Whether or not a visa is required to enter Germany depends on your nationality and the duration of your stay.

The Federal Foreign Office has a VISA portal which is currently being expanded.

Citizens of EU member states, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland generally do not require a visa. A valid identity card is sufficient for entry.

Citizens of Australia, Great Britain, Israel, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, South Korea and the USA can also enter Germany without a visa. For longer stays of more than 90 days, however, you will need a residence permit. This can be applied for after entering the country at the immigration office responsible for your place of residence.

To obtain the necessary documents for your VISA application, please contact the International Office!

If you are planning a stay at the MPIK as a scientific guest/ stipend holder, we need a completed and signed form Personalbogen_Gast or Personalbogen_Stipendium and possibly your bank details.

Open doctoral positions can be found on the pages of the scientific departments or under Careers.

After being accepted by one of the scientific divisions, you can send us your application documents (incl. personal form_employee and bank details) for your employment at the MPIK via this LINK (LINK to follow).

Information and advice on enrolment at Heidelberg University is provided by the HGSFP Graduate School.

NB We suggest that before you start your thesis you talk to your advisor on the expectations in supervision and communication strategy. Likely these things may change in the course of the thesis, but some structural aspects should be discussed beforehand anyway. We advise to use the PhD supervision expectation alignment form which you can download here.

Things you may want to settle beforehand are whether regular meetings shall be fixed, the amount of freedom in choosing the topic and methodology, how closely the advisor will check the progress of the thesis, whether you should be reachable during certain working hours, etc. We also suggest the advisors to formulate a realistic research plan, e.g. whether certain intermediate steps in the project are necessary, how long the duration of the thesis is to be expected, whether research and conference trips are planned, etc. 

Every thesis is different, and depending on you, the advisor and the topic, not all, or other aspects need to be discussed.

Finally, the university's "formal steps for beginning your doctorate" can be found here. 

The International Office requires all personnel documents relevant to your visa application or employment to be completed in full and uploaded here.