Freie Universität Berlin: Foundation in 1948 and Early Teaching

The creation of Freie Universität Berlin was closely connected with Berlin's postwar political division and conflicts over the existing Berlin university. In April 1948, students involved in the journal Colloquium, including Otto Hess and Joachim Schwarz, were expelled. On 23 April, students gathered in the British sector to demand a new free university. Freedom here initially addressed political interference in teaching, research and student expression.

On 19 June, figures from politics, scholarship and culture met at Wannsee and formed a preparatory committee chaired by Ernst Reuter, with Edwin Redslob taking a major organizing role. The founding appeal of 23 July stated concrete goals: students should not be objects of one-sided propaganda, and teachers should teach and research free of partisan dogma. The committee sought assistance from German and Allied authorities, scholars at home and abroad, and donors. From the outset, educational ideals required personnel, premises and money.

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The university was not created in a single day in 1948. On 22 September, Berlin's municipal government recognized it as a public-law corporation. Statutes effective on 4 November defined its legal status and organization. Teaching began progressively in the second half of November, while the foundation ceremony took place at the Titania-Palast in Steglitz on 4 December. The ceremony date therefore cannot substitute for every faculty's first teaching day.

Historian Friedrich Meinecke became the first rector, while Redslob handled practical university administration. Illness prevented Meinecke from attending the ceremony, and his address was transmitted by radio. Reuter, student representatives and American participants also took part. The university was located in Dahlem in the American sector, allowing use of former Kaiser Wilhelm Society buildings and separately rented premises rather than waiting for an entirely new campus.

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The founding statutes defined a community of teaching, learning and research and provided for academic self-government and management of its own finances. Student participation entered the formal organization: two representatives sat in the academic senate, one in faculty bodies and one on the financial supervisory board. Students' roles thus extended beyond attending courses to participation in university operation.

The same provisions preserved municipal authority. The mayor chaired the board, which included education and finance representatives. Professorial appointments required municipal-government involvement, and city audit supervised finances. Transitional appointment procedures also accommodated the first academic year's preparatory circumstances. Academic autonomy, student participation and public oversight were combined; the founding appeal's freedom did not mean complete separation from government.

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A record dated 16 November 1948, included with a report by US higher-education official Howard Johnston, described material conditions. The university used all or part of fifteen buildings, centred on the administration and philosophy faculty on Boltzmannstrasse in Dahlem, with some medical-teaching facilities in the British sector. Difficulties included not only classroom numbers but also coal, requiring timetables to account for heating consumption.

The record stated that students could access approximately 350,000 books through private, official and semi-official libraries; this was not a collection already owned entirely by the new university. A press fund supplied the first year's principal financing, converting twenty million Reichsmarks into two million West marks. The report explicitly identified funding for the second year as unresolved. Buildings, available books and start-up money enabled teaching without immediately removing uncertainty about continuing operations.

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Heinz Rieter's research gives the initial scale as 2,140 students and 128 teachers, including about forty professors, in three faculties: law and economics, philosophy, and medicine. Mathematics and natural sciences then belonged to philosophy. Admission required secondary-school qualifications and aptitude for further study. Where qualifications were equal, priority went to victims of Nazi persecution, late-returning prisoners of war, those denied educational opportunities for political reasons in the east, and people impoverished or delayed in their studies by war.

The Faculty of Law and Economics began teaching on 22 November, with institutes for law, economics and business economics. Where regular professors were lacking, Berlin judges, administrators, lawyers and notaries also taught law. By summer 1949, the faculty had split into a law faculty and a faculty of economics and social sciences. Specialized organization changed with teaching, appointments and scale; the later faculty structure cannot be projected back onto foundation.

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The founding appeal specifically invited overseas university teachers to give guest lectures and solicited teaching supplies and donations. American writer Thornton Wilder spoke at the 1948 ceremony, showing that the new university used international cultural contacts early to build its standing. Ceremonial participation and sustained teaching were different relationships, however; not every supporter can be listed as a university professor.

West German universities did not uniformly welcome the new institution. Some worried about relations with the existing Berlin university; recruitment was difficult, and judgments differed over professors' ages, academic standing and political records. The university sought broader connections through visiting teachers, inter-university support and returning exiled scholars, but ideals and actual appointments did not always align. Early intellectual exchange developed amid Cold War division, scarce resources and the effort to restore academic life.

References: [1] [4]