Fellowship of the German National Merit Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes) (1962-1969)
Fellowship of the VW Foundation (VW Stiftung)  (1986)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Council (DFG) (1986)
Hewlett Packard Europhysics Prize of the European Physical Society (EPS) (1989)
Alexander von Humboldt Award for the Promotion of the Scientific Cooperation between France and the Federal Republic of Germany (Gay-Lussac-Humboldt Prize) (1989)
American Physical Society (APS) International Prize for New Materials (James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials) (1990)
Honorary Professorship at the W. Trzebiatowski Institute for Low Temperature and Structure Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, Wrocław (1996)
Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities Göttingen and of the Saxonian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Leipzig (since 1999)
International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) Magnetism Award (2000)
Dr. h.c. Univ. of Augsburg (2000)
Member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) (since 2001)
Stern-Gerlach Medal of the German Physical Society (DPG) (2004)
Dr. h.c. Univ. of Cologne (2005)
Dr. h.c. Univ. of Frankfurt (M.) (2005)
Order of Merit (Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz) of the Federal Republic of Germany (2005)
Bernd T. Matthias Prize for Superconducting Materials (2006)
Dr. h.c. Jagiellonian University Krakow (2008)
External Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (since 2010)
Distinguished Visiting Professor, Institute of Physics (IOP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China) (since 2012)
Qiushi Distinguished Professor, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou (China) (since 2012).