University of Berlin

University of Berlin, institution of higher learning in Berlin. It has been known officially since 1949 as Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

The university was established in Berlin as the Königliche (German for “royal”) Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in 1810 by Frederick William III, king of Prussia from 1797 to 1840, to replace the University of Halle, because Napoleon I had incorporated the town of Halle into the new kingdom of Westphalia. From the beginning, the University of Berlin secured people of great ability to fill its professorial chairs; among the scholars connected with the university were the German philosophers Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the university's first rector; the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; and the German classicist and historian Theodor Mommsen. The university included faculties of jurisprudence, medicine, philosophy (arts and science), and theology. After World War II ended in 1945, the university came under the control of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and in 1949 was renamed Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In reaction to this, a group of its students and professors formed in the western zone of Berlin the Freie Universität Berlin (see Berlin, Free University).

Until the reunification of Germany in 1990, it was administered and supported by the East German government. For a short time following reunification, the two universities were jointly administered; currently, they are independently administered by the German government. The University of Berlin offers courses in agriculture and horticulture, economics, law, mathematics and natural sciences, medicine, pedagogy, philosophy, and theology. A Diplom, the approximate equivalent of a bachelor's degree in the United States, is awarded after a four- to five-year course of study. After an additional three years of study and the completion of a dissertation, a doctoral degree is awarded. Further study and the completion of a second dissertation lead to a second doctorate, the Habilitation, which qualifies the recipient to teach in a university. The Habilitation degree is the approximate equivalent of a doctoral degree in the United States.

Reviewed by: University of Berlin