On 13 November 2025, Hanspeter Loewen, Oberstudiendirektor i.K. i.R. (in the picture above on the left), presented Dr. Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Außerordentlicher Universitätsprofessor i.R., the Heinz von Foerster Prize for Organisational Cybernetics that is awarded by the Society for Cybernetics, Information and Systems Theory (GfK). The document has been signed by Honorarprofessor Dr. h.c. Siegfried Piotrowski, Chairman of the GfK and Spokesperson of the Jury (due to health reasons Piotrowski could not attend). Professor Dr. rer.nat. habil. Gerhard Pfaff was involved in the Jury. He is Secretary of the Leibniz Society (LS) Class of Natural Sciences and Technological Sciences and had convened this Class for a meeting in the historical council chamber of the city hall of Berlin-Friedrichshagen. Pfaff opened the session together with Loewen.

Frank Adloff, Professor of Sociology at the Universität Hamburg, was invited to hold the keynote address. He works on the dynamics and regulation of economy and society and is known for popularising the German versions of the Convivialist Manifestos. Adloff was already speaker at the GSIS conference on “Utopia(s) reloaded – science, activism and the techno-eco-social transformation” in 2023. In this talk here, he draws a striking new picture of realistic futures.
Frank Adloff: Zukunft als Katastrophe? Wirkliches und Mögliches in der Klimakrise | pptx

Christian Fuchs, Professor of Media Systems and Media Organisation at Paderborn University, delivered the laudatio. He was a student in Informatics at the TU Wien when he met Hofkirchner as Assistant in 1994. Fuchs is the ideal speaker because there are hardly any other people who have known Hofkirchner for so long and so well. In his laudatory speech he spans a horizon of Hofkirchner’s scientific life’s work from the early beginning up to now. In particular, he compares Hofkirchner’s social systems theory with that of Niklas Luhmann’s.
Christian Fuchs: Wolfgang Hofkirchners dialektisch-humanistische Systemtheorie | pdf

Wolfgang Hofkirchner expressed his gratitude to all colleagues involved and to those present and connected remotely [1]. He recalled the words of Heinz von Foerster on the responsibility to share knowledge and concluded by saying that in times of existential threats – as should have become increasingly clear with Adloff’s presentation – scientists are called upon as never before to take a stand for a shared future of humanity. In this respect, co-operation of scientists across all national borders without discriminations is required.