Berlin, University

Berlin, University of

 or Humboldt University of Berlin

Public university in Berlin, Germany. It was founded (as Friedrich Wilhelm University) in 1809–10 by Wilhelm, baron von Humboldt. By the mid 1800s it had attained world renown for its modern curriculum and its scientific research institutes. Among its faculty were G.W.F. Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Arthur Schopenhauer, Leopold von Ranke, Hermann von Helmholtz, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. In the 1930s it was Nazified, and many of its faculty fled abroad. Under the German Democratic Republic after World War II, it was renamed Humboldt University and given a Marxist-Leninist orientation. It was reorganized after East and West Germany reunified in 1990.