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Humboldt University of Berlin

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 86.145.248.3 (talk) at 09:35, 11 May 2008 (→Third Reich: Link to Nazi book burnings). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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
File:Seal of the Humboldt University of Berlin.svg
[Alma Universitas Humboldtiana Berolinensis
(older: Universitas Friderica Gulielma Berolinensis)] Error: {{Langx}}: text has italic markup (help)
TypePublic university
Established1810
PresidentChristoph Markschies
Students36,835
Location
Berlin
,
Germany
CampusUrban
AffiliationsEUA
Websitehttp://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 its founder.

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, 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.

History

Third Reich

After 1933, it was, like all German universities, 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.

File:Universitaet Berlin.jpg
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

East Germany

In 1946, the university opened again and was renamed in honour of its founder.

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

Today

After the end of communism, the university was radically restructured and all professors had to apply for their professorships anew. 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. The University continues to serve the German community.

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:

See also

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

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