Goethe University (german: link=no, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in
Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...
, 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
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as trea ...
. 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
Birgitta Wolff (born 14 July 1965 in Münster) is a German economist and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). She served as minister of education and culture and as minister of research and economy in the state government of Saxony ...
, was sworn into office in 2015,
and was succeeded by
Enrico Schleiff
Enrico Schleiff (born 17 November 1971) is a German biologist and physicist, and the president of the Goethe University Frankfurt, serving since 1 January 2021.
Career Early career
Schleiff studied physics at the Charles University in Prague fro ...
in 2021. 20 Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with the university, including
Max von Laue
Max Theodor Felix von Laue (; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals.
In addition to his scientific endeavors with cont ...
and
Max Born
Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a n ...
. The university is also affiliated with 18 winners of the
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize
The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (german: link=no, Förderpreis für deutsche Wissenschaftler im Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Programm der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft), in short Leibniz Prize, is awarded by the German Research Foundation to ...
.
Goethe University is part of the
IT cluster Rhine-Main-Neckar
The IT cluster Rhine-Main-Neckar, also known as Silicon Valley of Germany, is one of the most important locations of the IT and high-tech industry worldwide. It is concentrated in the Rhine-Main and Rhine-Neckar metropolitan regions. The IT cluster ...
. The
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (german: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) is a public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany, named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. With approximately 32,000 stu ...
, the Goethe University Frankfurt and the
Technische Universität Darmstadt
The Technische Universität Darmstadt (official English name Technical University of Darmstadt, sometimes also referred to as Darmstadt University of Technology), commonly known as TU Darmstadt, is a research university in the city of Darmstadt ...
together form the
Rhine-Main-Universities
The Rhine-Main-Universities (RMU), in German ''Rhein-Main-Universititäten'', is a strategic alliance of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main and Technische Universität Darmstadt.
Study an ...
(RMU).
History
![Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F005759-0014, Frankfurt-Main, Universität](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-F005759-0014%2C_Frankfurt-Main%2C_Universit%C3%A4t.jpg)
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 modern history of the University of Frankfurt can be dated to 28 September 1912, when the foundation contract for the “Königliche Universität zu Frankfurt am Main" (Royal University at Frankfurt on the Main) was signed at the Römer, Frankfurt's town hall. Royal permission for the university was granted on 10 June 1914, and the first enrollment of students began on 16 October 1914. Members of Frankfurt's Jewish community, including the
Speyer family
The Speyer family is a prominent Jewish family of German descent. It can be traced back to Michael Isaac Speyer (1644–1692), who had briefly been the head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt am Main in 1691–92. The family originates from Sp ...
,
Wilhelm Ralph Merton
Wilhelm Ralph Merton (14 May 1848, in Frankfurt – 15 December 1916, in Berlin) was a prominent and influential German entrepreneur, social democrat, and philanthropist. Among his most notable accomplishments, he was a founder of the Universit ...
, and the industrialists Leo Gans and
Arthur von Weinberg
Arthur von Weinberg (11 August 1860, in Frankfurt am Main – 20 March 1943, in the Theresienstadt Ghetto) was a German chemist and industrialist.
He was a co-owner of Cassella and later a co-founder, co-owner and member of the supervisory board a ...
donated two thirds of the foundation capital of the University of Frankfurt.
The university has been best known historically for its
Institute for Social Research
The Institute for Social Research (german: Institut für Sozialforschung, IfS) is a research organization for sociology and continental philosophy, best known as the institutional home of the Frankfurt School and critical theory. Currently a pa ...
(founded 1924), the institutional home of the
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), dur ...
, a preeminent 20th-century school of philosophy and social thought. Some of the well-known scholars associated with this school include
Theodor Adorno
Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor.
List of people with the given name Theodor
* Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher
* Theodor Aman, Romanian painter
* Theodor Blueger, ...
,
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer (; ; 14 February 1895 – 7 July 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist who was famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the Frankfurt School of social research. Horkheimer addressed authoritarianism, militari ...
, and
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas (, ; ; born 18 June 1929) is a German social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's wor ...
, as well as
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University ...
,
Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Fromm (; ; March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the U ...
, and
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist.
An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mys ...
. Other well-known scholars at the University of Frankfurt include the sociologist
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim (born Károly Manheim, 27 March 1893 – 9 January 1947) was an influential Hungarian sociologist during the first half of the 20th century. He is a key figure in classical sociology, as well as one of the founders of the sociolo ...
, the philosopher
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer (; ; February 11, 1900 – March 13, 2002) was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 ''magnum opus'', '' Truth and Method'' (''Wahrheit und Methode''), on hermeneutics.
Life
Family an ...
, the philosophers of religion
Franz Rosenzweig,
Martin Buber
Martin Buber ( he, מרטין בובר; german: Martin Buber; yi, מארטין בובער; February 8, 1878 –
June 13, 1965) was an Austrian Jewish and Israeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism c ...
, and
Paul Tillich
Paul Johannes Tillich (August 20, 1886 – October 22, 1965) was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher, religious socialist, and Lutheran Protestant theologian who is widely regarded as one of the most influential theologi ...
, the psychologist
Max Wertheimer
Max Wertheimer (April 15, 1880 – October 12, 1943) was an Austro-Hungarian psychologist who was one of the three founders of Gestalt psychology, along with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler. He is known for his book, ''Productive Thinking'', and f ...
, and the sociologist
Norbert Elias
Norbert Elias (; 22 June 1897 – 1 August 1990) was a German sociologist who later became a British citizen. He is especially famous for his theory of civilizing/decivilizing processes.
Biography
Elias was born on 22 June 1897 in Bresla ...
.
The University of Frankfurt has at times been considered liberal, or left-leaning, and has had a reputation for Jewish and
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
(or even Jewish-Marxist) scholarship . During the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
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
The West German student movement or sometimes called the 1968 movement in West Germany was a social movement that consisted of mass student protests in West Germany in 1968; participants in the movement would later come to be known as 68ers. T ...
of 1968.
The university also has been influential in the natural sciences and medicine, with Nobel Prize winners including
Max von Laue
Max Theodor Felix von Laue (; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals.
In addition to his scientific endeavors with cont ...
and
Max Born
Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a n ...
, and breakthroughs such as the
Stern–Gerlach experiment
The Stern–Gerlach experiment demonstrated that the spatial orientation of angular momentum is quantized. Thus an atomic-scale system was shown to have intrinsically quantum properties. In the original experiment, silver atoms were sent throug ...
.
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
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
’s
Fuqua School of Business
The Fuqua School of Business (pronounced ) is the business school of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. It enrolls more than 1,300 students in degree-seeking programs. Duke Executive Education also offers non-degree business education and ...
, the
Goethe Business School
Goethe Business School gGmbH (GBS) is a subsidiary of Goethe University of Frankfurt, Goethe University Frankfurt. Goethe Business School was founded 2004 and offers, in close cooperation with the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, ...
offers an MBA program. Goethe University has established an international award for research in financial economics, the
Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics.
Organization
![Bibliothek-westend-2005-10-27 1 (1)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Bibliothek-westend-2005-10-27_1_%281%29.jpg)
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
The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (german: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. ...
:
*
Max Planck Institute of Biophysics
*
Max Planck Institute for Brain Research
The Max Planck Institute for Brain Research is located in Frankfurt, Germany. It was founded as Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin 1914, moved to Frankfurt-Niederrad in 1962 and more recently in a new building in Frankfurt-Rie ...
*
Max Planck Institute for European Legal History
The Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory (german: Max-Planck-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie; formerly ''Max Planck Institute for European Legal History''), situated in Frankfurt/Main, is one of 83 institutes a ...
The university is involved in the
Hessian Centre for Artificial Intelligence (hessian.AI)
A Hessian is an inhabitant of the German state of Hesse.
Hessian may also refer to:
Named from the toponym
*Hessian (soldier), eighteenth-century German regiments in service with the British Empire
**Hessian (boot), a style of boot
**Hessian f ...
.
Campuses
![Campus-westend-park-am-poelzig-bau-2008-05-05-2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Campus-westend-park-am-poelzig-bau-2008-05-05-2.jpg)
The university is located across four campuses in Frankfurt am Main:
* Campus Westend:
Headquarters of the university, also housing Social sciences, Pedagogy, Psychology, Theology, Philosophy, History, Philology, Archaeology, Law, Economics and Business Administration, Human geography
* Campus Bockenheim:
University library, Mathematics, Computer science, Art history, Fine Arts
* Campus Riedberg:
Pharmacy, Physics, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biology, Geosciences and Geography
* Campus Niederrad:
Medical science, dentistry, university hospital
* Campus Ginnheim:
Sports.
Campus Westend
![IG Farben Gebaeude Uni Frankfurt](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/IG_Farben_Gebaeude_Uni_Frankfurt.jpg)
“Campus Westend” of the university is dominated by the
IG Farben Building
The IG Farben Building – also known as the Poelzig Building and the Abrams Building, formerly informally called The Pentagon of Europe – is a building complex in Frankfurt, Germany, which currently serves as the main structure of the West ...
by architect Hans Poelzig, an example of the
modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
New Objectivity
The New Objectivity (in german: Neue Sachlichkeit) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle'' in Mannheim, who ...
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
Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG (), commonly known as IG Farben (German for 'IG Dyestuffs'), was a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate (company), conglomerate. Formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies—BASF, ...
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
The House of Finance is an interdisciplinary research and teaching institute for law and economics at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Its mission is to evolve into a leading European and, ultimately, international center for finan ...
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
Goethe Business School gGmbH (GBS) is a subsidiary of Goethe University of Frankfurt, Goethe University Frankfurt. Goethe Business School was founded 2004 and offers, in close cooperation with the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, ...
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
Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...
. Goethe Business School has a partnership in Executive Education with the
Indian School of Business
The Indian School of Business (ISB) is a private business school established in India in 2001. It has two parallel campuses in India, in Hyderabad (Telangana) and Mohali (Punjab). It offers certificates in various post-graduate management prog ...
(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 alumni (partial list)
*
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno ( , ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, musicologist, and composer.
He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of criti ...
(1903–1969), double Ordinarius of philosophy and sociology and member of the
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), dur ...
*
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer (; ; 14 February 1895 – 7 July 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist who was famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the Frankfurt School of social research. Horkheimer addressed authoritarianism, militari ...
, member of the
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), dur ...
*
Alex Karp
Alexander Caedmon Karp (born 2 October 1967) is an American billionaire businessman, and the co-founder and CEO of the software firm Palantir Technologies. As of April 2022, his estimated net worth is US$1.1 billion.
Early life
Alexander Caedmon ...
, co-founder of
Palantir Technologies
Palantir Technologies is a public American software company that specializes in big data analytics. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, it was founded by Peter Thiel, Nathan Gettings, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Alex Karp in 2003. The compa ...
and American billionaire
*
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas (, ; ; born 18 June 1929) is a German social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's wor ...
, sociologist and a philosopher
*
Hans Bethe
Hans Albrecht Bethe (; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American theoretical physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics, and solid-state physics, and who won the 1967 Nobel Prize ...
, theoretical physicist (Nobel Prize 1967)
*
Max Born
Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a n ...
, theoretical physicist and mathematician (Nobel Prize 1954)
*
Klaus Bringmann
Klaus Bringmann (28 May 1936, in Bad Wildungen - 14 July 2021Uwe Walter, ''Sinn fürs Wesentliche - Zum Tod von Klaus Bringmann'', In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung vom 19. Juli 2021) was a German historian, an author of books on Roman history, ...
, historian
*
Rolf van Dick
Rolf van Dick (born 5 April 1967 in Duisburg) is a German social psychologist."Prof. Dr. Rolf van Dick" (faculty data page),
Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany, 2011, webpage:
GU From 2018-2021 he served as Vice President at Goethe Univer ...
, social psychologist
*
Paul Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich (; 14 March 1854 – 20 August 1915) was a Nobel Prize-winning German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology, and antimicrobial chemotherapy. Among his foremost achievements were finding a cure ...
, Nobel Prize Winner 1908
*
Walter Gerlach
Walther Gerlach (1 August 1889 – 10 August 1979) was a German physicist who co-discovered, through laboratory experiment, spin quantization in a magnetic field, the Stern–Gerlach effect. The experiment was conceived by Otto Stern in 1921 an ...
, theoretical physicist
*
Walter Hallstein
Walter Hallstein (17 November 1901 – 29 March 1982) was a German academic, diplomat and statesman who was the first President of the European Commission, President of the European Commission, Commission of the European Economic Community ...
(1901–1982), first
President of the European Commission
The president of the European Commission is the head of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union (EU). The President of the Commission leads a Cabinet of Commissioners, referred to as the College, collectively account ...
*
Helmut Kiener, psychologist turned investment professional, founder of the
ponzi scheme
A Ponzi scheme (, ) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors. Named after Italian businessman Charles Ponzi, the scheme leads victims to believe that profits are comin ...
K1 fund The K1 fund was a British Virgin Islands based hedge fund, initially marketed to and invested in by mainly German-based private investors, and latterly a series of global banks. With an estimated size of $378million/£249million and $1Bn under manag ...
*
Vladimir Košak
Vladimir Košak (25 July 1908 – 18 June 1947) was a Croatian economist, lawyer, politician and NDH diplomat, hanged for war crimes after World War II.
Early life
Košak was born in Velika Gorica. He graduated with a doctorate in law Faculty of ...
, economist, lawyer, politician and diplomat
*
Josef Mengele
, allegiance =
, branch = Schutzstaffel
, serviceyears = 1938–1945
, rank = ''Schutzstaffel, SS''-''Hauptsturmführer'' (Captain)
, servicenumber =
, battles =
, unit =
, awards =
, command ...
, officer and a physician in the
Nazi concentration camp
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...
Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
*
Oskar Dirlewanger
Oskar Paul Dirlewanger (26 September 1895 – ) was a German military officer ('' SS-Oberführer'') who served as the founder and commander of the Nazi SS penal unit "Dirlewanger" during World War II. Serving in Poland and in Belarus, his nam ...
, officer, who served as the founder and commander of the infamous Nazi SS penal unit "
Dirlewanger" during World War II
*
Boudewijn Sirks :''Sirks leads here. For places and people named Sirk, see Sirk (disambiguation)''
Adriaan Johan Boudewijn Sirks (born 14 September 1947), known as Boudewijn Sirks and as A. J. B. Sirks, is a Dutch academic lawyer and legal historian specializing in ...
, Professor of the History of Ancient Law from 1997 to 2005, later
Regius Professor of Civil Law at
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
*
Walter Greiner
Walter Greiner (29 October 1935 – 6 October 2016) was a German theoretical physicist. His research interests lay in atomic physics, heavy ion physics, nuclear physics, elementary particle physics (particularly in quantum electrodynamics and qu ...
, theoretical physicist in high energy physics
*
Alfred Schmidt, philosopher and translator
*
Horst Stöcker
Horst Stöcker (born 1952 in Frankfurt, West Germany) is a German theoretical physicist and Judah M. Eisenberg Professor Laureatus at J.W. Goethe – Universität, Frankfurt.
Biography
Horst Stöcker studied physics, chemistry, mathematics and ph ...
, theoretical physicist
*
Alexander R. Todd, Baron Todd
Alexander Robertus Todd, Baron Todd (2 October 1907 – 10 January 1997) was a British biochemist whose research on the structure and synthesis of nucleotides, nucleosides, and nucleotide coenzymes gained him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in ...
, chemist
*
Luciano Rezzolla
Luciano Rezzolla (born 1967) is an Italian professor of relativistic astrophysics and
numerical relativity at the Goethe University Frankfurt. His main field of study is the physics and astrophysics of compact objects such as black holes and ne ...
, theoretical astrophysicist
*
Hannah Elfner
Hannah Elfner (born Hannah Petersen; October 12, 1982) is a German physicist who is Head of Simulations at the Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research and Professor of Physics at the Goethe University Frankfurt. She was named the 2021 Alfons an ...
, Head of Simulations at the
Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research and Professor of Physics at the Goethe University Frankfurt
*
Alexander T. Sack, neuroscientist and cognitive psychologist
*
Helma Wennemers
Helma B. Wennemers (born 24 June 1969 in Offenbach am Main) is a German organic chemist. She is a professor of organic chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich).
Education
Helma Wennemers studied chemistry ...
, German organic chemist and professor
*
Nancy Faeser
Nancy Faeser (born 13 July 1970) is a German lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), serving as Federal Minister of the Interior and Community in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's cabinet since 2021. She served as a member of the St ...
, German politician
Nobel Prize winners (alumni and faculty)
*
Paul Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich (; 14 March 1854 – 20 August 1915) was a Nobel Prize-winning German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology, and antimicrobial chemotherapy. Among his foremost achievements were finding a cure ...
: 1908 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
*
Max von Laue
Max Theodor Felix von Laue (; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals.
In addition to his scientific endeavors with cont ...
: 1914 Nobel Prize for Physics
*
Otto Loewi
Otto Loewi (; 3 June 1873 – 25 December 1961) was a German-born pharmacologist and psychobiologist who discovered the role of acetylcholine as an endogenous neurotransmitter. For his discovery he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or M ...
: 1914 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
*
Paul Karrer
Paul may refer to:
*Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name)
* Paul (surname), a list of people
People
Christianity
*Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chri ...
: 1937 Nobel Prize for Chemistry
*
Otto Stern
:''Otto Stern was also the pen name of German women's rights activist Louise Otto-Peters (1819–1895)''.
Otto Stern (; 17 February 1888 – 17 August 1969) was a German-American physicist and Nobel laureate in physics. He was the second most n ...
: 1943 Nobel Prize for Physics
*
Max Born
Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a n ...
: 1954 Nobel Prize for Physics
*
Alexander Robertus Todd
Alexander Robertus Todd, Baron Todd (2 October 1907 – 10 January 1997) was a British people, British biochemist whose research on the structure and biosynthesis, synthesis of nucleotides, nucleosides, and nucleotide coenzymes gained him the N ...
: 1957 Nobel Prize for Chemistry
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Karl Ziegler
Karl Waldemar Ziegler (26 November 1898 – 12 August 1973) was a German chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963, with Giulio Natta, for work on polymers. The Nobel Committee recognized his "excellent work on organometallic compounds ...
: 1963 Nobel Prize for Chemistry
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Hans Bethe
Hans Albrecht Bethe (; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American theoretical physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics, and solid-state physics, and who won the 1967 Nobel Prize ...
: 1967 Nobel Prize for Physics
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Niels Kaj Jerne
Niels Kaj Jerne, FRS (23 December 1911 – 7 October 1994) was a Danish immunologist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1984 with Georges J. F. Köhler and César Milstein "for theories concerning the specificity in dev ...
: 1984 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
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Gerd Binnig
Gerd Binnig (; born 20 July 1947) is a German physicist. He is most famous for having won the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Heinrich Rohrer in 1986 for the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope.
Early life and education
Binnig wa ...
: 1986 Nobel Prize for Physics
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Jean-Marie Lehn
Jean-Marie Lehn (born 30 September 1939) is a French chemist. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Donald Cram and Charles Pedersen in 1987 for his synthesis of cryptands. Lehn was an early innovator in the field of supramolec ...
: 1987 Nobel Prize for Chemistry
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Hartmut Michel
Hartmut Michel (; born 18 July 1948) is a German biochemist, who received the 1988 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for determination of the first crystal structure of an integral membrane protein, a membrane-bound complex of proteins and co-factors tha ...
: 1988 Nobel Prize for Chemistry
*
Reinhard Selten
Reinhard Justus Reginald Selten (; 5 October 1930 – 23 August 2016) was a German economist, who won the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with John Harsanyi and John Nash). He is also well known for his work in bound ...
: 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics
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Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard
Christiane (Janni) Nüsslein-Volhard (; born 20 October 1942) is a German developmental biologist and a 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate. She is the only woman from Germany to have received a Nobel Prize in the sciences.
N ...
: 1995 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
*
Horst Ludwig Störmer
Horst Ludwig Störmer (; born April 6, 1949) is a German physicist, Nobel laureate and emeritus professor at Columbia University.
He was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Daniel Tsui and Robert Laughlin "for their discovery of ...
: 1998 Nobel Prize for Physics
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Günter Blobel
Günter Blobel (; May 21, 1936 – February 18, 2018) was a Silesian German and American biologist and 1999 Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in ...
: 1999 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
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Peter Grünberg
Peter Andreas Grünberg (; 18 May 1939 – 7 April 2018) was a German physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his discovery with Albert Fert of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disk d ...
: 2007 Nobel Prize for Physics
World rankings
*''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'': Among the World's 10 best universities by employer choice. Goethe University was ranked 10 out of 150 universities in 2012.
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ARWU World (Shanghai Rankings): 101–150
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QS World University Rankings
''QS World University Rankings'' is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). The QS system comprises three parts: the global overall ranking, the subject rankings (which name the world's top universities for the ...
: 279
Points of interest
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Botanischer Garten der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
The Botanischer Garten Frankfurt am Main (7 hectares) is a botanical garden and arboretum formerly maintained by the Goethe University and since 2012 administered by the City of Frankfurt. It is located at Siesmayerstraße 72, Frankfurt am Main, ...
, a
botanical garden
A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens, an ...
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IG Farben Building
The IG Farben Building – also known as the Poelzig Building and the Abrams Building, formerly informally called The Pentagon of Europe – is a building complex in Frankfurt, Germany, which currently serves as the main structure of the West ...
See also
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Frankfurt University Library
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List of modern universities in Europe (1801–1945)
The list of modern universities in Europe (1801–1940) contains all universities that were founded in Europe after the French Revolution and before the end of World War II. Universities are regarded as comprising all institutions of higher ed ...
References
External links
University homepageVerified University Twitter account(in German)
Official University Instagram account(in German)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goethe University
Educational institutions established in 1914
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1914 establishments in Germany
Universities and colleges in Frankfurt