University of Freiburg

The University of Freiburg (colloquially German: Uni Freiburg), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (German: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The university was founded in 1457 by the Habsburg dynasty as the second university in Austrian-Habsburg territory after the University of Vienna. Today, Freiburg is the fifth-oldest university in Germany, with a long tradition of teaching the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences and technology and enjoys a high academic reputation both nationally and internationally. The university is made up of 11 faculties and attracts students from across Germany as well as from over 120 other countries. Foreign students constitute about 18.2% of total student numbers.

The University of Freiburg has been associated with figures such as Hannah Arendt, Rudolf Carnap, David Daube, Johann Eck, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Friedrich Hayek, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Herbert Marcuse, Friedrich Meinecke, Edith Stein, Paul Uhlenhuth, Max Weber and Ernst Zermelo. As of October 2020, 22 Nobel laureates are affiliated with the University of Freiburg as alumni, faculty or researchers, and 15 academics have been honored with the highest German research prize, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, while working at the university.

History

Foundation

Originally Albrechts University, the university started with four faculties (theology, philosophy, medicine, and law). Its establishment belongs to the second wave of university foundings in the German-speaking world in the late Middle Ages, like the University of Tübingen and the University of Basel (Switzerland). Established by papal privilege (papal bull), the university in Freiburg actually was – like all or most universities in the Middle Ages – a corporation of the church body and therefore belonged to the Roman Catholic Church and its hierarchy. The bishop of Basel consequently was its provost or chancellor (Kanzler), the bishop of Constance was its patron, and the real founder of the university was the sovereign, Archduke Albert VI of Austria, being the brother of Frederick III, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. At its founding, the university was named after Albert VI of Austria. He provided the university with land and endowments, as well as its own jurisdiction. Also he declared Albrechts University as the "county university" (German Landesuniversität) for his territory until it was handed over to the Austrian House of Habsburg in 1490.

The university soon attracted many students, such as the humanists Geiler von Kaysersberg, Johann Reuchlin, and Jakob Wimpfeling. When Ulrich Zasius was teaching law (until 1536), Freiburg became a centre of humanist jurisprudence. From 1529 to 1535, Erasmus of Rotterdam after having left Basel, lived and taught in Freiburg, however, never at the university. From around 1559 on, the university was housed at the Altes Collegium ("Old College"), today called the "new town-hall". The importance of the university decreased during the time of the Counter-Reformation. To counter reformatory tendencies, the administration of two faculties was handed over to the Roman Catholic order of the Jesuits in 1620. From 1682 on, the Jesuits built their college, as well as the Jesuit church (nowadays the "University Church" or Universitätskirche).

Studium Gallicum

In 1679, Freiburg temporarily became French territory, along with the southern parts of the upper Rhine. French King Louis XIV disliked the Austrian system and gave the Jesuits a free hand to operate the university. On 6 November 1684, a bilingual educational program was initiated. From 1686 to 1698, the faculty fled to Konstanz.

Austrian reforms

After Freiburg was re-conquered and appointed as capital of Further Austria, a new time began for the university by the reforms of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. The requirements for admission were changed for all faculties in 1767 (before that time only Roman Catholics were allowed to study) and Natural Sciences were added as well as Public Administration. Also in 1767, the university became a governmental institution despite the Church's protests. The Church finally lost its predominant influence on the university when the Jesuits were suppressed following a decree signed by Pope Clement XIV in 1773. Consequently, Johann Georg Jacobi (brother of the more famous philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi) in 1784 was the first Protestant professor teaching at the university in Freiburg.

Campus

Having grown with the city since the 15th century, the university's buildings are deeply intertwined with the city. The three large campuses are the university center next to the historical city center, the institutes quarter, and the engineering campus, but other buildings can be found scattered throughout Freiburg.

The university complex in the historical center of Freiburg contains such picturesque buildings as the Jugendstil Kollegiengebäude I(short: "KG I"), built in 1911 by Hermann Billing, and the gothic revival old university library. The current University Library is also located in the historical center; it is a monumental building erected in the 1970s, and was to be renovated and redesigned beginning in September 2008. It is one of the largest in Germany and placed fourth in an October 2007, German national ranking of university libraries.

The University Church, located across from Kollegiengebäude II (short: "KG II"), was built in 1683 by the Jesuit order. The church and the Jesuit college were handed over to the university after the Jesuit order was suppressed in 1773. The church was destroyed in the 27 November 1944, bombing raid on Freiburg, and reconstructed in 1956.

The "institute quarter" (Institutsviertel) is home to the science faculties. This campus was destroyed almost completely in the Freiburg bombing raid in 1944. After World War II, the reconstruction of the institutes began. Today, the quarter houses the physics buildings, the tall main chemistry building, visible from afar, the famous Institute for Macromolecular Chemistry at the Hermann-Staudinger-Haus, various other science buildings, and the preclinical institutes of the Faculty of Medicine.

The engineering campus is located next to the small Freiburg airfield to the northwest of the city center, close to the University Medical Center. The campus is home to the Institut für Mikrosystemtechnik ( Department of Microsystems Engineering) and the Department of Computer Science. With the addition of the Faculty of Engineering, the University of Freiburg became the first classical university to combine traditional disciplines with microsystems technologies.

The University Medical Center (Universitätsklinikum Freiburg) is one of Germany's largest medical centers. It boasts 1,600 beds and handles 55,000 in-patients a year, with another 357,000 being treated as out-patients. It consists of 13 specialized clinics, five clinical institutes, and five centers (e.g. Center for Transplantation Medicine). The University Medical Center achieved many technical advances, such as the first implantation of an artificial heart Jarvik 2000 in 2002.

Students and admission

The university has a combined undergraduate and graduate student population of around 21,600. About 16% of these students are foreigners, from about 120 countries. Admission largely depends on the faculty and program applied for and is strictly merit based, with the average score of final secondary-school examinations (German Abitur) or A-levels playing an important role. Overall, in the fall of 2010, roughly 4,000 of around 26,000 applicants were admitted: this means that the university's acceptance rate that year was equal to 15.38%.

The University of Freiburg offers a large variety of undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral degree programs at its 11 faculties in 150 fields of study.

As common among German universities, the academic year consists of summer and winter terms (semesters). The winter term runs from 1 October to 31 March, while the summer term runs from 1 April to 30 September. However, lectures and classes usually do not run for the full duration of these periods and allow for breaks in spring and fall.

As a German university, tuition is mostly free. The University of Freiburg currently has a semester fee of 180 EUR for all undergraduate and most graduate and doctoral programs. Additionally, since autumn 2017, non-EU students are charged 1500 EUR tuition fee per semester.

Student life

Numerous student clubs and organizations are active, among them a campus news station, uniCROSS which is a cross-media platform run by students. It consists of the "uniFM" team, which brings the news as a radio format, the "uniTV" team, producing videos and the "uniONLINE" team which is responsible for the magazine. Because of the nearby French and Swiss borders and the adjacent Black Forest, where the university owns a retreat on Schauinsland Mountain, fine opportunities exist for leisure and outdoor activities. Students come from Central and Eastern Europe for language studies, the majority demographic category is females in age range 18–25 (58%).

The university provides student housing in its various dormitories, run by the Studentenwerk. Additionally, further dormitories in Freiburg are operated by other institutions, such as the Catholic Archdiocese. Due to the affordable rent and limited spots, rooms in the various dormitories are very popular. Many students find private living arrangements, such as Wohngemeinschaften (shared apartments). However, the popularity of Freiburg for prospective students can make finding an apartment or room quite time-consuming, especially before the start of the academic terms.

Academic profile

Excellence initiative

The university scored well with its submissions to the German Universities Excellence Initiative. The university received funding in all three categories. In the first category, funding for a new graduate school, the Spemann Graduate School of Biology and Medicine, was granted; in the second, funding was granted for the excellence cluster Centre for Biological Signalling Studies (bioss); and in the third category, Institutional Strategy Line of Funding, open only to institutions with submissions qualified in the first two categories, the university is receiving funding for "Windows for Research", which aims to promote a high level of interdisciplinarity between research fields and attract scientists from all over the world. To that end, the university founded the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS). Being selected for the third category ranks Freiburg as one of nine "excellence universities" in Germany. The university is to receive over EUR 130 million in additional funds over five years (from 2007) from this third category of funding.

In 2009, the university was also successful in a nationwide competition for excellence in teaching, held by the Stifterverband der deutschen Wissenschaft. The University of Freiburg, with its plans for future innovative teaching concepts, was selected as one of 10 winners from a field of over 100 higher education institutions.

In 2012, in the third round of the Excellence Initiative, the university was able to successfully extend funding for the Spemann Graduate School of Biology and Medicine, as well as bioss, while also gaining funding for a new cluster called BrainLinks-Brain Tools, an interdisciplinary neurotechnology project. Citing insufficient evidence of integration of the FRIAS concept into the university's framework, the committee did not extend funding for the FRIAS and the institutional strategy line of funding, despite acknowledging the impressive research and advances achieved at FRIAS in the past years.

Rankings

The University of Freiburg is recognized in several university ranking systems. In the QS World University Rankings 2024, it holds the 192nd position globally and the 9th position nationally. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024 placed it 128th in the world and 11th in Germany. The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2023 ranks it between 101st and 150th globally, and 5th nationally.

In university rankings published in 2007 and 2008 by German magazines and periodicals (Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Focus, etc.) the University of Freiburg has established itself as one of Germany's top universities. The faculties for law, medicine, economics, history, English studies, German studies, biology, dentistry, and pharmacology achieve especially high scores. In regards to the natural sciences, the University of Freiburg ranked sixth in Europe and second in Germany in a ranking from 2003 of the European Commission of the universities according to their overall impact on scientific research. The Centre for Higher Education Development, a German higher education think tank, periodically publishes comprehensive rankings of European Master's and PhD programs. In 2016, Freiburg garnered five spots in the top Excellence Group among seven subject fields examined. In a recent survey by the Nature Publishing Group, the Nature Publishing Index – 2012 Global Top 100, the University of Freiburg was the highest-ranked German university and ranked 66th worldwide and 18th in Europe. A recent study, "Benchmarking China and Germany: An Analysis of Patent Portfolios of Universities and Research Organizations", was published in May 2013 and sought to evaluate leading universities and research institutions in Germany and China in regards to their patent applications. The study placed the University of Freiburg as the third-most innovative university in Germany in terms of total patent applications.

Organization and faculties

Today, about 430 professors, 3,695 academic employees, and 8,644 non-academic employees at the university are working for the Albert Ludwigs University, making it Freiburg's and the region's biggest employer. The university attracts many academics from abroad and was awarded excellent positions in the 2005 and 2009 Humboldt Ranking.

Faculties

The university is headed by a rector and divided into 11 faculties:

• Faculty of Theology
• Faculty of Law
• Faculty of Medicine
• Faculty of Economics and Behavioural Sciences
• Faculty of Philology

Faculty of Philosophy (history, sociology, etc.)

• Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
• Faculty of Chemistry, Pharmacy, and Geosciences
• Faculty of Biology
• Faculty of Forest and Environmental Sciences
• Faculty of Engineering

University College Freiburg

University College Freiburg (UCF) is the university's central facility for promoting and administering international, interdisciplinary teaching activities. It was established in 2012 and is situated in the historical buildings of the old university, the historical site of the artes liberales. UCF serves as a lab for innovative teaching approaches and instructional design at the University of Freiburg and works in close co-operation with the faculties and the Rectorate's departments for Instructional Development and International Relations. It is accredited by the University of Freiburg, which draws its authority from the Central Evaluation and Accreditation Agency.

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