Frankfurt University

Frankfurt University   (University)
Formation	1914
Headquarters	Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Type	Public
Founded and funded by the wealthy and active liberal citizenry of Frankfurt.

Goethe University (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealthy and active liberal citizenry of Frankfurt. The original name was Universität Frankfurt am Main. In 1932, the university's name was extended in honour of one of the most famous native sons of Frankfurt, the poet, philosopher and writer/dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The university currently has around 45,000 students, distributed across four major campuses within the city.

The university celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2014. The first female president of the university, Birgitta Wolff, was sworn into office in 2015. 20 Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with the university, including Max von Laue and Max Born. The university is also affiliated with 18 winners of the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.

Goethe University is part of the IT cluster Rhine-Main-Neckar. The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the Goethe University Frankfurt and the Technische Universität Darmstadt together form the Rhine-Main-Universities (RMU).

History

Campus Bockenheim (in 1958)

The historical roots of the university can be traced back as far as 1484, when a City Council Library was established with a bequest from the patrician Ludwig von Marburg. Merged with other collections, it was renamed City Library in 1668 and became the university library in 1914. Depending on the country, the date of foundation is recorded differently. According to Anglo-American calculations, the founding date of Goethe University would be 1484. In Germany, the date on which the right to award doctorates is granted is considered the founding year of a university.

The university has been best known historically for its Institute for Social Research (founded 1924), the institutional home of the Frankfurt School, a preeminent 20th-century school of philosophy and social thought. Some of the well-known scholars associated with this school include Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Jürgen Habermas, as well as Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Walter Benjamin. Other well-known scholars at the University of Frankfurt include the sociologist Karl Mannheim, the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, the philosophers of religion Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Paul Tillich, the psychologist Max Wertheimer, and the sociologist Norbert Elias.

The University of Frankfurt has at times been considered liberal, or left-leaning, and has had a reputation for Jewish and Marxist (or even Jewish-Marxist) scholarship. During the Nazi period, "almost one third of its academics and many of its students were dismissed for racial and/or political reasons—more than at any other German university". The university also played a major part in the German student movement of 1968.

The university also has been influential in the natural sciences and medicine, with Nobel Prize winners including Max von Laue and Max Born, and breakthroughs such as the Stern–Gerlach experiment.

In recent years, the university has focused in particular on law, history, and economics, creating new institutes, such as the Institute for Law and Finance (ILF) and the Center for Financial Studies (CFS). One of the university's ambitions is to become Germany's leading university for finance and economics, given the school's proximity to one of Europe's financial centers. In cooperation with Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, the Goethe Business School offers an M.B.A. program. Goethe University has established an international award for research in financial economics, the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics.

Organization

The university consists of 16 faculties. Ordered by their sorting number, these are:

• 01. Rechtswissenschaft (Law)
• 02. Wirtschaftswissenschaften (Economics and Business Administration)
• 03. Gesellschaftswissenschaften (Social Sciences)
• 04. Erziehungswissenschaften (Educational Sciences)
• 05. Psychologie und Sportwissenschaften (Psychology and Sports Sciences)
• 06. Evangelische Theologie (Protestant Theology)
• 07. Katholische Theologie (Roman Catholic Theology)
• 08. Philosophie und Geschichtswissenschaften (Philosophy and History)
• 09. Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaften (Faculty of Linguistics, Cultures, and Arts)
• 10. Neuere Philologien (Modern Languages)
• 11. Geowissenschaften/Geographie (Geosciences and Geography)
• 12. Informatik und Mathematik (Computer Science and Mathematics)
• 13. Physik (Physics)
• 14. Biochemie, Chemie und Pharmazie (Biochemistry, Chemistry and Pharmacy)
• 15. Biowissenschaften (Biological Sciences)
• 16. Medizin (Medical Science)

In addition, there are several co-located research institutes of the Max Planck Society:

• Max Planck Institute of Biophysics
• Max Planck Institute for Brain Research
• Max Planck Institute for European Legal History

Campus Westend

IG Farben Building at Uni Frankfurt

IG Farben Building at Campus Westend

“Campus Westend” of the University is dominated by the IG Farben Building by architect Hans Poelzig, an example of the modernist New Objectivity style. The style for the IG Farben Building was originally chosen as "a symbol for the scientific and mercantile German manpower, made out of iron and stone", as the IG Farben director at the time of construction, Baron von Schnitzler, stated in his opening speech in October 1930.

After the university took over the complex, new buildings were added to the campus. On 30 May 2008, the House of Finance relocated to a new building designed by the architects Kleihues+Kleihues, following the style of the IG Farben Building. The upper floors of the House of Finance building have several separate offices as well as shared office space for researchers and students. The ground floor is open to the public and welcomes visitors with a spacious, naturally lit foyer that leads to lecture halls, seminar rooms, and the information center, a 24-hour reference library. The ground floor also accommodates computer rooms and a café. The floors, walls and ceiling of the foyer are decorated with a grid design that is continued throughout the entire building. The flooring is inspired by Raphael's mural, The School of Athens.

Goethe Business School

The Goethe Business School is a graduate business school at the university, established in 2004, part of the House of Finance at the Westend Campus and the IKB building. it is a non-profit foundation under private law held by the university. The Chairman of the Board at Goethe Business School, Rolf E. Breuer, is former Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank. Goethe Business School has a partnership in Executive Education with the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad.

The Deutsche Bank Prize

The Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics honors renowned researchers who have made influential contributions to the fields of finance and money and macroeconomics, and whose work has led to practical and policy-relevant results. It is awarded biannually, since 2005, by the Center for Financial Studies, in partnership with Goethe University Frankfurt. The award carries an endowment of €50,000, which is donated by the Stiftungsfonds Deutsche Bank im Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft.

Notable faculty (partial list)

• Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969), double Ordinarius of philosophy and sociology and member of the Frankfurt School
• Max Horkheimer, member of the Frankfurt School
• Jürgen Habermas, sociologist and a philosopher
• Hans Bethe, theoretical physicist (Nobel Prize 1967)
• Max Born, theoretical physicist and mathematician (Nobel Prize 1954)
• Klaus Bringmann, historian
• Rolf van Dick, social psychologist
• Paul Ehrlich, Nobel Prize Winner 1908
• Walter Gerlach, theoretical physicist
• Walter Hallstein (1901–1982), first President of the European Commission
• Helmut Kiener, psychologist turned investment professional, founder of the ponzi scheme K1 fund
• Vladimir Košak, economist, lawyer, politician and diplomat
• Josef Mengele, officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz
• Oskar Dirlewanger, officer, who was the founder and commander of the infamous Nazi SS penal unit "Dirlewanger" during World War II
• Boudewijn Sirks, Professor of the History of Ancient Law from 1997 to 2005, later Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford
• Walter Greiner, theoretical physicist in high energy physics
• Alfred Schmidt, philosopher and translator
• Horst Stöcker, theoretical physicist
• Alexander R. Todd, Baron Todd, chemist
• Moses Rothschild, innovator
• Luciano Rezzolla, theoretical astrophysicist

 

Alumni on Wikispooks

Person	Born	Died	Nationality	Summary	Description
Rüdiger Altmann	1 December 1922	13 February 2000	Germany	Author Intellectual	Student of Carl Schmitt who became speechwriter for Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, before becoming a spokesman for German industry. Attended Bilderberg/1969.
Kurt Biedenkopf	28 January 1930	12 August 2021	Germany	Politician	West German politician "parachuted" into the former East Germany to lead the state of Saxony.
Diether Dehm	3 April 1950			Musician Politician
Christian Drosten	1972		Germany	Science/Corruption Epidemiologist Big pharma/Lobbyist	German scientist who created and promoted PCR "test" which became pretext for Covid
Peter Duesberg	2 December 1936		US	Scientist
Peter Eigen	11 June 1938			Lawyer	Founder of Transparency International
Nancy Faeser	13 July 1970		Germany	Politician	German lawyer and politician
Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger			Germany	Editor	Transatlantic German editor
Alex Karp	2 October 1967		US	Businessperson	CEO of Palantir, Big Data & Surveillance Advocate, Paypal mafia
Roland Koch	24 March 1958		Germany	Politician	German politician
Souad Mekhennet	1978		Germany	Spook Journalist	Spooky journalist for the Washington Post and New York Times
Alexander von Paleske	1947			Doctor Blogger	German doctor
Michael Roth (politician)	24 August 1978			Politician
Dolf Sternberger	28 July 1907	27 July 1989	Germany	Philosopher Academic	German Political Science academic who attended the third and fourth Bilderbergs
Klaus Töpfer	29 July 1938		Germany	Politician	Attended Bilderberg as German Minister for the Environment. Later United Nations Environment Programme, involved in behind-the-scenes negotiations of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Advisor on energy and sustainable development etc.
Ernst Welteke	21 August 1942		Germany	Politician Economist	President of Deutsche Bundesbank from September 1999 until he was forced to resign in 2004.
Norbert Wieczorek	12 December 1940	12 April 2022	Germany	Politician	German politician who attended the 1985 Bilderberg meeting.

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