Humboldt University of Berlin

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For other universities in Berlin, see List of Universities in Berlin. For the American university of a similar name in Arcata, California, see Humboldt State University.
Humboldt University of Berlin
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Latin: Alma Universitas Humboldtiana Berolinensis
(older: Universitas Friderica Gulielma Berolinensis)
Established: 1810
Type: Public university
President: Christoph Markschies
Students: 36,835
Location: Berlin, Flag of Germany Germany
Campus: Urban
Affiliations: EUA
Website: http://www.hu-berlin.de
Data as of 2004
Statue of Alexander von Humboldt outside Humboldt University. Note the Spanish inscription describing him as "the second discoverer of Cuba".

The Humboldt University of Berlin (German Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin (Universität zu Berlin) by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities. From 1828 it was known as the Frederick William University (Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität), later also as the Universität unter den Linden. In 1949, it changed its name to Humboldt-Universität in honour of both its founder Wilhelm and his brother, naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.

Contents

[edit] History

The first semester at the newly founded Berlin university occurred in 1810 with 256 students and 52 lecturers in faculties of law, medicine, theology and philosophy. The university has been home to many of Germany's greatest thinkers of the past two centuries, among them the subjective idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, the absolute idealist philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, the Romantic legal theorist Savigny, the pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, the objective idealist philosopher Friedrich Schelling, cultural critic Walter Benjamin, and famous physicists Albert Einstein and Max Planck. Founders of Marxist theory Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels attended the university, as did poet Heinrich Heine, German unifier Otto von Bismarck, Communist Party of Germany founder Karl Liebknecht, African American Pan Africanist W. E. B. Du Bois and European unifier Robert Schuman, as well as the influential surgeon Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach in the early half of the 1800s. The university is home to 29 Nobel Prize winners.

The structure of German research-intensive universities, such as Humboldt, served as a model for institutions like Johns Hopkins.

This section requires expansion.

[edit] Third Reich

After 1933, like all German universities, it was transformed into a Nazi educational institution. It was from the University's library that some 20,000 books by "degenerates" and opponents of the regime were taken to be burned on May 10 of that year in the Opernplatz (now the Bebelplatz) for a demonstration protected by the SA that also featured a speech by Joseph Goebbels. A monument to this can now be found in the center of the square, consisting of a glass panel opening onto an underground white room with empty shelf space for 20,000 volumes and a plaque, bearing an epigraph from an 1820 work by Heinrich Heine: "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen" ("That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they ultimately burn people"). Jewish students and scholars and political opponents of Nazis were ejected from the university and often deported.

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

[edit] East Germany

In 1946, the university opened again. The Soviet administration soon took over control of the university, relegating all students who did not conform to Communist ideology. As a reaction, the Free University of Berlin was founded in 1948 in the Western part of the city. The communist party forced it to change the name of the university in 1949. Until the collapse of the East German regime in 1989, Humboldt University remained under tight ideological control of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany), or SED, which, by rigorously selecting students according to their conformity to the party line, made sure that no democratic opposition could grow on its university campuses. Its Communist-selected students and scholars did not participate to any significant degree in the East German democratic civil rights movements of 1989, and elected the controversial SED member and former Stasi spy Heinrich Fink as the Director of the University as late as 1990.

The Royal Library, now seat of the Faculty of Law.
The Humboldt Museum, the largest museum of natural history in Germany.

[edit] Today

After the unification of East and West Germany, the university was radically restructured and all professors had to reapply for their professorships . The faculty was largely replaced with West German professors, among them renowned scholars like the art historian Horst Bredekamp and the historian Heinrich August Winkler. Today, the Humboldt University is a state university with a large number of students (37,145 in 2003, among them more than 4,662 foreign students) after the model of West German universities, and like its counterpart Free University of Berlin.

Its main building is located in the centre of Berlin at the boulevard Unter den Linden. The building was erected on order by King Frederick II for his younger brother Prince Henry of Prussia. Most institutes are located in the centre, around the main building, except the nature science institutes, which are located at Adlershof in the south of Berlin. Further, the university continues its tradition of a book sale at the university gates facing Bebelplatz. The books sold are reprints of those burnt during the Third Reich and is symbolic of the institution atoning for its participation. The University continues to serve the German community.

[edit] Library

Once the Royal Library proved insufficient, a new library was founded in 1831, first located in several temporary sites. In 1871-1874 a library building was constructed, following the design of architect Paul Emanuel Spieker. In 1910 the collection was relocated in the building of the Berlin State Library. During the Weimar Period the library contained 831.934 volumes (1930) and was thus one of the leading university libraries in Germany at that time. During the Nazi book burnings in 1933, no volumes from the university library were destroyed. Also, the loss through World War II was comparativly small. Therefore, the library's collection proves to be very homogeneous even today. In 2003, natural science related books were outhoused to the newly found librarly at the Campus Adlershof, which is dedicated solely to the natural sciences. Since the premises of the State Library had to be cleared in 2005, a new library building is about to be erected close to the main building in the center of Berlin. The "Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm-Zentrum" will be finished in 2009. In the meantime, the collection once more is held at a temporary site. In total, the university library contains about 6.5 million volumes and 9000 held magazines and journals and is one of the biggest university libraries in Germany. As a comparison, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library at New York University contains approximately 4.5 million volumes.

[edit] Notable alumni, professors and docents

[edit] Organization

These are the 11 faculties into which the university is divided:

Furthermore there are two independent institutes (Zentralinstitute) that are part of the university:

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Institutional Network of the Universities from the Capitals of Europe (UNICA)
v • d • e
Universities in the North of Germany
Traditional universities
HU Berlin · Greifswald · Göttingen · Hamburg · Hanover · Kiel · Rostock
Northern Germany
New universities
Universities of Technology

Coordinates: 52°31′05″N 13°23′36″E / 52.51806°N 13.39333°E / 52.51806; 13.39333

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