Free University of Berlin

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  Philological Library of the Free University of Berlin.

• The "Holzlaube" university building of Freie Universität in Fabeckstraße.

• Holzlaube, Rostlaube, Silberlaube und Goldlaube at the Free University of Berlin.

• Henry Ford Building of the Free University of Berlin.

• Hahn-Meitner-Bau of the Free University of Berlin.

Freie Universität Berlin is the largest university in the capital. The FU is one of Germany's elite universities and was the driving force behind the student protests of the 1968 movement.

Alongside Humboldt University, the Free Universität of Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin, abbreviation FU Berlin) is one of the two universities in Berlin that offer the courses of a traditional university. With about 34,000 students, it is the largest university in the German capital and one of the largest in Germany. A total of around 470 professors and countless academic staff teach and conduct research at the FU. With more than 4700 employees, the FU is one of the largest employers in the region.

Foundation of the FU: Against the SED ideology

The Free University was officially founded on December 4, 1948 in the Titania-Palast in the Steglitz district, after the Berlin University Unter den Linden had already been reopened in 1946, but soon committed itself to the SED ideology. Opposition meant revocation of the right to study. Against this backdrop, rejected students, together with committed academics and with the support of the United States of America, planned to found a new university in the western part of the city. The FU was able to start teaching in the Dahlem institutes of the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society as early as the winter semester of 1948/49.

Student protests at the Free University of Berlin

Numerous emigrants and personalities active in the resistance against the Nazi regime, such as Ernst Reuter, Richard Löwenthal and Ernst Hirsch, returned to Berlin and shaped the beginnings of the FU, whose structure was to contribute in an exemplary manner to democratic organization after 1945 and which was therefore not only an old-style curatorial university, but also the first in German university history to give students a seat and a vote in the Academic Senate.

By the end of the 1950s, more than 10,000 students were already enrolled. At the end of the 1960s, against the backdrop of rigid university and social structures, the Vietnam War and the assassination attempt on Rudi Dutschke, a fierce ideological conflict broke out. Student protests were also part of the daily agenda in the 1970s, before the ideological dispute gave way to the pragmatic disputes of a modern mass university in the 1980s due to the steady growth of the FU.

Buildings of the Freie Universität Berlin

The Free University is housed in a total of around 250 buildings, many of them former private villas, which are scattered in various districts of southwest Berlin. Since the 1990s, the academic facilities have increasingly been concentrated in FU-owned buildings. The central campus with the Henry Ford Building and the Rostlaube, Silberlaube and Holzlaube is located in a green area in the Dahlem district. Most of the institutes of the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences are located here. Veterinary Medicine in Düppel, the Benjamin Franklin University Hospital with its medical institutes in Steglitz and the Geosciences and Communication Sciences in Lankwitz each have their own smaller campus.

Information

• Address:
  Kaiserswerther Straße 16
  14195 Berlin
  City map
• Internet: www.fu-berlin.de