Humboldt University of Berlin

The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany.

The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humboldt, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher as the University of Berlin () in 1809, and opened in 1810. From 1828 until its closure in 1945, it was named the (Royal) Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin (FWU Berlin; ). During the Cold War, the university found itself in East Berlin and was de facto split in two when the Free University of Berlin opened in West Berlin. The university received its current name in honour of Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1949.

The university is divided into nine faculties, including its medical 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. Its main campus is located on the boulevard in central Berlin. The university is known worldwide for pioneering the Humboldtian model of higher education, which has strongly influenced other European and Western universities.

It is generally regarded as having been the world's preeminent university for the natural sciences during the 19th and early 20th centuries; it is linked to major breakthroughs in physics and other sciences by its professors, such as Albert Einstein. Past and present faculty and notable alumni include 57 Nobel Prize laureates

In 1967, eight statues from the destroyed Potsdam 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 the Landtag of Brandenburg in 2013.

Early history

thumb|upright|left|[[Wilhelm von Humboldt Memorial, Berlin in front of the main building by artist Paul Otto]]

Similarly to the University of Bonn, the University of Berlin was established by King Friedrich Wilhelm III on 16 August 1809, during the period of the Prussian Reform Movement, on the initiative of the liberal Prussian philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt. The university was located in a palace constructed from 1748 to 1766 for the late Prince Henry, the younger brother of Frederick the Great. After his widow and her ninety-member staff moved out, the first unofficial lectures were given in the building in the winter of 1809. 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:

The university has been home to many of Germany's greatest thinkers of the past two centuries, among them subjective idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, absolute idealist philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, Romantic legal theorist Friedrich Carl von Savigny, anti-optimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, objective idealist philosopher Friedrich Schelling, cultural critic Walter Benjamin, and famous physicists Albert Einstein and Max Planck.

thumb|right|Friedrich Wilhelm University in 1850

The founders of Marxist theory Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels attended the university, as did poet Heinrich Heine, novelist Alfred Döblin, founder of structuralism Ferdinand de Saussure, 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 influential surgeon Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach in the early half of the 1800s.

The structure of German research-intensive universities served as a model for institutions like Johns 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."

Enlargement

thumb|upright|Statue of [[Alexander von Humboldt outside Humboldt-Universität (Reinhold Begas, 1883)]]

In addition to the strong anchoring of traditional subjects, such as science, law, philosophy, history, theology and medicine, the university developed to encompass numerous new scientific disciplines. Alexander von Humboldt, brother of the founder William, promoted the new learning. The construction of modern research facilities in the second half of the 19th century aided the teaching of the natural sciences. Famous researchers, such as the chemist August Wilhelm Hofmann, the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, the mathematicians Ernst Eduard Kummer, Leopold Kronecker, Karl Weierstrass, the physicians Johannes Peter Müller, Emil du Bois-Reymond, Albrecht von Graefe, Rudolf Virchow, and Robert Koch, contributed to Berlin University's scientific fame.

thumb|Friedrich Wilhelm University, ([[photochrom, 1900)]]

During this period of enlargement, the university gradually expanded to incorporate other previously separate colleges in Berlin. An example would be the Charité, the Pépinière and the Collegium Medico-chirurgicum. In 1710, King Friedrich I had built a quarantine house for Plague 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 for charity]). 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 began a natural history collection in 1810, which by 1889 required a separate building and became the Museum 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, the Landwirtschaftliche 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 the House of Hohenzollern (das geistige Leibregiment des Hauses Hohenzollern)."

In 1887, chancellor Otto Bismarck established the (SOS), (usually known in English as the Oriental Seminary) to prepare public servants for posting to Kamerun (later Cameroon), then part of the German colonial empire. 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). Teachers included (1909–1915) and Heinrich Vieter.

Friedrich Wilhelm University became an emulated model of a modern university in the 19th century.

Nazi regime

thumb|Friedrich Wilhelm University in 1938

After 1933, like all German universities, Friedrich Wilhelm University was impacted by the Nazi regime. The rector during this period was Eugen Fischer. The Law 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" and opponents of the regime were taken to be burned on 10 May of that year in the Opernplatz square (now called the Bebelplatz) for a demonstration that was protected by the SA and featured a speech by Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. A monument to this tragic event called The 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 an epigraph taken from an 1820 work by the great German-Jewish writer Heinrich Heine:

Cold War

thumb|Humboldt University, 1950 thumb|Humboldt University in 1964

During the Cold War, the university was located in East Berlin. It reopened in 1946 as the University of Berlin, but faced repression from the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, including the persecution of liberal and social democrat students. Almost immediately, the Soviet occupiers started persecuting non-communists and suppressing academic freedom at the university, requiring lectures to be submitted for approval by Socialist Unity Party officials, and piped Soviet propaganda into the cafeteria. This led to strong protests within the student body and faculty. NKVD secret police arrested a number of students in March 1947 as a response. The Soviet Military Tribunal in Berlin-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.

From 1945 to 1948, 18 other students and teachers were arrested or abducted, many missing for weeks, and some were taken to the Soviet 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. During the Berlin Blockade, the Freie Universität Berlin was established as a de facto western successor in West Berlin in 1948, with support from the United States, and retaining traditions and faculty members of the old Friedrich Wilhelm University. 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 in East Berlin in particular.

Modern Germany

upright|thumb|The [[Museum für Naturkunde Berlin|Berlin 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 the German reunification, the university was radically restructured under the Structure and Appointment Commissions, which were presided over by West German professors. 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. 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. As a result, only 10% of the mid-level academics in Humboldt-Universität still had a position in 1998.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Academic Units of Humboldt University of Berlin

!Faculty

!Departments

|Faculty of Arts and Humanities

Department of Philosophy
Department of History
Department of European Ethnology
Department of Library and Information Science

|Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

|Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department of Archaeology
Department of Art and Visual History
Department of Asian and African Studies
Department of Cultural History and Theory
Department of Education Studies
Department of Musicology and Media Studies
Department of Rehabilitation Sciences
Department of Social Sciences
Department of Sports Sciences
Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies

|Faculty of Law

|Faculty of Language, Literature and Humanities

Department of German Literature
Department of German Studies and Linguistics
Department of Northern European Studies
Department of Romance Literatures and Linguistics
Department of English and American Studies
Department of Slavic and Hungarian Studies
Department of Classical Philology

|Faculty of Life Sciences

Albrecht Daniel Thaer-Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences
Department of Biology
Department of Psychology

|Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences

Department of Chemistry
Department of Computer Science
Department of Geography
Department of Mathematics
Department of Physics

|Faculty of Theology

|Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin

Graduate schools

Graduate schools provide structured PhD programmes:

Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies
Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences
Berlin-Brandenburg School for Regenerative Therapies
Berlin School of Mind and Brain
Berlin Mathematical School
Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy
Humboldt Graduate School
SALSA - School of Analytical Sciences Adlershof
Graduate School "Advanced Materials"

Central institutes

Furthermore, there are four central institutes (Zentralinstitute) that are part of the university:

Centre for British Studies (in German: Großbritannienzentrum)
Humboldt-Innovation (research transfer and spin-off service)
Museum für Naturkunde (Natural History Museum)
Späth-Arboretum

Student parliament

Each year, students elect the student parliament (), which serves as the body of student representatives under German law (AStA).

{| class="wikitable sortable"

|+Summary of election results (seats)

!! class="unsortable"; style=max-width:0.5em; |

!List

!2022

!2023

!2024

!2025

Academics

Rankings

According to the 2024 QS World University Rankings, the university ranked 120th globally and 7th at the national level. Additionally, in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2024, it was placed at 87th worldwide and 4th within the country.

In the 2023 QS Subject Ranking, Humboldt University ranks first in Germany in the arts and humanities and the social sciences. In the 2024 THE Subject Ranking, Humboldt University ranks second in Germany in the arts and humanities, law, psychology, and social sciences. In the 2023 ARWU Subject Ranking, Humboldt University ranks first in Germany in geography.

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 100%; font-size: 90%"

|+ QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 In 2020, the American U.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.

International partnerships

HU students can study abroad for a semester or a year at partner institutions such as the University of Oxford, Princeton University and Peking University.

Notable alumni and faculty

File:Albert Einstein Head cleaned.jpg|Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist known for developing the theory of relativity and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics

File:Erwin Schrödinger (1933).jpg|Erwin Schrödinger, physicist who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theory, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics

File:Max Planck 1933.jpg|Max Planck, theoretical physicist and originator of quantum theory, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics

File:(UAZ) AB.1.0583 Laue.tif|Max von Laue, physicist and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics

File:Paul Ehrlich. Photograph, 1915. Wellcome L0010139.jpg|Paul Ehrlich, physician known for curing syphilis and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

File:Albrecht Kossel nobel.jpg|Albrecht Kossel, biochemist who pioneered in the study of genetics and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine

File:Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff.jpg|Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, pioneering chemist and the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

File:Otto Hahn 1970.jpg|Otto Hahn, chemist, pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry

File:RobertKoch cropped.jpg|Robert Koch, physician and microbiologist, discoverer of anthrax, tuberculosis and cholera bacillus

File:Rudolf Virchow NLM3.jpg|Rudolf Virchow, physician anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist, father of modern pathology

File:Theodor Mommsen 03.jpg|Theodor Mommsen, classical scholar and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature

File:Wegener Alfred signature.jpg|Alfred Wegener, polar researcher and geophysicist who originated the continental drift hypothesis

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-2005-0057, Otto von Bismarck.jpg|Otto von Bismarck, 1st Chancellor of Germany

File:Bundesarchiv Bild183-R57262, Werner Heisenberg crop.jpg|Werner Heisenberg, theoretical physicist and pioneer of quantum mechanics

File:Karl Weierstrass.jpg|Karl Weierstrass, mathematician, considered "the father of modern analysis"

File:Grimm1.jpg|Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, best-known collectors of German and European folk tales

File:Heinrich Heine-Oppenheim.jpg|Heinrich Heine, poet best known for his early lyric poetry

File:Yeshayahu Leibowitz 1.jpg|Yeshayahu Leibowitz, public intellectual, scientist, and writer

File:Karl Marx 001.jpg|Karl Marx, philosopher, political theorist, and socialist revolutionary

File:Friedrich Engels portrait (cropped).jpg|Friedrich Engels, philosopher and revolutionary socialist

File:Hegel portrait by Schlesinger 1831.jpg|Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, idealist philosopher and one of the fundamental figures of modern Western philosophy

File:Johann Gottlieb Fichte.jpg|Johann Gottlieb Fichte, philosopher, German idealist

File:Walter Benjamin vers 1928.jpg|Walter Benjamin, philosopher, cultural critic and essayist

File:Max stirner.jpg|Max Stirner, philosopher and forerunner of nihilism and postmodernism

File:ErnstCassirer.jpg|Ernst Cassirer, idealist philosopher

File:Schopenhauer by Jules Lunteschütz.jpg|Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher

File:Jebens, Adolf - Leopold von Ranke (detail) - 1875.jpg|Leopold von Ranke, historian, founder of modern source-based history

File:Louise Seidler - Niebuhr - Uhde 222.jpg|Barthold Georg Niebuhr, historian, statesman, banker, father of modern scholarly historiography

File:Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Litho.jpg|Felix Mendelssohn, composer during the early Romantic period

File:Max Weber, 1918.jpg|Max Weber, sociologist and influential figure in modern social theory and social research

File:Simmel 01.JPG|Georg Simmel, sociologist and philosopher

File:W.E. Burghardt DuBois.JPG|W.E.B. Du Bois, civil rights activist and academic

File:KLiebknecht.jpg|Karl Liebknecht, socialist politician and revolutionary

File:Gustav Stresemann.jpg|Gustav Stresemann, statesman during the Weimar Republic and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize

File:Austen Chamberlain MP.jpg|Austen Chamberlain, statesman and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize

File:2019-08-28-Gregor Gysi-Maischberger-7202.jpg|Gregor Gysi, politician, former President of the Party of the European Left, leader of the Left Party

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1987-074-16, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.jpg|Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian, pastor, anti-Nazi dissident, founder of the Confessing Church

File:Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher.jpg|Friedrich Schleiermacher, theologian, philosopher, biblical scholar, considered the "Father of Modern Protestant theology"

File:Emmanuelle Charpentier.jpg|Emmanuelle Charpentier, professor and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

File:Benedykt Dybowski ca 1910 (776305) (cropped).jpg|Benedykt Dybowski, professor of Zoology, pioneer of Limnology

File:Stefan Rosental.jpg|Stefan Rosental, Polish neurologist and psychiatrist

</gallery>