India Germany national visa – guest scholar/scientist

Dear learned colleagues,

I am an Indian and am an independent researcher. While I have published a lot of books (with standard scientific publishing houses) I don’t hold a job in an university and am away from academia. My highest qualification is an engineering in electronics.

I have been elected for a prestigious “fellowship” from Germany. It is fully funded including the sufficient stipend. But I am not able to decide the category of visa I should go for. Websites are confusing me more.

I should be applying for guest scientist/visiting scholar visa and have all the documents ready. But I do not have a NOC from my university since I don’t work for one.

Should I go ahead with this?

Visa office can’t apparently help me decide the category.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.