| University of Göttingen | |
|---|---|
| Georg-August-Universität Göttingen | |
 | |
| Latin: Universitas Regiae Georgiae Augustae | |
| Established: | 1734 |
| Type: | Public Law foundation (Stiftung öffentlichen Rechts, since 2003) |
| President: | Prof. Dr. Kurt von Figura |
| Students: | 24,000 |
| Location: |  Göttingen, Germany |
| Affiliations: | German Excellence Universities Coimbra Group EUA |
| Website: | www.uni-goettingen.de |
The University of Göttingen (German: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) is a university in the city of Göttingen, Germany.
It was founded in 1734 by George II, King of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover, and was then opened in 1737. The University of Göttingen soon grew in size and popularity. Göttingen is a historic university city, with a high student population and has been home to generations of notable academics and notable alumni alike.
The University of Göttingen is also one of the highest-ranked universities in Germany.
History
Inauguration
In 1734, George II, King of Great Britain and of Hanover, gave his prime minister Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen, the order to establish a university in Göttingen to carry forward the idea of academic freedom at the times of European Enlightenment. Upon that, the University of Göttingen became the trailblazer of European universities to hail academic freedom with its four classic faculties of theology, law, philosophy and medicine.
18th – 19th centuries
Throughout the 18th century the University of Göttingen was at the top of German universities for its extremely free spirit and atmosphere of scientific exploration and research. By 1812, Göttingen had become an internationally acknowledged modern university with its library of more than 250,000 volumes. Napoleon had even studied law here and remarked that "Göttingen belongs to the whole Europe".
In the first years of the University of Göttingen it became famous for its faculty of law. In the 18th century Johann Stephan Pütter, the most prestigious scholar of public law at that time, taught jus publicum here for half a century, which had attracted a great number of students such as Klemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich, later diplomat and prime minister of Austria, and Wilhelm von Humboldt, who later set up the University of Berlin. It is also worth mentioning for this period that Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher best known for his work The World as Will and Representation, became a student at the University of Göttingen in 1809, where he studied metaphysics and psychology under Gottlob Ernst Schulze, who advised him to concentrate on Plato and Kant.
By 1837, when the university was a hundred years old, the University of Göttingen had earned its fame as "university of law" because almost every year the students enrolled by the faculty of law made up more than half of all the students on the campus. Göttingen became a mecca for the study of public law in Germany. Heinrich Heine, the famous German poet, studied law and was awarded Dr.iur..
However, political disturbances, in which both professors and students were implicated, lowered the attendance to 860 in 1834. The expulsion in 1837 of the famous seven professors - Die Göttinger Sieben - viz, the Germanist, Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht (1800-1876); the historian, Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann (1785-1860); the orientalist, Georg Heinrich August Ewald (1803-1875); the historian, Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805—1875); the physicist, Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1804-1891); and the philologists, the brothers Jakob Grimm (1785-1863), and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859), for protesting against the revocation by King Ernest Augustus I of Hanover of the liberal constitution of 1833, further reduced the prosperity of the university. Prior to this, the Brothers Grimm had taught here and compiled the first German Dictionary.
Thereafter, Gustav von Hugo, forerunner of the historical school of law, and Rudolf von Jhering, a most significant jurist who created the theory of "culpa in contraendo" and wrote Battle for Right, taught here in the 19th century and maintained the good reputation of the faculty of law. Otto von Bismarck, the main creator and first chancellor of the second German Empire, had also studied law in Göttingen in 1833 and lived in a tiny house on the "Wall" (according to oral tradition, he lived there because his rowdiness had caused him to be banned from living within the city walls), now known as "Bismarck Cottage".
Nevertheless, what made Göttingen a focus of the world scientific center was its glory in natural science, especially mathematics. Carl Friedrich Gauß, the "most important mathematician", taught in the 19th century here in Göttingen. Bernhard Riemann, Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet and a number of significant mathematicians made their contribution to mathematics here. By the end of the 19th century David Hilbert and Felix Klein had attracted mathematicians from around the world to Göttingen, which made Göttingen the center and mecca of mathematics at the beginning of the 20th century in the world.
End of the 19th century – beginning of the 20th century
During this period, the University of Göttingen achieved its peak in the academic history of Europe and even of the world.
In 1903, its teaching staff numbered 121 and its students 1529. Ludwig Prandtl joined the university in 1904, and developed it into a world leader in fluid mechanics and in aerodynamics over the next two decades. By the 1920s, it was unparalleled, and in 1925, Prandtl was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Fluid Mechanics. Many of Prandtl's students went on to make some of the fundamental contributions to aerodynamics, and read like a "who's who" guide to the field.
To date, 45 Nobel Prize laureates have studied, taught or made contributions here. Most of these prizes were given in the first half of the 20th century, which was called the "Göttingen Nobel prize wonder".
Social studies and study of humanities continued to flourish. Edmund Husserl, the great philosopher and known as the father of phenomenology, taught here. Max Weber, the great sociologist studied here for one term.
The "great purge" of 1933
In the 1930s, the university became a focal point for the Nazi crackdown on "Jewish physics", as represented by the work of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr (both Jewish). In what was later called the "great purge" of 1933, academics including Max Born, Victor Goldschmidt, James Franck, Eugene Wigner, Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, Emmy Noether, and Richard Courant were expelled or fled. The legacy of greatness in mathematics, a lineage which had included Carl Friedrich Gauss and Bernhard Riemann, was broken.
Though David Hilbert remained, by the time he died in 1943, the Nazis had essentially gutted the university, as many of the top faculty were either Jewish or had married Jews. About a year after the purge, he attended a banquet, and was seated next to the new Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust. Rust asked, "How is mathematics in Göttingen now that it has been freed of the Jewish influence?" Hilbert replied, "Mathematics in Göttingen? There is really none any more" (Reid, 205). Today, Göttingen is one of the most comprehensive universities in Germany, with a respectable, but no longer world-famous, mathematics department.
Renovation after War
After World War II, the University of Göttingen was the first university in the western Zones to be opened under British control in 1945. Jürgen Habermas, a leading German philosopher and sociologist, pursued his study here in Göttingen. Later, Richard von Weizsäcker, the former president of Germany, earned his Dr.iur. here. Gerhard Schröder, the former Chancellor of Germany, also graduated from the faculty of law here in Göttingen and became a lawyer thereafter.
Current status
Today the university consists of 13 faculties. About 24,000 students are currently enrolled. More than 2,500 professors and other academics presently work at the University, assisted by a technical and administrative staff of over 10,000. The post-war expansion of the University led to the establishment of a new, modern 'university quarter' in the north of the town. The architecture of the old university can still be seen in the Auditorium Maximum (1826/1865) and the Great Hall (1835/1837) on the Wilhelmsplatz.
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