Goethe University Frankfurt: Civic Endowments and the Opening of 1914

Today's Goethe University Frankfurt was founded as the “Royal University of Frankfurt.” Mayor Franz Adickes and businessman Wilhelm Merton advanced the project, drawing on the Academy of Social and Commercial Sciences and the city's existing medical and natural-science institutions. On September 28, 1912, the funding parties signed a university foundation agreement, committing the municipality, charitable research institutions, foundations, and scholarly societies to specific obligations.

This undertaking required more than constructing university buildings. Ludwig Heilbrunn's history of the founding, published in 1915, preserves negotiations, financial tables, and statutes. He had himself participated in municipal affairs and acknowledged in the preface that his account reflected a participant's perspective. The early source allows detailed institutions to be traced, but its documentary records must be distinguished from the author's praise of the founders.

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The financial summary reproduced by Heilbrunn listed arranged endowments and capital totaling 14,594,266 marks, divided among recurring expenditure, a security fund, reserves, construction, and other purposes. This included two million marks for the security fund, 500,000 marks reserved for specified new needs, and 2.25 million marks for one-time construction. The figure combined capital allocated to different purposes and was not an annual budget.

Construction plans specified an extension to the Jügel building, medical lecture halls, anatomy facilities, and a library. The city and other institutions separately bore some construction costs, while the operating costs of municipal hospital clinics were not included in the university expenditure usually listed. The founding arrangements combined cash, use of assets, and continuing maintenance obligations, bringing institutions already serving the city into higher education without requiring all their property to become university-owned.

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On June 10, 1914, Wilhelm II issued the order establishing the university; the formal statutes were dated August 1. Article 3 defined it as a state institution while granting it corporate legal rights, and Article 7 expressly provided for ministerial supervision. Civic donations thus acquired the legal standing of a formal university without removing the Prussian state's governing authority.

Financial governance also involved a “Grand Council” and a board. The statutes provided representation for the mayor, city council, charitable institutions, chamber of commerce, and principal foundations and learned societies. The Grand Council handled budgets, final accounts, and real estate. Article 6 explicitly prohibited exclusion from professorial and research-institute appointments on grounds of religious or denominational affiliation. Financial participation, academic organization, and state supervision were distinct elements of the same founding system.

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Preparations for the opening were already being publicized. On July 22, 1914, the Taunusbote reported that a provisional course catalog for the first winter semester had appeared and could be requested free by post from the university secretariat at 17 Jordanstraße. For prospective students, the institution first took shape as a set of courses they could inspect and choose, rather than merely a ceremony yet to occur.

After war broke out, the large ceremony planned for October 18 gave way to simpler arrangements. Heilbrunn records that Rector Richard Wachsmuth presided over the opening on October 26 and that the first semester began on October 27. Under the statutes, students first formally matriculated and received a certificate of admission, identity documentation, and a course-registration booklet, then registered with their faculty. This procedure linked university membership to study within a particular faculty. Some teachers had already been called into military service, so teaching was constrained by war from the outset.

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The statutes established five faculties: law, medicine, philosophy, natural sciences, and economics and social sciences. Article 2 required the university to continue the earlier functions of advanced commercial education and scholarly continuing education. Article 73 also provided opportunities for further study by merchants, industrial and commercial workers, administrators, judges, lawyers, and others. Student education and urban professional needs were thus connected within its statutory mission.

Bernhard Diestelkamp's study of the law faculty shows how this relationship worked in practice. Alongside full-time professors, the university brought in local professionals through teaching commissions and honorary professorships, including chamber-of-commerce legal adviser Hans Trumpler and patent attorney Richard Wirth. Courses also addressed social insurance, labor protection, and commercial legal affairs. These arrangements brought urban practical experience into the classroom while extending legal instruction beyond its traditional core subjects.

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Library resources likewise drew on the city's accumulated holdings. Heilbrunn described the municipal, Senckenberg, and Rothschild libraries as possessing, respectively, general collections, natural-science and medical collections, and language and literature collections, with work on a union catalog already under way. The statutes required research institutions to support the needs of related units and allowed the creation of specialized research institutes or reductions in researchers' teaching, examination, and administrative duties to preserve time for research.

Historian Jason Lemberg examines this system within the relationships among the state, industry, and scholarship. Private giving expanded educational resources but also brought economic interests into governance. Heavy losses of endowment assets after the war forced financial reorganization, while exclusion and persecution followed after 1933. The founding arrangements created conditions for development but could not automatically guarantee lasting financial stability or academic openness.

References: [1] [2] [5]