Rhine University[edit]

Frederick William III, founder of the university

The new Rhine University (German: Rhein-Universität) was then founded on 18 October 1818 by
Frederick William III. It was the sixth Prussian University, founded after the universities in
Greifswald, Berlin, Königsberg, Halle and Breslau. The new university was equally shared
between the two Christian denominations. This was one of the reasons why Bonn, with its
tradition of a nonsectarian university, was chosen over Cologne and Duisburg. Apart from a
school of Roman Catholic theology and a school of Protestant theology, the university had
schools for medicine, law and philosophy. Initially 35 professors and eight adjunct professors
were teaching in Bonn.
The university constitution was adopted in 1827. In the spirit of Wilhelm von Humboldt the
constitution emphasized the autonomy of the university and the unity of teaching and research.
Similar to the University of Berlin, which was founded in 1810, the new constitution made the
University of Bonn a modern research university.
Only one year after the inception of the Rhein University the dramatist August von Kotzebue was
murdered by Karl Ludwig Sand, a student at the University of Jena. The Carlsbad Decrees,
introduced on 20 September 1819 led to a general crackdown on universities, the dissolution of
the Burschenschaften and the introduction of censorship laws. One victim was the author and
poet Ernst Moritz Arndt, who, freshly appointed university professor in Bonn, was banned from
teaching. Only after the death of Frederick William III in 1840 was he reinstated in his
professorship. Another consequence of the Carlsbad Decrees was the refusal by Frederick
William III to confer the chain of office, the official seal and an official name to the new university.
The Rhine University was thus nameless until 1840, when the new King of Prussia, Frederick
William IV gave it the official name Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität. (This last
sentence conflicts with pg. 176 of "Die Preussischen Universitäten", which states a cabinet order
on 28 June 1828 gave the university the following name: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms
[3]
Universität. )
 Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz was a professor of chemistry at the University of Bonn from
1867 to 1896

Despite these problems, the university grew and attracted famous scholars and students. At the
end of the 19th century the university was also known as the Prinzenuniversität (English:Princes'
university), as many of the sons of the king of Prussia studied here. In 1900, the university had
68 chairs, 23 adjunct chairs, two honorary professors, 57 Privatdozenten and six lecturers. Since
1896, women were allowed to attend classes as guest auditors at universities in Prussia. In 1908
the University of Bonn became fully coeducational.

World Wars[edit]
The growth of the university came to a halt with World War I. Financial and economic problems in
Germany in the aftermath of the war resulted in reduced government funding for the university.
The University of Bonn responded by trying to find private and industrial sponsors. In 1930 the
university adopted a new constitution. For the first time students were allowed to participate in
the self-governing university administration. To that effect the student council Astag (German:
Allgemeine Studentische Arbeitsgemeinschaft) was founded in the same year. Members of the
student council were elected in a secret ballot.
After the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, the Gleichschaltung transformed the university into a
Nazi educational institution. According to the Führerprinzip the autonomous and self-governening
administration of the university was replaced by a hierarchy of leaders resembling the military,
with the university president being subordinate to the ministry of education. Jewish professors
and students and political opponents were ostracized and expelled from the university. The
theologian Karl Barth was forced to resign and to emigrate to Switzerland for refusing to swear
an oath to Hitler. The Jewish mathematician Felix Hausdorff was expelled from the university in
1935 and committed suicide after learning about his impending deportation to a concentration
camp in 1942. The philosophers Paul Ludwig Landsberg and Johannes Maria Verweyen were
deported and died in concentration camps. In 1937 Thomas Mann was deprived of his honorary
doctorate. His honorary degree was restored in 1946.
During the second World War the university suffered heavy damage. An air raid on 18 October
[citation needed]
1944 destroyed the main building.

Post-war to modern day[edit]

The university was re-opened on 17 November 1945 as one of the first in the British occupation
zone. The first university president was Heinrich Matthias Konen, who had been expelled from
the university in 1934 because of his opposition to Nazism. At the start of the first semester on 17
November 1945 the university had more than 10,000 applicants for only 2,500 places.
The university greatly expanded in the postwar period, in particular in the 1960s and 1970s.
Significant events of the postwar era were the relocation of the university hospital from the city
center to the Venusberg in 1949, the opening of the new university library in 1960 and the
opening of a new building, the Juridicum, for the School of Law and Economics in 1967.
In 1980 the Pedagogigal University Bonn was merged into the University of Bonn, although
eventually all the teachers education programs were closed in 2007. In 1983 the new science
library was opened. In 1989 Wolfgang Paul was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Three
years later Reinhard Selten was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. The decision of the
German government to move the capital from Bonn to Berlin after the reunification in 1991
resulted in generous compensation for the city of Bonn. The compensation package included
three new research institutes affiliated or closely collaborating with the university, thus
significantly enhancing the research profile of the University of Bonn.
In the 2000s the university implemented the Bologna process and replaced the traditional Diplom
and Magister programs with Bachelor and Master programs. This process was completed by
[4]
2007.

Campus[edit]
The University of Bonn does not have a centralized campus. The main building is the
Kurfürstliches Schloss, the former residential palace of the prince-elector of Cologne in the city
center. The main building was built by Enrico Zuccalli for the prince-elector of Cologne, Joseph
Clemens of Bavaria from 1697 to 1705. Today it houses the faculty of humanities and theology
and the university administration. The Hofgarten, a large park in front of the main building is a
popular place for students to meet, study and relax. The Hofgarten was repeatedly the place for
political demonstrations as for example the demonstration against the NATO Double-Track
[5]
Decision on 22 October 1981 with about 250,000 participants.
The school of law and economics, the main university library and several smaller departments
are housed in modern buildings a short distance south of the main building. The department of
psychology and the department of computer science are located in a northern suburb of Bonn.
The science departments and the main science library are located in Poppelsdorf and Endenich,
west of the city center, and housed in a mix of historical and modern buildings. Notable is the
Poppelsdorf Palace (German: Poppelsdorfer Schloss), which was built from 1715 to 1753 by
Robert de Cotte for Joseph Clemens of Bavaria and his successor Clemens August of Bavaria.
Today the Poppelsdorf Palace houses the university's mineral collection and several science
departments; its grounds are the university's botanical garden (the Botanische Gärten der
Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn).
The school of medicine is located on the Venusberg, a hill on the western edge of Bonn. Several
residence halls are scattered across the city. In total the University of Bonn owns 371 buildings.

University library[edit]

Building of the University Library

The university library was founded in 1818 and started with 6,000 volumes inherited from the
library of the closed University of Duisburg. In 1824 the library became legal deposit for all books
published in the Prussian Rhine province. The library contained about 200,000 volumes at the
end of the 19th century, and about 600,000 volumes at the outbreak of World War II. An air raid
on 10 October 1944 destroyed about 200,000 volumes and a large part of the library catalog.
After the war the library was housed in several makeshift locations until the completion of the
new central library in 1960. The new building was designed by Pierre Vago and Fritz Bornemann
and is located close to the main building. In 1983 a new library building was opened in
Poppelsdorf, west of the main building. The new library building houses the science, agriculture
and medicine collections. Today, the university library system comprises the central library, the
library for science, agriculture and medicine and about 160 smaller libraries. It holds 2.2 million
[6]
volumes and subscribes to about 14,000 journals.

University hospital[edit]
Main article: University Hospital Bonn

A nurse attending to an infant in the University Hospital of Bonn in November 1953

The university hospital (German:Universitätsklinikum Bonn) was founded at the same time as the
university and officially opened on 5 May 1819 in the former Electoral Palace
(German:Kurfüstliches Schloss), the main building, in the western wing (internal medicine) and
on the second floor (obstetrics). In its first year, the hospital had thirty beds, performed 93
surgeries and treated about 600 outpatients. From 1872 to 1883 the hospital moved to a new
complex of buildings in the city center of Bonn, where today the Beethoven Concert Hall stands,
and after World War II to the Venusberg on the western edge of Bonn. On 1 January 2001 the
university hospital became a public corporation. Although the university hospital is since then
independent from the university, the School of Medicine of the University of Bonn and the
university hospital closely collaborate. Today the university hospital comprises about thirty
individual hospitals, employs more than 990 physicians and more than 1,100 nursing and clinical
[7]
support staff and treated about 50,000 inpatients.

University museums[edit]
The Akademisches Kunstmuseum (English: Academic Museum of Antiquities ) was founded in
1818 and has one of the largest collections of plaster casts of ancient Greek and Roman
sculptures in the world. At this time collections of plaster casts were mainly used in the
instruction of students at art academies. They were first used in the instruction of university
students in 1763 by Christian Gottlob Heyne at University of Göttingen. The Akademisches
Kunstmuseum in Bonn was the first of its kind, as at this time collections at other universities
were scattered around universities libraries. The first director was Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker,
who also held a professorship of archaeology. His tenure was from 1819 until his retirement in
1854. He was succeeded by Otto Jahn and Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, who shared the
directorship. From 1870 to 1889 Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz, nephew of the famous organic
chemist Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz, was the director. In 1872 the museum moved to
a new building that was formerly used by the department of anatomy. The building was
constructed from 1823 to 1830 and designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Hermann Friedrich
Waesemann. Other directors of the museum were Georg Loeschcke (from 1889 to 1912), Franz
Winter (from 1912 to 1929), Richard Delbrück (from 1929 to 1940), Ernst Langlotz (from 1944 to
1966), Nikolaus Himmelmann (from 1969 to 1994) and Harald Mielsch (since 1994). All directors,
with the exception of Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl held a professorship of archaeology at the
[8]
university.
The Egyptian Museum (German: Ägyptisches Museum) was founded in 2001. The collection
dates back to the 19th century and was formerly part of the Akademisches Kunstmuseum. Large
parts of the collection were destroyed in World War II. Today the collection comprises about
[9]
3,000 objects.
The Arithmeum was opened in 1999. With over 1,200 objects it has the world's largest collection
of historical mechanical calculating machines. The museum is affiliated with the Research
[10]
Institute for Discrete Mathematics.

Minke whale skeleton, Museum Koenig

The Teaching Collection of Archaeology and Anthropology (German: Archäologisch-

ethnographische Lehr- und Studiensammlung) was opened in 2008. The collection comprises
[11]
more than 7,500 objects of mostly pre-Columbian art.
The Botanical Garden was officially founded in 1818 and is located around the Poppelsdorf
Palace. A garden existed at the same place at least since 1578, and around 1720 a Baroque
garden was built for Clemens August of Bavaria. The first director of the Botanical Garden was
Nees von Esenbeck from 1818 to 1830. In May 2003 the world's largest titan arum, some 2.74
[12]
meters high, flowered in the Botanical Garden for three days.
The natural history museum was opened in 1820 by Georg August Goldfuss. It was the first
[13]
public museum in the Rhineland. In 1882 it was split into the Mineralogical Museum located
in the Poppelsdorf Palace and a museum of palaeontology, now named Goldfuß Museum of
[14]
Palaeontology.
The Horst Stoeckel-Museum of the History of Anesthesiology (German: Horst Stoeckel-
Museum für die Geschichte der Anästhesiologie) was opened in 2000 and is the largest of its
[15]
kind in Europe.
The Museum Koenig is one of the largest natural history museums in Germany and is affiliated
with the university. The museum was founded in 1912 by Alexander Koenig, who donated his
[16]
collection of mounted specimen to the public. See also the separate article Museum Koenig.

Organization[edit]
The University of Bonn has 32,500 students, and 4,000 of these are international students. Each
year about 3,000 undergraduate students graduate. The university also confers about 800
Ph.D.s and about 60 habilitations. More than 90 programs in all fields are offered. Strong fields
as identified by the university are mathematics, physics, law, economics, neuroscience, medical
genetics, chemical biology, agriculture, Asian and Oriental studies and Philosophy and Ethics.
The university has more than 550 professors, an additional academic staff of 3,900 and an
[2]
administrative staff of over 1,700. The annual budget was more than 570 million euros in 2016.

Faculties[edit]
From the foundation in 1818 to 1928 the University of Bonn had five faculties, that is, the Faculty
of Catholic Theology, the Faculty of Protestant Theology, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of
Arts and Science. In 1928, the Faculty of Law and the Department of Economics, that until then
was part of the Faculty of Arts and Science, merged into the new Faculty of Law and Economics.
In 1934 the until then independent Agricultural University Bonn-Poppelsdorf (German:
Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule Bonn-Poppelsdorf) was merged into the University of Bonn as
the Faculty of Agricultural Science. In 1936, the science departments were separated from the
[17]
Faculty of Arts and Science. Today the university is divided into seven faculties:
● Faculty of Catholic Theology (German: Katholisch-Theologische Fakultät)
● Faculty of Protestant Theology (German: Evangelisch-Theologische Fakultät)
● Faculty of Law, Economics and Social Sciences (German: Rechts- und
Staatswissenschaftliche Fakultät)
● Faculty of Medicine (German: Medizinische Fakultät)
● Faculty of Arts (German: Philosophische Fakultät)
● Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (German: Mathematisch-
Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät)
● Faculty of Agriculture (German: Landwirtschaftliche Fakultät)