Technical University of Munich
The Technical University of Munich is a public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences.
Established in 1868 by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the university now has additional campuses in Garching, Freising, Heilbronn, Straubing, Ottobrunn, and Singapore, with the Garching campus being its largest. The university is organized into seven schools, and is supported by numerous research centers. It is one of the largest universities in Germany, with 52,931 students and an annual budget of €1,892.9 million including the university hospital.
A University of Excellence under the German Universities Excellence Initiative, TUM is among the leading universities in the European Union. Its researchers and alumni include 18 Nobel laureates and 24 Leibniz Prize winners.
History
19th century
In 1868, King Ludwig II of Bavaria founded the Polytechnische Schule München with Karl Maximilian von Bauernfeind as founding director. The new school had its premises at Arcisstraße, where it is still located today. At that time, around 350 students were supervised by 24 professors and 21 lecturers. The institution was divided into six departments: The "General Department", the "Engineering Department", the "Building Construction Department", the "Mechanical-Technical Department", the "Chemical-Technical Department", and the "Agricultural Department".In 1877, the Polytechnische Schule München became the Technische Hochschule München, and in 1901 it was granted the right to award doctorates. With an average of 2,600 to 2,800 students, the TH München was Germany's largest technical university, ahead of the TH Berlin. In 1970 the institution was renamed Technische Universität München.
20th century
In 1906, Anna Boyksen became the first female student to enroll in electrical engineering, after the Bavarian government had allowed women to study at technical universities in the German Empire.Martha Schneider-Bürger became the first German female civil engineer to graduate from the university in 1927.
In 1913, Jonathan Zenneck became director of the newly created Physics Institute.
During the Weimar Republic, the TH München faced the challenge of limited resources and was drawn into radical political conflicts during the November Revolution, the Great Depression, and the rise of Adolf Hitler. Two of the 16 Nazis killed in Hitler's failed coup attempt in 1923 were students at the university. The National Socialist German Students' League became the strongest faction in the General Students' Committee in 1930, and Jewish and politically unpopular professors were terrorized by the young students.
After Hitler took power, the TH was soon aligned and a "Führer rector" was appointed, with the deans directly responsible to him. The Führerprinzip was also imposed on universities, resulting in a significant restriction of the autonomy of the TH München. In 1933, the newly enacted Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service led to the dismissal of staff deemed "non-Aryan" or married to "non-Aryans," as well as politically "undesirable" professors. Jewish students lost their rights and were banned from enrolling after 1938.
The university was deeply involved in the crimes of the Nazi regime. For instance, Heinz Henseler, a professor in charge of animal breeding at the university, headed a new "Colonial Science Seminar" from 1940. The seminar focused on exploring how to "Germanize" the landscapes of Poland and Russia for future colonization and settlement during the war. The entire Faculty of Agriculture was influenced by the ideology of blood and soil, and agricultural scientists had no qualms about using forced laborers and prisoners of war on university experimental farms. Henseler repeatedly asked his former student and SS chief Heinrich Himmler for additional land and led several excursions to the SS herb garden on the grounds of the Dachau concentration camp with his students.
During World War II, the TH München conducted extensive research in armaments to support the war effort. Notable professors during this time included aircraft designer Willy Messerschmitt and physicist Walther Meissner. Despite the war, high-level basic research continued to be conducted in some institutes, as some professors, staff members, and students dared to disobey and resist. Nobel laureate Hans Fischer protected Jewish students from Nazi persecution. He committed suicide shortly before the end of the war.
Post World War II
During the war, 80 percent of the university's facilities in Munich had been destroyed. Under these difficult conditions, teaching resumed in April 1946.In 1956, the construction of a research reactor in Garching was the beginning of the Garching campus. In 1969, the physics department building was opened there, followed in 1977 by new buildings for the chemistry, biology and geoscience departments.
Between 1868 and 1870 the architect Arnold Zenetti oversaw the construction of several hospital buildings which are today attached to the Munich universities or form part of the TUM campus. In 1967, a TUM School of Medicine was founded with campuses in the buildings of Rechts der Isar Hospital. By 1968, the so called TH München comprised six faculties, 8,400 students, and 5,700 staff. In 1972, the Zentrale Hochschulsportanlage, a 45-hectare sports center, was built on the grounds of the 1972 Summer Olympics.
In 1970, the TH München was renamed to its present name Technische Universität München. When the Bavarian Higher Education Act came into force in 1974, the six faculties were replaced by eleven departments. In 1992, the field of computer science was established as an independent Department of Informatics, having previously been part of the Department of Mathematics since 1967.
21st century
In 2002, TUM Asia was founded in Singapore, in cooperation with the Nanyang Technological University and the National University of Singapore. It was the first time that a German university had established a subsidiary abroad.The Department of Sport and Health Sciences and the School of Management were established in 2002. The Weihenstephan departments were combined into the "Weihenstephan Centre of Life and Food Sciences", which would later become the School of Life Sciences. With the establishment of the School of Education in 2009, the School of Governance in 2016, the Department of Aerospace and Geodesy in 2018, the School of Natural Sciences in 2023, the university comprises 7 schools and 29 research departments.
Since the inception of the German Universities Excellence Initiative in 2006, TUM has won every round of evaluation and the title University of Excellence.
As part of its Agenda 2030, the 15 schools and departments were consolidated into seven schools by 2023.
In 2024, TUM entered and won A2RL, an autonomous racing league held in Abu Dhabi, in the car racing format. In 2025, they participated again, also winning in Abu Dhabi.
Campuses
TUM's academic faculties are divided amongst numerous campuses.Munich
The historic Main Campus is located in Maxvorstadt, the central borough of Munich. Today, the departments of Architecture, Civil, Geo and Environmental Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Schools of Management, Governance, Education are located here.The TUM School of Medicine is located at the site of its university hospital, the Rechts der Isar Hospital, in the district of Haidhausen.
The TUM Department of Sport and Health Sciences is located in the Olympiapark, the former site of the 1972 Summer Olympics.
Garching
The campus in Garching, located around 10 km north of Munich, has grown to become the largest TUM campus. In the last decades, the departments of Physics, Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering, Informatics and Mathematics have all relocated from their former buildings in the Main Campus. They have since been joined by numerous research institutes, including the Max Planck Institutes for Plasma Physics, Astrophysics, Extraterrestrial Physics and Quantum Optics, the Forschungsreaktor München II, the headquarters of the European Southern Observatory, and the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, one of the fastest supercomputers in Europe.A landmark of the Garching campus is the Oskar von Miller Tower, a meteorological measurement tower with a height of 62 m. The Garching campus is connected to Munich by the Autobahn and the Munich U-Bahn. It has its own fire department.
Weihenstephan
The third TUM campus is located 35 km north of Munich in Weihenstephan, Freising. It hosts the School of Life Sciences.Other locations
Additional TUM facilities are located in Ottobrunn, Straubing, Heilbronn, and Singapore.TUM Asia
TUM operates a subsidiary in Singapore. In 2001, the German Institute of Science and Technology – TUM Asia was founded in partnership with the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University, offering a range of Master's programs. In 2010, TUM Asia started offering bachelor's degrees in collaboration with the Singapore Institute of Technology.In 2010, TUM and the Nanyang Technological University founded TUMCREATE, a research platform for the improvement of Singapore's public transportation.
Academics
Schools and departments
As a technical university, the university specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and the applied and natural sciences. Compared to a Volluniversität, it lacks the Geisteswissenschaften, including law and many branches of the social sciences.As of 2025, the Technical University of Munich is organized into seven schools:
| Schools | Students | Female | International |
| 14866 | ||
| 13884 | ||
| 5173 | ||
| 4761 | ||
| 4335 | ||
| 7005 | ||
| 2079 | ||
| TUM Campus Straubing | 828 | ||
| Total | 52931 |
Other institutions include the Rechts der Isar Hospital, the TUM Graduate School and the Munich School of Politics and Public Policy.
The TUM School of Management is triple accredited by the European Quality Improvement System, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business and the Association of MBAs.