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.