Dear DMG members,
Science thrives on the exchange of ideas between researchers. This exchange takes place, on the one hand, thru the publication of results and findings in scientific journals, so that they can be assessed, evaluated, and discussed, and colleagues can build upon them in their own work. Equally important, however, is the exchange in lectures, posters, and personal conversations at conferences, meetings, and other larger and smaller gatherings. The DMG has been organizing an annual conference since 1908, with few interruptions, bringing together mineralogy researchers from Germany and neighboring countries.
The DMG and its conferences emerged from the Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians (GDNÄ), which has been meeting for over 200 years and whose founding was already recommended by the chemist Johann Schweigger in 1818. Schweigger advocated for public meetings to "promote a mutual connection among the natural scientists of Germany." Already two centuries ago, he recognized the importance of personal exchange among researchers. The DMG meetings initially brought together only a few dozen members, but in the second half of the twentieth century, they typically grew to around 200 participants (and a few female participants).
With the broader scope of the field of mineralogy, the DMG annual meetings around the turn of the millenium transformed into larger events with around 400 to 500 participants, and after the introduction of specialized sections within the DMG, section meetings in the spring were added in addition to the annual meeting in the fall. These are still very popular and offer the opportunity for a very targeted professional exchange on a specific subfield of mineralogy. At the section meetings, our student members in particular travel to take advantage of the opportunity for scientific networking and their first experience with their own presentations outside their own alma mater. The number of participants at the section meetings is sometimes in the three-digit range and has now become a fixed part of the annual calendar.
Internationally, the DMG is well connected and was involved in the founding of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA) in 1958 as well as the European Mineralogical Union (EMU) in 1987. Since the mid-1980s, the IMA has been organizing a large conference every four years at various locations around the world, while European mineralogists have been holding the emc conference, which also takes place every four years, since 2012.
Within Germany, efforts are being made to strengthen the networking of mineralogy (the "material-related geoscience") with other geosciences. These are now organized under the umbrella organization Geosciences (DVGeo) and include geologists, paleontologists, and geophysicists. Since 2015, five joint annual conferences of the DVGeo societies have been held at various locations, for example under the names GeoBerlin or GeoMinKöln. These conferences brought together between 500 and 1000 participants from all subfields of the geosciences and were generally very popular. These joint DVGeo conferences facilitate exactly the exchange within the geosciences and the mutual connection among scientists that Johann Schweigger had advocated over two hundred years ago. Especially for our younger members, the annual large GeoMin conference had already been established as an important event in the annual calendar, having taken place every year for the past eight years (only interrupted by the Covid crisis). Accordingly, there was great confusion when this year separate annual meetings of the DVGeo sub-societies were announced and held again. The presence and participation of DMG members at the DGGV conference in Berlin was also remarkable, and the competitive situation that arose between the two conferences in September 2023 was certainly not beneficial to either event.
From my personal perspective, the following conclusions can be drawn for the future organization of the conferences: the DMG and its members should continue to participate in the international mineralogists' conferences (IMA and emc). The close professional exchange will take place within the sections during the well-established section meetings in the spring. Furthermore, we should hold a large geoscientific conference for all societies united in DVGeo, which, following the very successful model of the past GeoMin conferences, has the potential to bring together different disciplines, address the major topics of geosciences, and attract participant numbers in the lower four-digit range. In this sense, I am already announcing with great anticipation the planned joint conference in Göttingen in 2025, where, in all likelihood, all the societies united in DVGeo will come together for a joint annual conference. Before that, however, we will see each other at the fourth emc conference (https://emc-2024.org) in August 2024 in Dublin.
Your
Horst Marscha
Horst Marschall
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