Prof. Harald F. Kauffmann, an excellent experimental physicist, former head of the ultrafast spectroscopy group at the Vienna University has passed away on January 9th 2021. Prof. Kauffmann has been keeping long-term contacts with the Institute of Physics of Charles University, first with prof. Vladislav Čápek and prof. Jiří Bok and later with prof. František Šanda and prof. Tomáš Mančal. He has build the first working experimental set-up for the coherent electronic two-dimensional spectoscopy on the European continent, and during his career he has brought up many successfull young scientists. His collaboration with the Czech and Slovak physicists and chemists was marked by his special understanding of our "East-European" experience. The Czech-Austrian collaboration which he supported was crowned by fourteen publications during his active participation between the years 1999 and 2012. The research group which he founded and lead continues active research in a new incarnation at the Technical University in München, and publications from the collaboration he started still continue to add up.
In prof. Kauffmann, the scientific community has lost an excellent personality and a great organizer of scientific life.