COURAGE

connecting collections

The ERC's mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, on the basis of scientific excellence.

The ERC complements other funding activities in Europe such as those of the national research funding agencies, and is a flagship component of Horizon 2020, the European Union's Research Framework Programme for 2014 to 2020.

Being 'investigator-driven', or 'bottom-up', in nature, the ERC approach allows researchers to identify new opportunities and directions in any field of research, rather than being led by priorities set by politicians. This ensures that funds are channelled into new and promising areas of research with a greater degree of flexibility.

ERC grants are awarded through open competition to projects headed by starting and established researchers, irrespective of their origins, who are working or moving to work in Europe. The sole criterion for selection is scientific excellence. The aim here is to recognise the best ideas, and confer status and visibility on the best brains in Europe, while also attracting talent from abroad.

However, the ERC aims to do more than simply fund research.
In the long term, it looks to substantially strengthen and shape the European research system. This is done through high quality peer review, the establishment of international benchmarks of success, and the provision of up-to-date information on who is succeeding and why.

The hope is that these processes will help universities and other research institutions gauge their performance and encourage them to develop better strategies to establish themselves as more effective global players.

By challenging Europe's brightest minds, the ERC expects that its grants will help to bring about new and unpredictable scientific and technological discoveries - the kind that can form the basis of new industries, markets, and broader social innovations of the future.

Ultimately, the ERC aims to make the European research base more prepared to respond to the needs of a knowledge-based society and provide Europe with the capabilities in frontier research necessary to meet global challenges.

ERC IN A NUTSHELL

The ERC aims to:

• Support the best of the best in Europe across all fields of science, scholarship and engineering
• Promote wholly investigator-driven, or 'bottom-up' frontier research
• Encourage the work of the established and next generation of independent top research leaders in Europe
• Reward innovative proposals by placing emphasis on the quality of the idea rather than the research area
• Raise the status and visibility of European frontier research and the very best researchers of today and tomorrow

What is 'frontier research' and what are its benefits?

Today the distinction between 'basic' and 'applied' research has become blurred, due to the fact that emerging areas of science and technology often cover substantial elements of both. As a result, the term 'frontier research' was coined for ERC activities since they will be directed towards fundamental advances at and beyond the 'frontier' of knowledge.

The ERC aims to bring about a wide range of benefits in the following ways:

• By creating open and direct competition for funding between the very best researchers in Europe, the ERC will enhance aspirations and achievements. It will enable the best ideas and talents to be recognised from a larger pool than exists at national level.
• The ERC's competitive funding will be able to channel funds into the most promising new fields, with a degree of agility not always possible in national funding schemes.
• The ERC aims to stimulate research organisations to invest more in the support of promising new talents - the next generation of research leaders in Europe.
• On the economic side, the ERC will help nurture science-based industry and create a greater impetus for the establishment of research-based spin-offs.
• From a societal perspective, the ERC could provide a mechanism for investing rapidly in research targeted at new and emerging issues confronting society.

The idea for creating the Solidarity Museum was formed in 1998 by the mayor of Gdansk Pawel Adamowicz, and the historian Dr. Jerzy Kukliński. In 1999 – with the endorsement of Lech Wałęsa and his Institute, the Metropolitan bishop Tadeusz Gocłowski, the Solidarity Trade Union, the Gdansk Shipyard, and the Government of the Pomorskie Voivodship – the Solidarity Centre Foundation was established. The foundation gave background for the development of the future cultural institution.

On 8 November 2007 the City of Gdansk, the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Government of the Pomorskie Voivodship, the Solidarity Trade Union, and the Solidarity Centre Foundation established the European Solidarity Centre, which gathers activists from various political options and social environments in common goal: preserving memory of the peaceful opposition and sharing the idea of freedom, democracy, and solidarity.

The Evangelical Church of Augustan Confession (A.C.) in Romania is a Lutheran Church, which has its origins in the middle of the sixteenth century, when Lutheranism spread among the Transylvanian Saxons. Johannes Honterus (1498–1549), a humanist and theologian from Braşov (Kronstadt), played the key role in promoting Martin Luther’s teachings in Transylvania and in organising  the new  Protestant denomination. In 1572, the synod of Mediaş (Mediasch) decided that the doctrine of the Lutheran Church of the Transylvanian Saxons would be the so-called Augsburg Confession,or Confessio Augustana in Latin. After Transylvania became a part of the Habsburg Empire at the end of the seventeenth century, the Protestant denominations in the region had to face a state-supported Counter-Reformation. After the establishment of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary in 1867, Transylvania became a province under Hungarian administration. In this context, the Evangelical Church of the Transylvanian Saxons increased its cultural and political role to the point of becoming the main supporter of the schooling system in the German language and a key institution in preserving the Saxons’ collective identity. This significant position within the Transylvanian Saxon community was preserved up to the twentieth century.
The Evangelical Church A.C. in Romania is organised according to an organic statute of 1861, which stipulates that the organisation has three levels: the local parish churches, the district churches, and the national church. The ruling structures of the Evangelical Church A.C. in Romania are the Church General Assembly and the High Consistory. In 2016, the Evangelical Church A.C. in Romania had fifty-seven parish churches, with forty-two pastors.
During the twentieth century, the Evangelical Church A.C. in Romania suffered the abuses and interferences of both fascism and communism. The former exercised direct political pressure through the Nazi-controlled leadership of the German Ethnic Group in Romania, which was especially harsh between 1940 and 1944. The Romanian communist regime took several repressive measures against the Evangelical Church A.C., such as the arrest of those pastors considered to be “political enemies,” the nationalisation of confessional schools and other subordinated institutions or valuable assets, including museums and archival collections, and an interdiction on teaching religious classes to young people preparing for confirmation.
As far as the archival heritage of the Evangelical Church A.C. is concerned, all collections with great historical value were nationalised by the communist authorities and included in the State Archives in 1948. During the late 1940s and 1950s, members of this religious community tried to hide many precious documents, which thus escaped nationalisation. Following a law of 1957, the Evangelical Church A.C. was able to create in 1958 the Archives of the Honterus Parish Community, which included the most valuable archival collections of the local parish churches. However, following Decree no. 472/1971, the church was forced again to cede a part of its archival heritage to the State Archives. The fall of the communist regime in Romania allowed the Evangelical Church A.C. to regain the right to perform some of its traditional cultural roles in the Transylvanian Saxon community. Consequently, the archives of the High Consistory of the Evangelical Church A.C. in Romania were made accessible to the general public in 2004, through the opening of Teutsch House in Sibiu, and the Archives of the Honterus Parish Community, also known as the Black Church Archives and Library, reopened in 2005 in Brașov. These two institutions are nowadays not only significant repositories of valuable archival heritage, but also the most active cultural institution of the Transylvanian Saxons, which regularly organise under their institutional tutelage events such as exhibitions, conferences, book launches, etc.

The Communist Party of Croatia (CPC), i.e., the League of Communists of Croatia (LCC), as part of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY), was the sole governing political party in Yugoslavia and Croatia during the socialist era (1945-1990). Its members assumed the leading positions in all fields of state and social life. Party organizations in Yugoslavia, as well as Party organizations in its federal units, were managed by their central committees as the highest organs of the Party between the two congresses. To accomplish defined program objectives, LC CC elected the constituent, executive political body (Political Bureau or Politburo, 1937-1952, Executive Council, 1952-1974, Presidium, 1974-1989). To carry out specific tasks, the Executive Council established working bodies - permanent or interim commissions to deal with specific issues.