Free University of Berlin
The Free University of Berlin is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948 with American support during the early Cold War period as a Western continuation of the Friedrich Wilhelm University, or the University of Berlin, whose traditions and faculty members it retained. The Friedrich Wilhelm University, being located in East Berlin, was renamed the Humboldt University. The Free University's name referred to West Berlin's status as part of the intellectual continuum of the Western "Free World", contrasting with Soviet-controlled East Berlin.
In 2008, as part of a joint effort, the Free University of Berlin, along with the Hertie School of Governance and WZB Social Science Research Center Berlin, created the Berlin Graduate School for Transnational Studies.
The Free University of Berlin was conferred the title of "University of Excellence" under the German Universities Excellence Initiative, of which it is a part. As an institution of the Berlin University Alliance, the FU Berlin was included in the second funding line in 2019 as part of the Excellence Strategy.
History
The Free University of Berlin was established by students and scholars on 4 December 1948. The foundation is strongly connected to the beginning of the Cold War period.The University of Berlin was located in the former Soviet sector of Berlin and was granted permission to continue teaching by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany in January 1946. The university came under increased communist influence and repression, as it became a battlefield for the political disputes of the postwar period. This led to protests by students critical of the prevailing system. Between 1945 and 1948, more than 18 students were brutally beaten and arrested or persecuted, and some were even executed by the Soviet secret police.
Foundation (1948–2000)
At the end of 1947, students demanded a university free from political influence. The climax of the protests was reached on 23 April 1948: after three students were expelled from the university without a trial, about 2,000 students protested at the Hotel Esplanade. By the end of April, the governor of the United States Army, Lucius D. Clay, issued the order to legally examine the formation of a new university in the western sectors of Berlin. On 19 June 1948, the "preparatory committee for establishing a free university" consisting of politicians, professors, administrative staff members, and students, met. With a manifesto titled "Request for establishing a free university in Berlin", the committee appealed to the public for support.The municipal authorities of Berlin granted the foundation of a free university and requested the opening for the coming 1948/49 winter semester. Meanwhile, the students' committee in the German Democratic Republic protested against the formation; the GDR described the new university as the "so-called free university" in official documents until the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The council-manager government accepted the by-law on 4 November 1948. The by-law achieved prominence under its alias "the Berlin model":
The university was founded as a statutory corporation and was not directly subjected to the state, as it was controlled by a supervisory board consisting of six representatives of the state of Berlin, three representatives of the university, and students. This form was unique in Germany at that time, as the students had much more influence on the system than before. Until the 1970s, the involvement of the students in the committees was slowly cut back while adapting to the model of the Western German universities in order to be fully recognized as an equivalent university.
On 15 November 1948, the first lectures were held in the buildings of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science. The actual foundation took place on 4 December 1948 in the Titania Palace, the film theater with the biggest hall available in the western sectors of Berlin. Attendants of the event were not only scientists, politicians and students, but also representatives of American universities, among them Stanford University and Yale University. The first elected president of the Free University of Berlin was the historian Friedrich Meinecke.
File:JFKBerlinSpeech.jpg|thumb|left|John F. Kennedy, 1963: This school must be interested in turning out citizens of the world, men who comprehend the difficult, sensitive tasks that lie before us as free men and women, and men who are willing to commit their energies to the advancement of a free society.
By 1949, the Free University had registered 4,946 students. Until the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, many students came from the Soviet sector, often supported through the Währungsstipendium of the senate.
On 26 June 1963, the same day he delivered his Ich bin ein Berliner speech at Rathaus Schöneberg, John F. Kennedy was awarded honorary citizen status by the Free University and gave a ceremonial speech in front of the Henry Ford building, in which he addressed the future of Berlin and Germany under the consideration of the motto of the FU. Amongst the attendant crowd are also the Governing Mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt, and the Chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer. His brother, Robert F. Kennedy, visited the university in 1962 for the first time and in June 1964 to receive his honorary degree from the Department of Philosophy. The speech he held at the event was dedicated to John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated the year before.
In the late 1960s, the Free University of Berlin was one of the main scenes of the West German student movement of '68, as a reaction to the global student protests during that time. Significant issues included better living standards and education at the university, the Vietnam War, the presence of former Nazi Party members in the government as epitomized by the Globke affair, and continuing institutional authoritarianism. After the assassination of student Benno Ohnesorg and the attempt on the life of Rudi Dutschke, protests quickly escalated to violence throughout West Germany. The events of the 68-movement provided the impulse for more openness, equality, and democracy in West German society.
During the 1970s and the 1980s, the university became a Massenuniversität with 50,298 registered students in 1983. After reunification, the Free University of Berlin was the second-largest university in Germany with 62,072 students in the winter term of 1991/92. Shortly thereafter, the senate of Berlin decided to drastically reduce enrollment until 2003, the number of students shrank to 43,885 in the winter term of 2002/03.
Since 2000, the Free University of Berlin has revamped itself. The university's research performance increased markedly with regard to the number of graduates, PhDs granted, and publications.
Since 2000
Since 2003, the FU Berlin has been regrouping its research capacities into interdisciplinary research focus areas called clusters.Due to financial cutbacks and restructuring of medical schools in the same year, the medical institutions of the Free and Humboldt Universities of Berlin merged to create a joint department, the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
The year 2007 was another crucial year for the Free University of Berlin as it was the university with the most approved funding applications in the German Universities Excellence Initiative, and it is now one of nine elite German universities to receive funding for its future development strategy. In the same year, Free University of Berlin dedicated a monument to the founding students who were murdered during the protests. The university presents its Freedom Award to personalities who have made a special contribution toward the cause of freedom. The university received a total of 108 million euros from the Excellence Initiative for its approved projects between 2007 and 2012.
Based on its founding tradition, the Free University of Berlin seal to this day bears the Latin terms for Truth, Justice, and Liberty. The designer of the seal was art historian and former president of the Free University of Berlin, Edwin Redslob.
Campuses
Campus Dahlem
Most of the facilities of the Free University of Berlin are located in the residential garden district of Dahlem in southwestern Berlin.Around the beginning of the 20th century, Dahlem was established as a center for research of the highest caliber. Academic activity in Dahlem was supported by Friedrich Althoff, Ministerial Director in the Prussian Ministry of Culture, who initially proposed the foundation of a "German Oxford."
The first new buildings housed government science agencies and new research institutes of the University of Berlin. The Kaiser Wilhelm Society – forerunner of the present-day Max Planck Society – was founded in 1911 and established several institutes in Dahlem.
A dynamic group of researchers carried out pioneering research resulting in numerous Nobel Prizes. Since its foundation, the Free University of Berlin has been using buildings formerly belonging to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and, in addition, has added numerous architecturally innovative buildings.
The Free University of Berlin's central campus consists of building ensembles within walking distance of each other. The planners oriented themselves along the type of campus found in the United States – a novelty in post-war Germany. The first independent structure to be completed on campus was the Henry Ford building, funded by the Ford Foundation. To that point, the university was housed in several older structures around the neighborhood, including the Otto Hahn building, which houses the Department of Biochemistry to this day. Thanks to further donations from the United States, the Free University of Berlin was able to construct several new central building complexes, including the Benjamin Franklin university clinic complex.
The largest single complex of university buildings is the Rost- und Silberlaube, which translates roughly to the "Rust and Silver Lodges". This complex consists of a series of interlinked structures corresponding to either a deep bronze or shiny white hue, surrounding a variety of leafy courtyards. It was complemented in 2005 by a new centerpiece, the brain-shaped Philological Library, designed by British architect Lord Norman Foster.
With 43 ha and around 22,000 species of plants, FU's Berlin Botanical Garden in nearby Lichterfelde West is one of the largest of its kind.