Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg
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 Latin: Alma Mater Alberto-Ludoviciana |
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| Motto | Die Weisheit hat sich ein Haus erbaut
("Wisdom has built itself a house") |
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| Established | 1457 |
| Type | Public university |
| Rector | Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Jäger |
| Students | ca 20,000 |
| Location | Freiburg, Germany |
| Affiliations | EUA, LERU |
| Website | www.uni-freiburg.de |
Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg (German Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg ) was founded 1457 in Freiburg by the Habsburgs. One of the oldest universities in Germany, it has a long tradition of teaching the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. The university is one of Germany's most prestigious and a leading research as well as teaching institution in Europe.
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[edit] History
Originally Albrechts University, the university started with four faculties (theology, philosophy, medicine and law). Its establishment belongs to the second wave of German university foundings in the late Middle Ages, like the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and the University of Basel. Established by papal privilege (papal bull) the University in Freiburg actually was - like all or most universities in the middle ages - a corporation of the church body and therefore belonged to the Roman Catholic Church and its hierarchy. The bishop of Basel consequently was its provost or chancellor (Kanzler), the bishop of Konstanz was its patron while the real founder of the university was the sovereign, Archduke Albert VI of Austria, being the brother of Frederick III, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. At its founding, the university was named after Albert VI of Austria. He provided the university with land and a huge amount of endowments as well as its own jurisdiction. Also he declared Albrechts University as the "county university" (German Landesuniversität) for his territory - in the past including an area from Alsace to Tyrol - until it was handed over to the Austrian House of Habsburg in 1490.
Shortly after that the university had a time of prosperity when numerous later famous humanists were educated there like Geiler von Kaysersberg, Johann Reuchlin or Jakob Wimpfeling. When Ulric Zasius was teaching law (until 1536), Freiburg became a centre of humanist jurisprudence. From 1529 to 1535 Erasmus of Rotterdam lived and taught in Freiburg. Since around 1559 the university was housed at the Altes Collegium ("Old College"), today called the "new town-hall". The importance of the university decreased during the time of the Counter-Reformation. To counter those tendencies, the administration of two faculties was handed over to the Roman-Catholic order of the Jesuits in 1620. (The two faculties were, of course, Theology (or Divinity) and Philosophy.) Since 1682 the Jesuits built up their college as well as the Jesuit church (nowadays the "University Church" or Universitätskirche).
At times, especially during the disorders of the Thirty Years' War, the university had to move out of Freiburg temporarily, e.g. from 1686 to 1698, when French troops devastated Freiburg and the southern parts of the upper Rhine region.
After Freiburg as the capital of Further Austria was re-conquered, a new time began for the university by the reforms of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. The requirements for admission were changed for all faculties in 1767 (before that time only Roman Catholics were allowed to study) and Natural Sciences were added as well as Public Administration. Also in 1767, the university became a governmental institution despite the Church's protests. The Church finally lost its predominant influence on the university when the Jesuits were suppressed following a decree signed by Pope Clement XIII in 1773. It also might have been the Zeitgeist and the official line of the new Emperor Joseph II (successor and son of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria) that his Patent of Tolerance which ensured Protestants the same rights as Catholics (published 1781) finally began an era of Enlightenment within the domains of the Habsburg, nowadays known as an era called "Josephinismus". Consequently Johann Georg Jacobi (brother of the more famous philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi) in 1784 was the first Protestant professor teaching at the university in Freiburg. It is said that Joseph II instructed in his will to offer the professorship in Freiburg to Johann Heinrich Jacobi, probably already guessing the shocked reaction which the citizens of Freiburg would show given the fact that the area around Freiburg was deeply devoted to Catholicism.
When Freiburg became a part of the newly established Grand Duchy of Baden (in German "Großherzogtum Baden") in 1805 (after Napoleon occupied the area of the formerly Further Austria), a crisis began for the university in Freiburg. Indeed there were considerations by Karl Friedrich, Grand Duke of Baden and Karl, Grand Duke of Baden to close down the university in Freiburg while both of them thought that the Grand Duchy could not afford to run two universities at the same time (the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg also already existed since 1386). The university had enough endowmentss and earnings to survive until the beginning of the regency of Ludwig I, Grand Duke of Baden in 1818. Finally in 1820 he saved the university with an annual contribution. Since then the university has been named Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg) as an acknowledgement of gratitude by the university and the citizens of Freiburg.
In the 1880s the population of the student body and faculty started to grow quickly. The excellent scientific reputation of Albert Ludwigs University attracted several researchers like economist Adolph Wagner, historians Georg von Below and Friedrich Meinecke, or jurists Karl von Amira and Paul Lenel. In 1899 Freiburg became the first German university to accept a female student. Just before World War I the university counted 3,000 students. After World War I the highly distinguished philosophy Edmund Husserl and (since 1928) Martin Heidegger taught at Albert Ludwigs University, as well as Edith Stein (she was the assistant of Edmund Husserl, the predecessor of Martin Heidegger). On the field of social sciences, Walter Eucken developped the idea of ordoliberalism, which consequently is also known as "Freiburger Schule" in German.
In the beginning of the 20th century several new university buildings were built in the centre of Freiburg, such as in 1911 the new main building. During the "Third Reich" the university went through the process of Gleichschaltung like the rest of the German universities. This means that most of the non-governmental or non-state-controlled institutions, unions, clubs and associations of students were illegal (e.g. Catholic student fraternities were declared illegal). Under the rector Martin Heidegger all Jewish faculty members, among them many excellent and renowned Jewish scientists and professors, were forced to leave the university in accordance with the "‘Law for the Reintroduction of Professional Civil Service". After World War II the university was re-opened. New buildings for natural sciences were erected in the Institutsviertel ("institute quarter").
In the late 20th century, the university was part of a mass education campaign and expanded rapidly. The student body grew to 10,000 by the 1960s, and doubled to 20,000 students by 1980.
In the 1970s, the faculty structure was changed to 14 departments, with the Faculty of Applied Sciences becoming the 15th faculty in 1994. In 2002, the number of faculties was reduced to eleven.
In 2003, the university opened a memorial dedicated to the victims of National Socialism among the students, staff, and faculty.
The Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg has many partnerships with universities all around the world, especially the "Sokrates/Erasmus" partnership - a system mainly throughout Europe with an exchange-programme that is very popular with foreign students.
Since March 2006, the Albert Ludwigs University (ALU) Freiburg is a member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU).
[edit] Campus
Having grown with the city since the 15th century, the university's buildings are deeply intertwined with the city of Freiburg. There are three large campuses scattered throughout the city (the university centre next to the historical city of Freiburg, the institutes quarter and the applied sciences campus), but other buildings can be found all over Freiburg.
The University Medical Center Freiburg (Universitätsklinikum Freiburg) is one of Germany's largest medical centers. It boasts nearly 1,800 beds and handles 54,000 in-patients a year, with another 300,000 being treated ambulatorily. It consists of 13 specialized clinics, 5 clinical institutes, and 5 centers (e.g. Center for Transplantation Medicine). Many of the University Medical Center's achievements are ground-breaking, such as the first implantation of an artificial heart (2002) and so help to make the university clinic one of Germany's most distinguished.
[edit] Students
Today the university has a student population of around 20,000, including both undergraduate and graduate students. Approximately 10-15% of these students are foreigners.
[edit] Faculty
Today, there are about 430 professors, 2,950 scientific employees and 8,400 non-scientific employees working for the Albert Ludwigs University, making it one Freiburg's and the region's biggest employer.
[edit] Current Affairs
In university rankings of German magazines and periodicals (Der Spiegel, Zeit, Focus, etc.) the Albert Ludwigs University (ALU) has established itself as one of Germany's top universities. The faculties for law, medicine, history, English studies, biology, and pharmacology achieve especially high scores. The University of Freiburg demonstrated its position as one of the best German universities during the Excellence Initiative by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (Germany), receiving funding for the new graduate school Molecular Cell Research in Biology and Medicine. This graduate school is based on cooperation with other internationally renowned institutions, such as the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neurosciences (BCCN). The ALU Freiburg has also generated a very positive response towards the concept for the future of the university, called "Windows for Research” – New Universitas and Four Beacons of Learning, which aims to promote a high level of interdisciplinarity between the research fields and attract scientists from all over the world. The University of Freiburg intends to found a "Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies” (FRIAS) with four main schools: School of Historical Studies, School of Language and Literature, School of Life Sciences, and School of Soft Matter Science and Functional Systems. Members of this institute will be top researchers of international renown to be invited as fellows. The university is thus in a very good position for the next round of proposals for the Excellence Initiative.
In 2007, the Albert Ludwigs University will celebrate its 550th anniversary.
[edit] Organization
The university is headed by a rector and divided into 11 faculties:
- Faculty of Theology
- Faculty of Law
- Faculty of Medicine
- Faculty of Economics and Behavioural Sciences
- Faculty of Philology
- Faculty of Philosophy (history, sociology, etc.)
- Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
- Faculty of Chemistry, Pharmacy and Geo-sciences
- Faculty of Biology
- Faculty of Forestry and Environmental science
- Faculty of Applied Science (mainly computer science)
It is part of the regional EUCOR federation with Karlsruhe, Basel, Mulhouse and Strasbourg.
[edit] Noted Alumni and Professors
- Erasmus of Rotterdam
- Ulrich Zasius
- Karl von Rotteck
- Karl Theodor Welcker
- Johann Eck
- Edmund Husserl
- Martin Heidegger
- Ludwig Aschoff
- Hannah Arendt
- Walter Eucken
- Gerd Tellenbach
- Martin Waldseemüller
- Ernst Zermelo
- Eugen Fischer
- Alfred Döblin
- Friedrich Meinecke
- August Weismann
- Max Weber
- Rudolf Carnap
- Wim Wenders
- Herbert Marcuse
- Paul Langerhans
- Otfrid Foerster
- Hans Friedrich Karl Günther
- Hildegard Behrens
- Konstantin Fehrenbach
- Karl Cardinal Lehmann
- Konrad Adenauer
- Wolfgang Schäuble
- Jutta Limbach
Nobel Prize winners associated with the university
- Paul Ehrlich, student (Nobel Prize 1908, Physiology or Medicine)
- Otto Meyerhof, student (Nobel Prize 1922, Physiology or Medicine)
- Heinrich Otto Wieland, professor (Nobel Prize 1927, Chemistry)
- Adolf Windaus, student (Nobel Prize 1928, Chemistry)
- Otto Heinrich Warburg, student (Nobel Prize 1931, Physiology or Medicine)
- Hans Spemann, professor (Nobel Prize 1935, Physiology or Medicine)
- George de Hevesy, student and professor (Nobel Prize 1943, Chemistry)
- Philip Hench, student (Nobel Prize 1950, Medicine or Physiology)
- Hermann Staudinger, professor (Nobel Prize 1953, Chemistry)
- Hans Adolf Krebs, student (Nobel Prize 1953, Physiology or Medicine)
- J. Hans D. Jensen, student (Nobel Prize 1963, Physics)
- Friedrich August von Hayek, professor (Nobel Prize 1974, Economics)
- Georg Wittig, professor (Nobel Prize 1979, Chemistry)
- Georges J. F. Köhler, student and professor (Nobel Prize 1984, Physiology or Medicine)
- Bert Sakmann, student (Nobel Prize 1991, Physiology or Medicine)
- Mario Molina, student (Nobel Prize 1995, Chemistry)
[edit] External link
| League of European Research Universities |
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Amsterdam | Cambridge | Edinburgh | ALU Freiburg | Geneva | Heidelberg | Helsinki | Karolinska (Stockholm) | Leiden | Leuven | London (UCL) | Lund | Milan | LMU Munich | Oxford | Paris VI | Paris-Sud | Strasbourg I (Louis Pasteur) | Utrecht | Zürich |
