RWTH Aachen University

RWTH Aachen University is a public research university located in Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is one of the oldest and leading technical universities in Germany and, with about 45,000 students, is simultaneously the second-largest. It was founded in 1870 as Königliche Rheinisch-Westfälische Polytechnische Schule zu Aachen in Prussia. Renowned for its academic excellence, RWTH Aachen is funded under the national Excellence Strategy and is recognized as an elite research university. The university comprises ten faculties and some 290 institutes.
RWTH Aachen maintains numerous partner universities and is a founding member of the CESAER association of universities of science and technology in Europe, and IDEA League, a strategic alliance of five leading universities of technology in Europe, as well as its German counterpart TU9. It is also a member of DFG, Top Industrial Managers for Europe, ACalNet, ALMA, CESAER, DFH, JARA, NRW-Zertifikat, ENHANCE, PEGASUS and UNITECH International.
Since 2007, RWTH Aachen has been continuously funded by the DFG and the German Council of Science and Humanities as one of eleven German Universities of Excellence. RWTH Aachen regularly achieves good rankings in national and international rankings, particularly in engineering, natural sciences, and economics. In the Times Higher Education World University Ranking 2025, RWTH Aachen University was ranked 36th worldwide in engineering. In the QS World University Ranking 2025, RWTH Aachen University was ranked 1st in Germany, 8th in Europe, and 23rd worldwide in mechanical engineering.

History

On 25 January 1858, prince Frederick William of Prussia, was given a donation of 5,000 talers from the Aachener und Münchener Feuer-Versicherungs-Gesellschaft, the precursor of the AachenMünchener insurance company, for charity. In March, the prince chose to use the donation to found the first Prussian institute of technology somewhere in the Rhine province. The seat of the institution remained undecided over years; while the prince initially favored Koblenz, the cities of Aachen, Bonn, Cologne and Düsseldorf also applied, with Aachen and Cologne being the main competitors. Aachen finally won with a financing concept backed by the insurance company and by local banks. Groundbreaking for the new Polytechnikum took place on 15 May 1865 and lectures started during the Franco-Prussian War on 10 October 1870 with 223 students and 32 teachers. The new institution had as its primary purpose the education of engineers, especially for the mining industry in the Ruhr area; there were schools of chemistry, electrical and mechanical engineering as well as an introductory general school that taught mathematics and natural sciences and some social sciences.
The unclear position of the new Prussian polytechnika affected the first years. Polytechnics lacked prestige in society and the number of students decreased. This began to change in 1880 when the early RWTH, amongst others, was reorganized as a Royal Technical University, gained a seat in the Prussian House of Lords and finally won the right to bestow Dr.-Ing. degrees and Dipl.-Ing. titles. In the same year, over 800 male students enrolled. In 1909 the first women were admitted and the artist August von Brandis succeeded Alexander Frenz at the Faculty of Architecture as a "professor of figure and landscape painting", Brandis became dean in 1929.
World War I, however, proved a serious setback for the university. Many students voluntarily joined up and died in the war, and parts of the university were shortly occupied or confiscated.
While the TH Aachen flourished in the 1920s with the introduction of more independent faculties, of several new institutes and of the general students' committee, the first signs of nationalist radicalization also became visible within the university. Nazi Germany's Gleichschaltung of the TH in 1933 met with relatively low resistance from both students and faculty. Beginning in September 1933, Jewish and Communist professors were systematically persecuted and excluded from the university. Vacant Chairs were increasingly given to NSDAP party-members or sympathizers. The freedom of research and teaching became severely limited, and institutes important for the regime's plans were systematically established, and existing chairs promoted. Briefly closed in 1939, the TH continued courses in 1940, although with a low number of students. On 21 October 1944, when Aachen capitulated, more than 70% of all buildings of the university were destroyed or heavily damaged.
After World War II ended in 1945 the university recovered and expanded quickly. In the 1950s, many professors who had been removed because of their alleged affiliation with the Nazi party were allowed to return and a multitude of new institutes were founded. By the late 1960s, the TH had 10,000 students, making it the foremost of all German technical universities. With the foundation of philosophical and medical faculties in 1965 and 1966, respectively, the university became more "universal". The newly founded faculties in particular began attracting new students, and the number of students almost doubled twice from 1970 to 1980 and from 1980 to 1990. Now, the average number of students is around 42,000, with about one third of all students being women. By relative terms, the most popular study-programs are engineering, natural science, economics and humanities and medicine.

Recent developments

In December 2006, RWTH Aachen and the Sultanate of Oman signed an agreement to establish a private German University of Technology in Muscat. Professors from Aachen aided in developing the curricula for the currently five study-programs and scientific staff took over some of the first courses.
In 2007, RWTH Aachen was chosen as one of nine German Universities of Excellence for its future concept RWTH 2020: Meeting Global Challenges, earning it the connotation of being a "University of Excellence". However, although the list of universities honored for their future concepts mostly consists of large and already respected institutions, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research claimed that the initiative aimed at promoting universities with a dedicated future concept so they could continue researching on an international level. Having won funds in all three lines of funding, the process brought RWTH Aachen University an additional total funding of €180 million from 2007 to 2011. The other two lines of funding were graduate schools, where the Aachen Institute for Advanced Study in Computational Engineering Science received funding and so-called "clusters of excellence", where RWTH Aachen managed to win funding for the three clusters: Ultra High-Speed Mobile Information and Communication , Integrative Production Technology for High-wage Countries and Tailor-Made Fuels from Biomass .
RWTH was selected to receive funding from the German federal and state governments for the third Universities of Excellence funding line starting 2019. RWTH's proposal was called "The Integrated Interdisciplinary University of Science and Technology – Knowledge. Impact. Networks." and has secured funding for a seven-year period.
2019 Clusters of Excellence:

The Fuel Science Center Adaptive Conversion Systems for Renewable Energy and Carbon Sources
Internet of Production
ML4Q – Matter and Light for Quantum Computing

RWTH was already awarded funding in the first and second Universities of Excellence funding lines, in 2007 and 2012 respectively.
The RWTH itself has a University agreement with the Harbin Institute of Technology since 2019. In June 2024 a research by Correctiv journalists showed Chinese military involvement in several RWTH projects. From 100 RWTH professors in Mechanical- and Electrical engineering 19 had coorperated with researchers from NUDT and the Seven Sons of National Defence initiative and 45 had benefited from Chinese government funding. The money, in some cases channelled through companies privately held by RWTH professors, went, among other things, to projects with military applications, including radar technology for drones.

Campus

RWTH Aachen University's campus is located in the north-western part of the city Aachen. There are two core areas – midtown and Melaten district. The Main Building, SuperC student's center and the Kármán Hall are 500 m away from the city centre with the Aachen Cathedral, the Audimax and the main refectory are 200 m farther. Other points of interest include the university's botanical garden.
A new building, the so-called Central Auditorium for Research and Learning was opened in 2017. It offers space for 4000 students and replaces Audimax as the largest lecture hall building. The name of the new central auditorium, which is going to contain different lecture halls, is a reference to Charlemagne, who reigned his empire from Aachen in the middle-ages.
The RWTH has external facilities in Jülich and Essen and owns, together with the University of Stuttgart, a house in Kleinwalsertal in the Austrian Alps.
The university is currently expanding in the city center and Melaten district. The SuperC, the new central service building for students, was opened in 2008. The groundbreaking for the new Campus-Melaten was in 2009.

Internationality

Double degrees and student mobility are promoted with other technology universities through the TIME network. Furthermore, the RWTH is member of the IDEA League, which is a strategic partnership among four of Europe's leading research universities, including TU Delft, Chalmers University of Technology, and ETH Zürich, and was the first German university starting an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program in 2008.
More than 7,000 international students are currently enrolled within the undergraduate, graduate or PhD programme. Compared to other German universities the portion of international students at the RWTH Aachen is higher-than-average. The proximity of Aachen to the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg combined with the subsequent exposure to a variety of cultural heritages has placed RWTH Aachen University in a unique position with regards to the reflection and promotion of international aspects and intensive interaction with other universities.
In Asia, RWTH Aachen collaborates with Tsinghua University to offer Tsinghua-Aachen Joint Master Program.