TheHumboldt University of Berlin (German:Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviatedHU Berlin) is apublicresearch university in the central borough ofMitte inBerlin, Germany.
The university is divided into nine faculties including itsmedical school shared with the Freie Universität Berlin. The university has a student enrollment of around 35,000 students, and offers degree programs in some 171 disciplines from undergraduate to post-doctorate level.[12] Its main campus is located on theUnter den Linden boulevard in central Berlin. The university is known worldwide for pioneering theHumboldtian model of higher education, which has strongly influenced other European and Western universities.[13]
In 1967, eight statues from the destroyedPotsdam City Palace were placed on the side wings of the university building. Currently there is discussion about returning the statues to the Potsdam City Palace, which was rebuilt as theLandtag of Brandenburg in 2013.[17]
Similar to theUniversity of Bonn, the University of Berlin was established byKing Friedrich Wilhelm III on 16 August 1809, during the period of thePrussian Reform Movement, on the initiative of the liberal Prussian philosopher andlinguistWilhelm von Humboldt. The university was located in a palace constructed from 1748 to 1766[18] for the latePrince Henry, the younger brother ofFrederick the Great.[19] After his widow and her ninety-member staff moved out, the first unofficial lectures were given in the building in the winter of 1809.[19] Humboldt faced great resistance to his ideas as he set up the university. He submitted his resignation to the King in April 1810, and was not present when the school opened that fall.[1]
The first students were admitted on 6 October 1810, and the first semester started on 10 October 1810, with 256 students and 52 lecturers[11] in faculties of law, medicine, theology and philosophy under rector Theodor Schmalz. The university celebrates 15 October 1810 as the date of its opening.[1] In 1810, at the time of the opening, the university established the firstacademic chair in the field of history in the world.[20] From 1828 to 1945, the school was named the "Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin", in honor of its founder.Ludwig Feuerbach, then one of the students, made a comment about the university in 1826:
"There is no question here of drinking, duelling and pleasant communal outings; in no other university can you find such a passion for work, such an interest for things that are not petty student intrigues, such an inclination for the sciences, such calm and such silence. Compared to this temple of work, the other universities appear like public houses."[21]
The structure of German research-intensive universities served as a model for institutions likeJohns Hopkins University. Further, it has been claimed that "the 'Humboldtian' university became a model for the rest of Europe [...] with its central principle being the union of teaching and research in the work of the individual scholar or scientist."[22]
During this period of enlargement, the university gradually expanded to incorporate other previously separate colleges in Berlin. An example would be theCharité, the Pépinière and the Collegium Medico-chirurgicum. In 1710, KingFriedrich I had built aquarantine house forPlague at the city gates, which in 1727 was rechristened by the "soldier king"Friedrich Wilhelm: "Es soll das Haus die Charité heißen" (called Charité [French forcharity]). By 1829 the site became Friedrich Wilhelm University's medical campus and remained so until 1927 when the more modern University Hospital was constructed.
The university started anatural history collection in 1810, which by 1889, required a separate building and became theMuseum für Naturkunde. The preexisting Tierarznei School, founded in 1790 and absorbed by the university, in 1934 formed the basis of the Veterinary Medicine Facility (Grundstock der Veterinärmedizinischen Fakultät). Also theLandwirtschaftliche Hochschule Berlin (Agricultural University of Berlin), founded in 1881 was affiliated with the Agricultural Faculties of the university.
In August 1870, in a speech delivered on the eve of war with France,Emil du Bois-Reymond proclaimed that "the University of Berlin, quartered opposite the King's palace, is, by the deed of our foundation, the intellectual bodyguard of theHouse of Hohenzollern (das geistige Leibregiment des Hauses Hohenzollern)."[23]
In 1887, chancellorOtto Bismarck established theSeminar für Orientalische Sprachen [de] (SOS), (usually known in English as the Oriental Seminary) to preparepublic servants for posting toKamerun (laterCameroon), then part of theGerman colonial empire.[24][25] Various Asian languages were taught there, and in 1890, there were 115 students, which belonged to various faculties, including law; philosophy, medicine and physical sciences; and theology (as part of their training to be missionaries).[26] Teachers includedHermann Nekes [de] (1909–1915) andHeinrich Vieter.[24] In the 1920s to 1930s, renowned Jewish orientalistEugen Mittwoch was director of the school, before being forced to emigrate toLondon afterKristallnacht in 1938.[27]
Friedrich Wilhelm University became an emulated model of a modern university in the 19th century.[28]
After 1933, like all German universities, Friedrich Wilhelm University was impacted by theNazi regime. The rector during this period wasEugen Fischer. TheLaw for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (German "Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums") resulted in 250 Jewish professors and employees being fired from the university during 1933–1934, as well as numerous doctorates being withdrawn. Students and scholars, and other political opponents of Nazis, were ejected from the university and often deported. During this time nearly one third of all of the staff were fired by the Nazis.
It was from the university's library that some 20,000 books by "degenerates" andopponents of the regime weretaken to be burned on 10 May of that year in theOpernplatz square (now called theBebelplatz) for a demonstration that was protected by theSA and featured a speech byReich Minister of PropagandaJoseph Goebbels. A monument to this tragic event calledThe Empty Library can now be found in the center of the square. It consists of a glass panel embedded in the pavement that looks into a large, subterranean white room with empty shelf space for 20,000 volumes, along with a plaque bearing anepigraph taken from an 1820 work by the great German-Jewish writerHeinrich Heine:
"Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." ("This was but a prelude; where they burn books, they ultimately burn people").[29]
Humboldt University, 1950Humboldt University in 1964
During theCold War, the university was located inEast Berlin. It reopened in 1946 as the University of Berlin, but faced repression from theSoviet Military Administration in Germany, including the persecution of liberal and social democrat students. Almost immediately, the Soviet occupiers started persecuting non-communists and suppressingacademic freedom at the university, requiring lectures to be submitted for approval bySocialist Unity Party officials, and piped Soviet propaganda into the cafeteria. This led to strong protests within the student body and faculty.NKVDsecret police arrested a number of students in March 1947 as a response. The Soviet Military Tribunal inBerlin-Lichtenberg ruled the students were involved in the formation of a "resistance movement at the University of Berlin", as well as espionage, and were sentenced to 25 years of forced labor.[30]
From 1945 to 1948, 18 other students and teachers were arrested or abducted, many missing for weeks, and some were taken to theSoviet Union and executed. Many of the students targeted by Soviet persecution were active in the liberal or social democratic resistance against the Soviet-imposed communist dictatorship. The German communist party had long regarded the social democrats as their main enemies, dating back to the early days of the Weimar Republic.[31] During theBerlin Blockade, theFreie Universität Berlin was established as a de facto western successor inWest Berlin in 1948, with support from the United States, and retaining traditions and faculty members of the old Friedrich Wilhelm University.[32] The name of the Free University refers to West Berlin's perceived status as part of the Western "free world", in contrast to the "unfree" Communist world in general and the "unfree" communist-controlled university inEast Berlin in particular.[31]
Because the historical name, the Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, had monarchic origins, the school was officially renamed in 1949. Although the Soviet occupational authorities preferred to name the school after a communist leader, university leaders were able to name it the "Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin", after the two Humboldt brothers, a name that was also uncontroversial in the West and capitalized on the fame of the Humboldt name, which is associated with theHumboldtian model of higher education.[33]
TheBerlin Natural History Museum (shown here photographed in 2005) is one of the largest natural history museums in the world. Founded alongside the University of Berlin in 1810 it left the Humboldt University in 2009.
After theGerman reunification, the university was radically restructured under the Structure and Appointment Commissions, which were presided by West German professors.[34][35] For departments on social sciences and humanities, the faculty was subjected to a "liquidation" process, in which contracts of employees were terminated and positions were made open to new academics, mainly West Germans. Older professors were offered early retirement.[35][36] The East German higher education system included a much larger number of permanent assistant professors, lecturers and other middle level academic positions. After reunification, these positions were abolished or converted to temporary posts for consistency with the West German system.[37] As a result, only 10% of the mid-level academics in Humboldt-Universität still had a position in 1998.[35] Through the transformations, the university's research and exchange links with Eastern European institutions were maintained and stabilized.[34]
Today, Humboldt University is a state university with a large number of students (36,986 in 2014, among them more than 4,662 foreign students) after the model of West German universities, and like its counterpart theFreie Universität Berlin.
The university consists of three different campuses, namely Campus Mitte, Campus Nord and Campus Adlershof. Its main building is located in the centre of Berlin at the boulevardUnter den Linden and is the heart of Campus Mitte. The building was erected on order by KingFrederick II for his younger brotherPrince Henry of Prussia. All the institutes of humanities are located around the main building together with the Department of Law and the Department of Business and Economics. Campus Nord is located north of the main building close toBerlin Hauptbahnhof and is the home of the life science departments including the university medical centerCharité. The natural sciences, together with computer science and mathematics, are located at Campus Adlershof in the south-east of Berlin. Furthermore, the university continues its tradition of a book sale at the university gates facing Bebelplatz.
The main building of Humboldt- Universität, located in Berlin's "Mitte" district (Unter den Linden boulevard)
When 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 to the building of theBerlin State Library.
During theWeimar Period the library contained 831,934 volumes (1930) and was thus one of the leading university libraries in Germany at that time.
During theNazi book burnings in 1933, no volumes from the university library were destroyed. The loss throughWorld War II was comparatively small. In 2003, natural science-related books were outhoused to the newly founded library at theAdlershof campus, 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 was erected close to the main building in the center of Berlin. The "Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm-Zentrum" (Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Centre, Grimm Zentrum, or GZ as referred to by students) opened in 2009.
In total, the university library contains about 6.5 million volumes and 9,000 held magazines and journals, and is one of the biggest university libraries in Germany.
The books of theInstitut für Sexualwissenschaft were destroyed during the Nazi book burnings, and the institute destroyed. Under the terms of the Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation, the government had agreed to continue the work of the institute at the university after its founder's death. However, these terms were ignored. In 2001, the university acquired the Archive for Sexology from the Robert Koch Institute, which was founded with a large private library donated byErwin J. Haeberle. This has now been housed at the new Magnus Hirschfeld Center.[51]
The former Royal Library, now seat of the Faculty of Law
In the 2023 QS Subject Ranking, Humboldt University ranks first in Germany in the arts and humanities and the social sciences.[55] In the 2024 THE Subject Ranking, Humboldt University ranks second in Germany in the arts and humanities, law, psychology, and social sciences.[56] In the 2023 ARWU Subject Ranking, Humboldt University ranks first in Germany in geography.[57]
Measured by the number of top managers in the German economy, Humboldt-Universität ranked 53rd in 2019.[58] In 2020, the AmericanU.S. News & World Report listed Humboldt-Universität as the 82nd best in the world, climbing eight positions, being among the 100 best in the world in 17 areas out of 29 ranked.[59]
^During that period, it was also unofficially calledUniversität unter den Linden after its location in the former palace ofPrince Henry of Prussia which his brother, KingFrederick II, had built for him between 1748 and 1753 on the avenueUnter den Linden.
^hu-presse."Facts and Figures".Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Retrieved26 September 2024.
^Connell Helen,University Research Management Meeting the Institutional Challenge: Meeting the Institutional Challenge, p. 137, OECD, 2005,ISBN9789264017450
^Hans C. Ohanian,Einstein's Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius, p. 156, W. W. Norton & Company, 2009,ISBN9780393070422
Ash, Mitchell G. (2006). "Bachelor of What, Master of Whom? The Humboldt Myth and Historical Transformations of Higher Education in German-Speaking Europe and the US1".European Journal of Education.41 (2). Wiley:245–267.doi:10.1111/j.1465-3435.2006.00258.x.ISSN0141-8211.
McClelland, Charles E. (2016).Berlin, the Mother of All Research Universities: 1860–1918. Lanham: Lexington Books.ISBN978-1-4985-4021-6.OCLC958371470.
McClelland, Charles E. (1980).State, society, and university in Germany 1700-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-22742-1.OCLC708362287.
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