us? We will also involve our young academics intensively in the program in other areas, such as moderating lectures.

The annual conference is and remains the main event in the calendar of the German Society of Pathology. By definition, science is international and global. In view of the steadily increasing number of international participants, we have taken a long-discussed step this year and will use English as the congress language throughout for the first time.

It is only through personal encounters and exchanges in conversation that all these topics really become extraordinary.

With this in mind and on behalf of the entire team: expect the extraordinary and see you in Leipzig!

Yours cordially, Philipp Ströbel