Free University of Berlin

Freie Universität Berlin was founded in 1948 by professors and students, in response to the persecution faced by students who took a critical eye of the system at Universität Unter den Linden, at that time located in the Soviet sector of the divided city. The idea of founding a free university found widespread support in the international community, including financial support. This outpouring of aid helped pave the way for Freie Universität to become a university with an outstanding international reputation. The principles of freedom and internationality have guided the university’s development ever since. Since the university’s founding, in December of 1948, the academic ethos of Freie Universität Berlin has always been defined by three values: truth, justice, and freedom.

The years 1968, 1990, and 2007 mark turning points in the history of Freie Universität. The university was one of the central sites in Germany for the student protests of the 1960s, a movement that sparked a trend toward greater openness, equality, and democracy.

Then, after German reunification in 1990, Freie Universität Berlin shifted its emphasis, increasing its research activities. The number of graduates, successful doctoral candidates, and publications also grew by a significant measure. The basis for the university’s successful new approach was a series of fundamental reforms, including the introduction of modern management structures in the university’s administration, reorganization of the departments, and use of funding to support specific aims.

In 2007, Freie Universität Berlin was selected in the Excellence Initiative jointly sponsored by the German federal government and the governments of the federal states. It was one of nine universities in Germany to receive distinction in all three lines of funding, a step that has enabled the university to solidify and further expand its position as an “international network university.” In 2012 during the second funding round of the Excellence Initiative, it was selected again and is now one of eleven universities of excellence in Germany.

Freie Universität Berlin is a leading research institution. It is one of the German universities successful in all three funding lines in the federal and state Excellence Initiative, thereby receiving additional funding for its institutional future development strategy.

Freie Universität can thus take its place as an international network university in the global competition among universities. Development and assessment of research projects takes place within various focus areas, research networks, and platforms for interdisciplinary collaborative research.

The university’s performance in the Excellence Initiative provided funding for several new graduate schools and transdisciplinary research clusters. In particular, the graduate schools play a key role in the development of internationally competitive research centers of excellence.

Freie Universität Berlin is a broad-based university with 15 departments and central institutes offering over 150 degree programs across a wide range of subjects.

Freie Universität Berlin was founded on December 4, 1948, by students, scholars, and scientists with the support of the American allied forces and politicians in Berlin. The move was sparked by the persecution faced by students who took a critical eye of the system at the former Universität Unter den Linden, at that time located in the Soviet sector of the divided city. Students and academics wanted to be free to pursue their learning, teaching, and research activities at Freie Universität, without being subject to political influence.

Generous donations from the United States enabled Freie Universität to build some of its central facilities, including the Benjamin Franklin University Hospital and the Henry Ford Building. In a nod to the history surrounding the university’s founding, the seal of Freie Universität still features the words truth, justice, and freedom. In 2007, the university dedicated a memorial to the founding students, who were killed by the Soviet secret service. The university also presents its Freedom Award to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to freedom.

To remain relevant and to compete academically and intellectually from its isolated position in West Berlin, Freie Universität made connections with academic institutions and leading academic figures in Germany, elsewhere in Europe, and all over the world. What started out of necessity, soon became a success strategy: Freie Universität currently maintains roughly 105 partnerships at the university-wide level, along with about 330 university partnerships within the Erasmus academic exchange network and ca. 45 institute partnerships.

Freie Universität is located in the southwest of Berlin, in the garden district of Dahlem, which had already become a top-ranked location for research and study in the early 20th century. Academic activity in Dahlem was supported by Friedrich Althoff, Ministerial Director at the Prussian Ministry of Culture, who proposed the founding of “a German Oxford” at that time.

The first new buildings housed government academic and scientific agencies and new institutes of the former University of Berlin. In addition, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society – the precursor of the Max Planck Society – maintained various institutes in Dahlem from the time it was founded, in 1911, onward. A dynamic group of scientists, including Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and Max Planck, performed pioneering research at the new site, earning multiple Nobel Prizes. In 1938, in what is now the Hahn-Meitner Building nuclear fission occurred. Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner had spent more than two decades working together there toward that aim.

Since it was first founded, Freie Universität Berlin has used former buildings of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society as well as bringing a number of architecturally innovative buildings of its own to the area. The campus of Freie Universität is made up of groups of buildings all located within walking distance of one another. The campus planners designed it along the lines of an American college campus, a novelty in postwar Germany.

The permanent exhibition “Future from the Very Beginning” (Zukunft von Anfang an) in the Henry Ford Building of Freie Universität highlights the university’s rich and varied history, from its founding in 1948 right up to the present day. Photographs, early films, radio reports, and contemporary printed materials show the university’s position at the center of contemporary events right from the start. The exhibition in the Henry Ford Building is open to the public at no charge during regular building opening hours (Garystraße 35, 14195 Berlin, 7:30 a.m.–8 p.m. Monday through Friday).