Берлиний Чөлөөт Их сургууль

The Free University of Berlin (German: Freie Universität Berlin, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948 during the early Cold War period. The Free University's name referred to West Berlin's status as part of the intellectual continuum of the Western "Free World" in contrast to Soviet-controlled East Berlin. Its main campus is located in Berlin-Dahlem in the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district.

The Free University is one of thirteen leading German universities currently designated a "University of Excellence" according to the German Universities Excellence Initiative (Exzellenzinitiative). It was the first Berlin university to be awarded this distinction and

one of only six universities nationwide to be so recognised in all three consecutive rounds of the Excellence Initiative in 2006/2007, 2012 and 2019, most recently as a member of the Berlin University Alliance. Former and current staff include five Nobel laureates. The FU Berlin has produced a total of 18 winners of the Leibniz Prize up to the year 2020. According to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the university is the most frequently preferred study location in Germany for leading international scientists and young academics.

History

The Free University of Berlin was established in West Berlin by faculty members and students on 4 December 1948. With American support, it was founded as the de facto Western continuation of the University of Berlin (before 1945 named the Friedrich Wilhelm University), which had reopened in 1946 in the Soviet sector of Berlin. In 1949, the University of Berlin, on its original site in East Berlin, was renamed the Humboldt University.

Foundation (1948–2000)

In January 1946, the formerly named Friedrich Wilhelm University, located in the Soviet sector of Berlin, was granted permission by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) to reopen as the University of Berlin. The university came under increased communist influence and repression, as it became a battlefield for the political disputes of the postwar period. This led to protests by students critical of the prevailing system. Between 1945 and 1948, more than 18 students were brutally beaten and arrested or persecuted, and some were even executed by the Soviet secret police (NKVD).

At the end of 1947, students demanded a university free from political influence. The climax of the protests was reached on 23 April 1948: after three students were expelled from the university without a trial, about 2,000 students protested at the Hotel Esplanade. By the end of April, the governor of the United States Army, Lucius D. Clay, issued the order to legally examine the formation of a new university in the western sectors of Berlin. On 19 June 1948, the "preparatory committee for establishing a free university" consisting of politicians, professors, administrative staff members, and students, met. With a manifesto titled "Request for establishing a free university in Berlin", the committee appealed to the public for support.

The municipal authorities of Berlin granted the foundation of a free university and requested the opening for the coming 1948/49 winter semester. Meanwhile, the students' committee in the German Democratic Republic protested against the formation; the GDR described the new university as the "so-called free university" in official documents until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin City Deputies Assembly (Stadtverordnetenversammlung) accepted the by-law on 4 November 1948. The by-law achieved prominence under its alias "the Berlin model":

The university was founded as a statutory corporation (Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts) and was not directly subject to the state, as it was controlled by a supervisory board consisting of six representatives of the state of Berlin, three representatives of the university, and students. This form was unique in Germany at that time, as the students had much more influence on the system than before. Until the 1970s, the involvement of the students in the committees was slowly cut back while adapting to the model of the Western German universities in order to be fully recognized as an equivalent university.

Campuses

The main campus of the Free University is located in Dahlem, a neighbourhood in the district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, in southwest Berlin. Additional institutes and subsidiary sites are situated in the Lichterfelde West and Düppel areas, as well as in the neighbourhoods of Steglitz and Lankwitz. Since its foundation, the main campus has been distinguished for modernist buildings designed by internationally renowned architects.

Campus Dahlem

Most of the facilities of the Free University are located in the residential garden district of Dahlem in southwestern Berlin.

Around the beginning of the 20th century, Dahlem was established as a center for research of the highest caliber. Academic activity in Dahlem was supported by Friedrich Althoff, Ministerial Director in the Prussian Ministry of Culture, who initially proposed the foundation of a "German Oxford."

The first new buildings housed government science agencies and new research institutes of the University of Berlin. The Kaiser Wilhelm Society – forerunner of the present-day Max Planck Society – was founded in 1911 and established several institutes in Dahlem.

A dynamic group of researchers carried out pioneering research resulting in numerous Nobel Prizes. Since its foundation, the Free University of Berlin has been using buildings formerly belonging to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and, in addition, has added numerous architecturally innovative buildings.

The Free University of Berlin's central campus at Dahlem consists of various building ensembles within a radius of about a 1.5 km. Previously, the university's facilities were located in several older institutional buildings and former private residences around the neighborhood, including the Otto Hahn Building, which still houses the Department of Biochemistry. The new plan was originally modelled on the Anglo-American university campus, a novelty in post-war Germany, where the prevailing tradition had been a focus on monumental buildings in a city centre. The main campus acquired its spatial focal point during the 1950s with the construction of new building complexes set amidst several green spaces. The first independent structure to be completed on campus (1954) was the Henry Ford building (Henry-Ford-Bau), funded by the Ford Foundation and based on designs by Gustav Müller and Franz-Heinrich Sobotka. The Henry Ford Building houses the Auditorium Maximum, additional large lecture halls, seminar rooms, and the meeting hall of the Academic Senate. Neighboring "Gründerzeit"-era villas, research buildings, and institutes belonging to the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society were also incorporated into the complex. Today, numerous departments and offices are located in southern Dahlem, including economics, social sciences and law, as well as the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, the Institute for East European Studies, pharmacology, biochemistry, the central university administration, and the Office of the President. The latter two occupy the building that formerly served as the Allied Kommandatura. Further donations from the United States enabled the Free University to construct several new central building complexes, including the Benjamin Franklin university clinic complex (see below).

Organisation and governance

Administration

The executive board consists of the president (Prof. Dr. Günter M. Ziegler), an executive vice president (Prof. Dr. Klaus Hoffmann-Holland), and three other vice presidents, as well as the Director of Administration and Finance (Dr.-Ing. Andrea Bör).

There are also supporting offices for Public Affairs and the General Counsel for legal affairs.

There are currently eight central service institutions (ZE) of the FU:

• Botanical Garden Berlin and Botanical Museum Berlin
• Center for Academic Advising, Career and Counselling Services
• Center for Continuing Studies
• Center for Recreational Sports
• Center for the Promotion of Woman's and Gender Studies
• Computing Services (ZEDAT)
• Language Center
• Academic library

The ISQ ("Institut für Schulqualität der Länder Berlin und Brandenburg", Institute for Quality of Schools in Berlin and Brandenburg) is an independent facility on the campus. It consults local schools and the senate to achieve and develop a high standard of school quality in Berlin and Brandenburg and closely cooperates with the Department of Education and Psychology of the FU.

The Collegium Musicum of Free University of Berlin was founded during the first semester in 1948/49. Under conductor Karl Forster, it merged with the ensemble of Technische Universität Berlin in 1954. Today, the Collegium Musicum has around 500 members from all fields of studies who spend their leisure time making music. It currently consists of five ensembles: a big choir, a chamber choir, two symphony orchestras, and a big band. There are frequently events on which the Collegium Musicum plays, for instance on ceremonies.

Structure

With 12 academic departments (Fachbereiche) and three interdisciplinary central institutes, the university can be seen as an universitas litterarum (a traditional university where studies in all basic sciences is possible). Despite the variety of subjects, apart from computer science, studies in the field of engineering can only be done at Technische Universität Berlin or universities of applied science (Fachhochschulen).

Interdisciplinary Central Institutes

• John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies
• Institute for East European Studies
• Institute for Latin American Studies

Academics

Admissions

With 33,000 applicants for the undergraduate programs (Bachelor) in 2013, admissions at Free University of Berlin remain highly competitive as the university only offers about 4,300 places each year. Due to the high numbers of applicants, most undergraduate programs at Free University of Berlin have limitations determined through the NC.In some cases (especially Medicine, Psychology and Political Science), the NC every year is as high as 1.0 (see Grades in Germany and Abitur).

Critical applicants which just scored slightly below the NC can be invited to a selective interview or an entry exam, depending on the department/faculty.

Applicants at Charité medical school who do not directly fulfill the NC-criteria have to pass an entry exam, which covers the basic fields of Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics in addition to passing a selective interview. Both results are then added to the Abitur grade. The final decision depends on the results of the competitors.

Teaching and learning

Free University of Berlin operates on a semester calendar where the winter term begins on 1 October and ends on 31 March. The exact same model can be found at almost every university in Germany. The time when lectures are being held varies each year, normally beginning around mid-October and ending as early as mid-February.

Free University of Berlin offers a broad spectrum of subjects in over 190 degree programs. A speciality of the FU is the possibility to study a vast number of "small subjects" (e.g. theater and film studies, Egyptology, Byzantine studies, Jewish studies, Turkology, Sinology, Communication studies, Meteorology, Bioinformatics, Biochemistry) with a high level of specialization. Due to the Bologna process, most of the undergraduate programs are now leading to the three-year Bachelor's degree with 180 ECTS. At the Free University of Berlin, Bachelor programs are generally divided into three categories: a regular Bachelor called "Mono-Bachelor", a combined Bachelor ("Kombi-Bachelor") consisting of two fields of study, and a combined Bachelor with a teaching option. Besides the core subject(s), all students are required to complete a series of courses related to general professional skills (ABV).

The old Diplom and Magister artium programs are still running, but do not accept new admissions anymore. In the fields of Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, and Law, students enroll in programs with Staatsexamen. Free University of Berlin also offers a variety of graduate degrees, from the master's degree to doctoral degrees.

Global partnerships

Free University of Berlin maintains wide-ranging international contacts with top universities and organizations, which provide key impulses for research and teaching. The Free University of Berlin has established partnerships with leading universities in the United States such as the University of California System (notably UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC Santa Cruz), the University of Chicago, Cornell University, Stanford University (which also has a small campus within the FU), Duke University, Princeton University, Yale University, and Columbia University. In addition to Western European universities such as the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, University College London, the University of Sussex and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

The university is a founding member of the global educational center for the study of transnational law, the Centre for Transnational Legal Studies in London.

First contacts with universities in Eastern Europe were made in the 1970s. In the 1990s, links were in particular extended to include growing numbers of institutions in Canada (McGill University, University of Alberta, York University), Eastern Europe, and the Far East (China: Peking University, Fudan University, Nanjing University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Japan: University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Nagoya University, Waseda University; South Korea: Korea University, Yonsei University, Seoul National University). The newly established Centre for International Cooperation (CIC) concentrates on identifying new strategic partners for international projects.

Today, Free University of Berlin has established over 400 partnerships in five continents, many of them as part of the European ERASMUS program.

Every year, about 600 visiting scientists contribute to the university teaching and research. For the grant programs in Germany, the Free University of Berlin is one of the first choices both for the ERASMUS and Tempus as well as for the Fulbright program and the international programs of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

An International Summer and Winter University (FUBiS) has been set up for international students offering (semi-)intensive German courses and numerous subject courses.

International branch offices

The Free University of Berlin operates foreign branch offices in New York City, Brussels, Moscow, Beijing, Cairo, São Paulo, and New Delhi. The foreign branch offices work to expand upon cooperation partnerships already existing with universities in the country.

In April 2005, the Free University of Berlin, in conjunction with LMU Munich, opened a joint representative office in New York. This German University Alliance, located in German House, the seat of the German Consulate General and the German UN Mission, represents the interests of the two universities in the United States and Canada and works to increase the exchange of students and scientists.

Эх сурвалж: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)