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Goethe University Frankfurt () is a
public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...
research university A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are "the key sites of Knowledge production modes, knowledge production", along with "intergenerational ...
located in
Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...
,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
. 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 in German was Universität Frankfurt am Main (University of 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 polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
. The university currently has around 48,000 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 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 X-ray diffraction, diffraction of X-rays by crystals". In addition to his scientifi ...
and
Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German-British theoretical physicist 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 ...
. The university is also affiliated with 18 winners of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. Goethe University is part of the IT cluster Rhine-Main-Neckar. The
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz () is a public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany. It has been named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. it had approximately 32,000 students enrolled in around 100 a ...
, 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 Darmsta ...
together form the Rhine-Main-Universities (RMU).


History

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 Ashkenazi Jews, Jewish family of Germans, 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 f ...
,
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 ...
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 Institute for Social Research may refer to: * Norwegian Institute for Social Research, a private research institute in Oslo, Norway * University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, a research institute in Frankfurt, Germany * University of ...
(founded 1923), the institutional home of the
Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School is a school of thought in sociology and critical theory. It is associated with the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 at the University of Frankfurt am Main ...
, 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 Blue ...
,
Max Horkheimer Max Horkheimer ( ; ; 14 February 1895 – 7 July 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist best known for his role in developing critical theory as director of the Institute for Social Research, commonly associated with the Frankfurt Schoo ...
, and
Jürgen Habermas Jürgen Habermas ( , ; ; born 18 June 1929) is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere. Associated with the Frankfurt S ...
, as well as
Herbert Marcuse Herbert Marcuse ( ; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German–American philosopher, social critic, and Political philosophy, political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at ...
,
Erich Fromm Erich Seligmann Fromm (; ; March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and set ...
, and
Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...
. 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 a Hungarian sociologist and a key figure in classical sociology as well as one of the founders of the sociology of knowledge. Mannheim is best known for his book '' Id ...
, the philosopher
Hans-Georg Gadamer Hans-Georg Gadamer (; ; 11 February 1900 – 13 March 2002) was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 on hermeneutics, '' Truth and Method'' (''Wahrheit und Methode''). Life Family and early life Gad ...
, the philosophers of religion
Franz Rosenzweig Franz Rosenzweig (; ; 25 December 1886 – 10 December 1929) was a German theologian, philosopher, and translator. Early life and education Franz Rosenzweig was born in Kassel, Germany, to an affluent, minimally observant Jewish family. His fa ...
,
Martin Buber Martin Buber (; , ; ; 8 February 1878 – 13 June 1965) was an Austrian-Israeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I and Thou, I–Thou relationship and the I� ...
, and
Paul Tillich Paul Johannes Tillich (; ; August 20, 1886 – October 22, 1965) was a German and American Christian existentialist philosopher, religious socialist, and Lutheran theologian who was one of the most influential theologians of the twenti ...
, the psychologist
Max Wertheimer Max Wertheimer (; April 15, 1880 – October 12, 1943) was a 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 for conceiving the ...
, and the sociologist
Norbert Elias Norbert Elias (; 22 June 1897 – 1 August 1990) was a German-Jewish sociologist who later became a British citizen. He is especially famous for his theory of civilizing/decivilizing processes. Life and career Elias was born on 22 June 1 ...
. 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 political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
(or even Jewish-Marxist) scholarship. During the
Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
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 (), sometimes called the 1968 movement in West Germany (), was a left-wing social movement that consisted of mass student protests in West Germany in 1968. Participants in the movement later came to be known as ...
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 X-ray diffraction, diffraction of X-rays by crystals". In addition to his scientifi ...
and
Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German-British theoretical physicist 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 ...
, and breakthroughs such as the
Stern–Gerlach experiment In quantum physics, the Stern–Gerlach experiment demonstrated that the spatial orientation of angular momentum is quantization (physics), quantized. Thus an Atomic spacing, atomic-scale system was shown to have intrinsically quantum propertie ...
. 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 An institute is an organizational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes ca ...
(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 university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...
's
Fuqua School of Business The Duke University Fuqua School of Business (pronounced ) is the business school of Duke University, a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina. It enrolls more than 1,300 students in degree-seeking programs. Du ...
, the Goethe Business School offers an MBA 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 (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 (; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. Founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, it was renamed to the M ...
: * Max Planck Institute of Biophysics * Max Planck Institute for Brain Research *
Max Planck Institute for European Legal History The Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory (; formerly ''Max Planck Institute for European Legal History''), situated in Frankfurt/Main, is one of 83 institutes and research facilities of the Max Planck Society (MPG). Since its ...
The university is involved in the (hessian.AI).


Campuses

The university is located across four campuses in Frankfurt am Main:


Campus Westend

The Westend Campus is the main location with the Presidential Board based in the Presidential and Administration Building (PA). The campus includes the I. G. Farben Building and numerous new buildings, including the House of Finance and the central lecture theatre building. In addition to the central administration, most departments, with the exception of Medicine and Natural Sciences, are or have been located here since 2001. The Language and Art Building (SKW) (FB 09) is currently the new building on campus. This campus is of particular historical significance, as Goethe University has inherited history through the acquisition of real estate. "Campus Westend" of the university is dominated by the IG Farben Building by architect Hans Poelzig, an example of the
modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
New Objectivity The New Objectivity (in ) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against German Expressionism, expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle Mannheim, Kunsthalle' ...
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 I. G. Farbenindustrie AG, commonly known as IG Farben, was a German Chemical industry, chemical and Pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceutical conglomerate (company), conglomerate. It was formed on December 2, 1925 from a merger of six chemical co ...
director at the time of construction, Baron von Schnitzler, stated in his opening speech in October 1930. After the university took over the complex in the 1990s, 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''. The emergence of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Basic Law (
Grundgesetz The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany () is the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. The West German Constitution was approved in Bonn on 8 May 1949 and came into effect on 23 May after having been approved by the oc ...
) can be traced back to the Frankfurter Dokumente that were handed over in the I. G. Farben Building.


Campus Bockenheim

The Bockenheim campus is the former centre of the university, which still houses various parts of the language and cultural sciences, the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, the central building of the university library Johann Christian Senckenberg and some parts of the administration in buildings dating from the 1950s to the 1970s.


Campus Riedberg

The Riedberg campus, with university buildings built from around 1970, is home to the Departments of Physics, Biochemistry, Chemistry and Pharmacy, Biosciences and (largely) Earth Sciences, the Science Garden and a lecture theatre centre with the natural sciences departmental library.


Campus Niederrad

The Niederrad campus is home to the University Hospital and the Department of Medicine, with buildings and facilities that have grown historically since the 19th century as well as modern complexes.


Campus Ginnheim

Campus Ginnheim is the location of the athletics grounds, multiple tennis and volleyball courts, the sports halls, and the University Sports Centre. Ginnheim also houses many of the lecture halls for classes in physical education, sport psychology, and social sciences in sport.


General information

The university's relocation programme, which has been intensified since the mid-1990s, aims to create a de facto three-campus university in the future. To this end, the units currently located in the Bockenheim district are also to be relocated, but not the sports grounds. The public Botanical Garden Frankfurt am Main at the end of Siesmayerstraße, formerly associated with the biology campus (1956-2011), has been transferred to the City of Frankfurt am Main and the responsibility of the Palmengarten. Parts of the former Bockenheim campus, including the historic Jügelhaus, have been taken over by the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, while other parts have been left to local urban development. The formerly numerous other scattered university buildings in the Bockenheim district have been abandoned and partly demolished, partly put to other uses.


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. Its board of directors is led by Rolf-Ernst Breuer, who was chairman of the board of
Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (, ) is a Germany, German multinational Investment banking, investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. ...
until 2006. The school has maintained a partnership in Executive Education with the
Indian School of Business The Indian School of Business (ISB) is a private business school with campuses in Hyderabad and Mohali, India. It offers various post-graduate management programs. History The Indian School of Business (ISB) was started in 1996 by a bunch of b ...
(ISB) since 2009.


Logo

The word/image mark used from 1980 to 2002 was developed by Adrian Frutiger. There are different types of basically the same logo. * Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main * Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main * Goethe Universität As old university logos never really "expire", they remain valid. Since 2008, the university administration has made various changes to the practical name of the university and, accordingly, to the logo. On 26 September 2016, another logo was also registered at the
German Patent and Trade Mark Office The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (; abbreviation: DPMA) is the Germany, German national patent office, with headquarters in Munich, and offices in Berlin and Jena. In 2006 it employed 2556 people, of which about 700 were patent examiners. ...
as an individual trade mark, consisting only of the words "GOETHE UNIVERSITY". However, this logo is not currently in use.


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.


Student organisations


Political university groups

According to information from the university, the political university groups are as follows: * DGB Hochschulgruppe Frankfurt am Main * DieLinke.SDS * DL – Demokratische Linke Liste * FDH – Fachschafteninitiative * Demokratische Hochschule * Grüne Hochschulgruppe * JUSO Politische Hochschulgruppe Frankfurt * Liberale Hochschulgruppe * Linke Liste * RCDS Frankfurt * Rosa*Liste There is little public information on the individual university groups and the work of the university committees, as there is usually only up-to-date information on university politics and/or university political actors on the respective websites of the General Students' Committee and the respective university parties, as well as representations in social networks. Further information and archives on university policy work at Goethe University do not exist, which is why there is hardly any transparency about university policy. There are official publications on the Goethe University website, which must be made in accordance with the Hessian Higher Education Act. These can also be found in the
German National Library The German National Library (DNB; ) is the central archival library and national bibliographic centre for the Federal Republic of Germany. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its task is to collect, permanently archive, comprehens ...
. Little can be said about the political significance of university politics due to the lack of transparency in university politics as a whole and the lack of interest in its activities. Students are not very interested in university politics due to a voter turnout of less than 15% in recent years and the incidents and judgements against the AStA.


Student university groups and initiatives

The university management and the departments support numerous private and university-affiliated student groups, initiatives and private alumni organisations. There are also networks between the student university groups and initiatives via the departments and the Goethe University Network:


Student councils

The student councils at Goethe University are legally regulated by the Hessian Higher Education Act. They are therefore not student initiatives in the traditional sense, as they are legally binding institutions without their own legal personality.


Student initiatives from the Deutschlandstipendium

New student initiatives are regularly created at Goethe University as part of the Deutschlandstipendium programme. These initiatives are supported by the non-material support programme for the Deutschlandstipendium from the Presidential Board of Goethe University. * Goethe Speaks Out * Goethe Uni Tour/ExperienceCampus * ExperienceFundraising * uni:hautnah (mittlerweile integriert in die Studienberatung der Goethe Universität). * Wissenschaftskommunikation


Alumni organisations


University-related alumni organisations

Goethe University has its own non-exhaustive network of alumni organisations, a sponsors' association and its own e-mail distribution list for alumni. Alumni organisations require formal recognition and approval by the university administration in order to be listed as official alumni associations. Without such recognition, it is not possible for the association to list itself as an official alumni organisation of Goethe University. Officers of these organisations are mostly current and former professors as well as people in leading positions at Goethe University. The largest university-related alumni organisation with over 1,300 members is the Frankfurter Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Gesellschaft (fwwg), which was founded in 1988 and is open to the Department of Economics. The Association of Friends and Supporters of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (''Vereinigung von Freunden und Förderern der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main'') acts unofficially as an umbrella organisation for the university-related alumni organisations at Goethe University and is also the university's official support association.


Independent alumni organisations

Local, regional, national, European and international student initiatives have given rise to many parallel alumni networks that run in parallel and independently of each other. These include the alumni organisations of
AIESEC AIESEC ( ) is an international "youth-run" and led, non-governmental and not-for-profit organization that provides young people with business development internships. The organization focuses on empowering young people to make a progressive soc ...
, MTP - Marketing between Theory and Practice, European Law Students' Association, Erasmus Student Network and others. Student initiatives such as green finance consulting, Goethe Club, Goethe Gruppe or Night of Science, as well as political university groups, are further hybrids between student initiatives and alumni organisations. Independent alumni organisations are not recognised as official alumni organisations at Goethe University.


Notable people


Alumni

*
Theodor W. Adorno Theodor W. Adorno ( ; ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, musicologist, and social theorist. He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, whose work has com ...
(1903–1969), double Ordinarius of philosophy and sociology and member of the
Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School is a school of thought in sociology and critical theory. It is associated with the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 at the University of Frankfurt am Main ...
*
Max Horkheimer Max Horkheimer ( ; ; 14 February 1895 – 7 July 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist best known for his role in developing critical theory as director of the Institute for Social Research, commonly associated with the Frankfurt Schoo ...
, member of the
Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School is a school of thought in sociology and critical theory. It is associated with the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 at the University of Frankfurt am Main ...
* Alex Karp, co-founder of
Palantir Technologies Palantir Technologies Inc. is an American publicly traded company that specializes in software platforms for big data analytics. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, it was founded by Peter Thiel, Stephen Cohen, Joe Lonsdale, and Alex Karp in 2 ...
and American billionaire *
Jürgen Habermas Jürgen Habermas ( , ; ; born 18 June 1929) is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere. Associated with the Frankfurt S ...
, sociologist and a philosopher *
Hans Bethe Hans Albrecht Eduard Bethe (; ; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics and solid-state physics, and received the Nobel Prize in Physi ...
, theoretical physicist (Nobel Prize 1967) *
Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German-British theoretical physicist 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 ...
, theoretical physicist and mathematician (Nobel Prize 1954) *
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 fo ...
, Nobel Prize Winner 1908 * Walter Gerlach, 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, also known as president of the College of Commissioners is the Head of government, head of the European Commission, the Executive (government), executive branch of the European Union (EU). The president ...
* Helmut Kiener, psychologist turned investment professional, founder of the
ponzi scheme A Ponzi scheme (, ) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays Profit (accounting), profits to earlier investors with Funding, funds from more recent investors. Named after Italians, Italian confidence artist Charles Ponzi, this type of s ...
K1 fund * Vladimir Košak, economist, lawyer, politician and diplomat * Mahide Lein, LGBTQ+ activist *
Josef Mengele Josef Mengele (; 16 March 19117 February 1979) was a Nazi German (SS) officer and physician during World War II at the Russian front and then at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, often dubbed the "Angel of Death" (). He performed Nazi hum ...
, officer and a physician in the
Nazi concentration camp From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately af ...
Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, 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 consisted of Auschw ...
. Also known by the name "Angel of Death" * Oskar Dirlewanger, officer, who served as the commander of the infamous Nazi SS penal unit " Dirlewanger Brigade" 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 Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...
*
Walter Greiner Walter Greiner (29 October 1935 – 6 October 2016) was a German theoretical physicist and professor of the Goethe University Frankfurt. His research interests lay in atomic physics, heavy ion physics, nuclear physics, elementary particle physic ...
, theoretical physicist in high energy physics * Alfred Schmidt, philosopher and translator * Horst Stöcker, theoretical physicist * Alexander R. Todd, Baron Todd, chemist * Luciano Rezzolla, theoretical astrophysicist * Hannah Elfner, 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, German organic chemist and professor *
Nancy Faeser Nancy Faeser (; born 13 July 1970) is a German lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Social Democratic Party (SPD), served as Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community, Federal Minister of the Interior and Communit ...
, German politician * Nina Eisenhardt (born 1990), German politician *
Hans-Hermann Hoppe Hans-Hermann Hoppe (; ; born 2 September 1949) is a German-American academic associated with Austrian School economics, anarcho-capitalism, right-wing libertarianism, and opposition to democracy. He is professor emeritus of economics at th ...
, German author and economist * Yi Shi, Chinese-German entrepreneur and angel investor


Nobel laureates

*
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 fo ...
: 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 X-ray diffraction, diffraction of X-rays by crystals". In addition to his scientifi ...
: 1914 Nobel Prize for Physics *
Otto Loewi Otto Loewi (; 3 June 1873 – 25 December 1961) was a Germany, German-born pharmacology, pharmacologist and psychobiologist who discovered the role of acetylcholine as an endogenous neurotransmitter. For this discovery, he was awarded the Nobel ...
: 1914 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine *
Paul Karrer Paul Karrer (21 April 1889 – 18 June 1971) was a Swiss organic chemist best known for his research on vitamins. He and British chemist Norman Haworth won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1937. Biography Early years Karrer was born in Moscow, ...
: 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. He is the second most nominated person for a Nobel Pri ...
: 1943 Nobel Prize for Physics *
Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German-British theoretical physicist 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 ...
: 1954 Nobel Prize for Physics * Alexander Robertus Todd: 1957 Nobel Prize for Chemistry * Karl Ziegler: 1963 Nobel Prize for Chemistry *
Hans Bethe Hans Albrecht Eduard Bethe (; ; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics and solid-state physics, and received the Nobel Prize in Physi ...
: 1967 Nobel Prize for Physics * Niels Kaj Jerne: 1984 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine *
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 *
Jean-Marie Lehn Jean-Marie Lehn (born 30 September 1939) is a French chemist who 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 supramo ...
: 1987 Nobel Prize for Chemistry *
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 that ...
: 1988 Nobel Prize for Chemistry *
Reinhard Selten Reinhard Justus Reginald Selten (; 5 October 1930 – 23 August 2016) was a German economics, economist, who won the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with John Harsanyi and John Forbes Nash, John Nash). He is also well ...
: 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics *
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 ...
: 1998 Nobel Prize for Physics * Günter Blobel: 1999 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine *
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 drive ...
: 2007 Nobel Prize for Physics *
Benjamin List Benjamin List (; born 11 January 1968) is a German chemist who is one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research and professor of organic chemistry at the University of Cologne. He co-developed organocatalysis, a method of acc ...
: 2021 Nobel Prize for Chemistry


Rankings

According to the
QS World University Rankings The ''QS World University Rankings'' is a portfolio of comparative college and university rankings compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a higher education analytics firm. Its first and earliest edition was published in collaboration with '' Times ...
for 2024, the university holds a global position of 302 and ranks 18th nationally. In the 2024 edition of the
Times Higher Education World University Rankings The ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'', often referred to as the THE Rankings, is the annual publication of university rankings by the ''Times Higher Education'' magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarelli Symon ...
, it is positioned between 201 and 250 internationally, and 22 to 24 within the country. The university achieved its highest national ranking in the 2023
Academic Ranking of World Universities The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong Universi ...
(ARWU), where it was placed between 151 and 200 globally, and 6 to 9 nationally. ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'': Among the World's 10 best universities by employer choice. Goethe University was ranked 10 out of 150 universities in 2012.


Points of interest

* Botanischer Garten der Goethe-Universität 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. is ...
* IG Farben Building


See also

* Center for Financial Studies *
Frankfurt University Library The Frankfurt University Library (German: ''Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main'' (UB Frankfurt), or ''Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg'', ISIL DE-30) is the library for the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. Histor ...
* House of Finance *
List of modern universities in Europe (1801–1945) The list of modern universities in Europe (1801–1940) contains all University, 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 ...


References


External links


University homepage

Verified University Twitter account
(in German)
Official University Instagram account
(in German) {{DEFAULTSORT:Goethe University Universities and colleges established in 1914 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1914 establishments in Germany Universities and colleges in Frankfurt