Award to Dr. Geoff Rodoreda on the University's "Day of Research"
‘Tag der Forschung’ (‘Day of Research’) took place on 1 July 2026 on the Vaihingen campus in a ceremony in which each faculty honours the excellent research on display in their faculty’s 2025 publications. Our very own Dr. Geoff Rodoreda was selected for the Faculty 9 Publication Prize (including a 2,500 Euro award) for his brilliant publication from 8 Grad Verlag of George Orwell in Stuttgart, Nürnberg, Köln: Kreigsreporter im Zeichen von 1984.
During the July 1st ceremony, Dr. Rodoreda began with a question to the audience, asking “What is this bridge?” and referring to the pedestrian bridge, Berger Steg, in Bad Cannstatt. Since his first semester teaching at Uni Stuttgart, some 15 years ago, Dr. Rodoreda has been researching and writing about Orwell, and especially Orwell’s passage on this foot bridge – the last standing bridge into Stuttgart in 1945 – in the company of a Belgian journalist and the US Army coming from Bad Cannstatt. While many Orwell scholars have disregarded this short period of time in 1945 when Orwell was a war reporter in Germany, Rodoreda asserts how important it is, not least because of the street-level reporting that Orwell honed during this time, but also because of the likely potentiality of its transfer into Orwell’s writing of 1984, which began shortly after his departure from Germany, as Dr. Rodoreda describes in his monograph, in response the startling insights from recently discovered Orwell manuscripts. Dr. Rodoreda concluded his Vaihingen presentation by calling for Stuttgart’s Berger Steg to be renamed the Orwell Steg!
