18th century in
Bayreuth The university was founded in 1742 as
Academia Fridericiana in
Bayreuth by
Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. On 21 February 1743, it was granted university status by
Charles VII.
19th century After the city of Erlangen was transferred to the
Kingdom of Bavaria in 1810, the university only narrowly managed to avoid closure – unlike the University of Nuremberg in Altdorf – because it was the only Bavarian state university to have a
Lutheran theological faculty going forward. It was therefore indispensable for the training of
Protestant theologians in the new state. The university remained Lutheran for a long time, but gradually lost its original Lutheran confessional character. Even today, the Friedrich-Alexander University has only a Protestant theological department and no
Catholic theological department. However, it is still possible to study Catholic
religious education for teaching at elementary, secondary, and vocational schools, as a subject in educational studies, and as an elective for business educators. For this purpose, there are four chairs at the Nuremberg campus, which now belong to the Faculty of Philosophy, to which the Department of Theology has been affiliated. In 1818, the margrave's castle became the property of the university. After a long period of modest development, Erlangen University, like other German universities, experienced an upswing in the early 1880s. In this context, it is also worth mentioning the founding of the long-overdue History Seminar on behalf of King
Maximilian II of Bavaria by the historian Karl Hegel, who had been working here since 1856 and who established modern
historical studies at the University of Erlangen. After Hegel had served as vice-rector of the university in 1870/71, the department was founded in 1872. Karl Hegel remained director of the Department of History until 1884. Student numbers rose in the 1880s from 374 at the end of the winter semester of 1869/70 to 1,000 in 1890. While law students were in the majority in the early years, the Faculty of Theology was the most popular at the beginning of the Bavarian period. It was not until 1890 that it was overtaken by the Faculty of Medicine. The number of full professors rose from 20 in 1796 to 42 in 1900, almost half of whom were employed by the Faculty of Philosophy, which also included the natural sciences. It was not until 1928 that the latter formed a separate faculty. Jakob Herz became the first
Jewish professor at a university in
Bavaria in 1863. After his death, a monument was unveiled in his honour on 6 May 1875. The larger-than-life bronze statue, erected on what is now Hugenottenplatz, was removed after the
National Socialists came to power and was presumably melted down for war purposes in 1944. In 1897, the first women were admitted to study, and the first woman received her doctorate in 1904. From the second half of the 19th century onwards, several large university buildings were erected on the edges of the palace gardens, including the Kollegienhaus and the university hospital.
20th century Around 75% of the university's students volunteered or were conscripted during the
First World War. 384 members of the university lost their lives in the war. In the post-war period, many of the students at Friedrich-Alexander University (around 350) took part in the suppression of the
Bavarian Soviet Republic as members of the
Freikorps Epp. As a result of the
Bavarian Concordat (1924) with the
Catholic Church, several Catholic "concordat chairs" still exist at the university to this day. In 1927, the natural sciences were separated from the Faculty of Philosophy and transferred to a joint Faculty of Natural Sciences.
Period of National Socialism The
National Socialist movement had already spread to the University of Erlangen in the early 1920s. An Erlangen
Sturmabteilung (SA) division, consisting mainly of students, had been in existence since 1922. After
Hitler's failed
Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, a spontaneously formed radical nationalist list won twelve of 25 seats in the Erlangen
AStA elections on 20 November 1923 and appointed Ludwig Franz Gengler as its first chairman. On 24 September 1924, 120 student members of the
NSDAP founded the National Socialist Student Group Erlangen, which disbanded after Gengler moved to LMU Munich and was only re-established in 1928 as a university group of the National Socialist German Students' Union (
NSDStB). In the winter semester of 1928/29, the NSDStB won eight seats. In the subsequent university elections in 1929, the NSDStB finally won 14 seats, making the University of Erlangen the first German university to have a student parliament dominated by National Socialists. With around 200 members, the Erlangen university group had reached a considerable size by 1930 and was one of
Baldur von Schirach's internal party opponents, led by the former Erlangen university group leader Reinhard Sunkel. After Sunkel and his supporters were expelled from the NSDStB, a splinter group of National Socialists called Revolutionary Students also ran in the university elections in Erlangen in November 1931 in competition with the Student Union and won a seat in the student parliament. The University of Erlangen was less affected by the
purge of German universities that began in 1933 than most other universities. Of the 121 members of the teaching staff in the winter semester of 1932/33, 9 people (7.4 percent) were expelled. However, 162 former students had their doctoral degrees revoked, mostly in 1939 (examples include the Jewish doctor Ernst Alfred Seckendorf and the lawyer and monarchist Catholic resistance fighter
Adolf von Harnier). After the
Second World War, the university denied this however, and it was not until the 1990s that this dark chapter of history was finally addressed.
Post-war period The university survived the world wars relatively unscathed in terms of its buildings. The
denazification process carried out by the American occupying forces led to the dismissal of numerous university teachers after the end of the war. They were replaced by professors from the former eastern territories, among others, which led to a shift from a predominantly Protestant teaching staff to a majority Catholic one. After the
Second World War, some of the university's faculties reopened in January 1946 and teaching was gradually reestablished. The post-war period led to further expansion, not only in terms of student numbers, but also in terms of the number of chairs. Above all, the collaboration with the parts of
Siemens AG that had recently moved to Erlangen provided decisive impetus for further expansion and led, among other things, to the construction of the south campus for the technical and natural science faculties. In 1961, the Nuremberg University of Economics and Social Sciences, founded in 1919, was incorporated as a separate faculty, giving FAU its second major location and its current name, Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen–Nuremberg. The
student revolt of the 1960s came to Erlangen with a slight delay and was significantly less intense. In 1966, a technical faculty was established. A new university complex was built in the south of Erlangen, which today combines engineering, computer science, inorganic chemistry, and an additional cafeteria in a concrete-dominated complex that is typical of the time. The Friedrich-Alexander University was thus one of the first classical universities to add a technical faculty to its range of subjects. In 1972, the Nuremberg College of Education was incorporated. In 1982, Erlangen University Hospital attracted national attention with the birth of Germany's first
test-tube baby. Ten years later, there was a nationwide debate about the
Erlanger baby, who was to be saved at Erlangen Hospital by life-support measures after its mother was declared brain dead following an accident. Since 1999, part of the new Erlangen district of "Röthelheimpark" has been used by the university ("Röthelheim Campus"). The site used to be an old
artillery barracks built in 1900 and was later expanded with several buildings.
21st century In 2004, the decision was made to establish the Central Institute for New Materials and Process Technology (ZMP) in
Fürth, making Fürth a "city of science" and another regional location for Friedrich-Alexander University. In July 2005, a new building for the chair of crystallography and structural physics was inaugurated at a cost of €5.8 million. On 14 July 2006, the newly founded Central Institute for Applied Ethics and Science Communication (ZIEW) was inaugurated. As recently as 2007, FAU was divided into eleven faculties (listed in order of establishment): • Faculty of Theology, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Medicine • Faculties of Philosophy • I (Philosophy, History, and Social Sciences) • II (Linguistics and Literary Studies) • Faculties of Natural Sciences • I (Mathematics and Physics) • II (Biology, Chemistry, and Pharmacy) • III (Geography, Geology, Mineralogy, Paleontology) • Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences in Nuremberg • Faculty of Engineering and finally the Faculty of Education in Nuremberg In 2007, the university was restructured as part of a structural reform: the previous faculties were merged to form five new large faculties. Three faculties lost their independence and became departments within the new faculties, including the Faculty of Theology, the Faculty of Education, and the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences (the latter two located in Nuremberg). Theology is now an independent department within the Faculty of Philosophy. Since 2008, the university has been part of the Bavarian Centre for Political Theory (BAYPOL), whose Erlangen headquarters have provided FAU with another "research and competence centre". In 2009, a chair for human rights ("Chair for Human Rights and Human Rights Policy") was established at the Institute for Political Science, enabling FAU to contribute to research and teaching in this important but academically rather weakly institutionalised field. In 2009, the new
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen emerged from the
Max Planck Research Group for Optics, Information, and Photonics, which was founded at the university for this purpose in 2004. Since then, it has hosted a large number of Max Planck Junior Research Groups and
Alexander von Humboldt scholarship holders and, together with the Faculty of Engineering, has been involved in the two institutions of the
Excellence Initiative established at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg in 2004. In April 2011, the university adopted a new logo in order to establish the commonly used abbreviation "FAU" as a trademark and build a corporate identity. The traditional seal depicting the two founders of the university will henceforth only be used in special contexts, such as on certificates and similar documents. From the outset, the design of the new logo was the subject of fierce criticism from various quarters. Students responded with satirical variations, some of which highlighted what they perceived as its excessive similarity to other well-known trademarks. There was also criticism that university members—both students and staff—were not sufficiently informed about or involved in this process, which is important for the university's identity. In the wake of a significant nationwide increase in student numbers in the winter semester of 2011, the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg became one of Germany's twelve largest universities for the first time that year. Since 2012, the Erlangen Graduate School in Advanced Optical Technologies has been bringing together the interdisciplinary fields of optics and photonics in the natural sciences and engineering at the MPI for the Science of Light, the
Fraunhofer Institutes in Erlangen, and the Erlangen Research Focus Area for Medical Research.
Expansion in Erlangen In mid-2013, age-related structural defects became apparent in various buildings belonging to Friedrich-Alexander University, particularly in the city centre. According to the university management, these defects are due to years of underinvestment in building maintenance by the state government: For example, only around one-sixth of the funds required (€5M of approximately €33M) were received for necessary repairs and renovation measures on the buildings of the Faculty of Philosophy in 2012. Buildings belonging to other faculties are also in need of renovation, such as those belonging to the Department of Organic Chemistry and facilities on the south campus of FAU. The consequence of these years of delay in necessary construction measures was increasing deterioration in the condition of numerous university properties. In a seminar building of the Faculty of Philosophy, for example, large parts of the ceiling cladding fell onto the workplaces below in July 2013. Not least due to the continuing poor condition of FAU's inner-city properties and the lack of space that has arisen over the last few decades, the university management and the
Bavarian state government are planning to completely relocate and merge the Faculty of Philosophy (with its facilities in Nuremberg) into buildings belonging to Siemens in Erlangen city centre. In particular, the group's former main administrative building in Erlangen known as the "Himbeerpalast" (Raspberry Palace), was the focus of attention in this context. The office building, with a total usable area of 46,000 m2, would be ideal for this purpose, as it would provide the estimated 40,000 m2 of space required. In addition, a central humanities library could be created there to replace the numerous smaller university libraries. In September 2014, then Bavarian minister of culture Ludwig Spaenle, together with then Minister of Finance
Markus Söder and then Minister of the Interior and Building
Joachim Herrman, presented a new location concept for the university. This concept stipulated the relocation of the philosophy and education departments and the establishment of a central humanities library in the Himbeerpalast. This location concept was revised in May 2017 to stipulate that educational sciences should remain in Nuremberg; however, the remaining departments of the Faculty of Philosophy were still to move to the Himbeerpalast by 2023. The reason for this was the announcement that Nuremberg would have its own technical university by 2030 and that the technical faculty of FAU would therefore remain in Erlangen. Finally, on 3 July 2018, the Bavarian cabinet decided at a meeting in Nuremberg on an investment package totalling €1.5 billion for the University of Erlangen, spread over 30 years, according to Minister President Markus Söder. Among other things, these funds are to be used to purchase the Himbeerpalast and convert it for the purposes of the planned humanities centre. In addition to the renovation of the existing buildings, this will also require the construction of a new central humanities library in the inner courtyard and another new building in the immediate vicinity of the Himbeerpalast. In addition, the old Chemikum building on Henkestraße is to be converted into a lecture hall building for the philosophy faculty. The existing buildings of the Faculty of Philosophy in the north of Erlangen are to be demolished, with the exception of the Juridicum, to make way for the nearby University Hospital and the Faculty of Medicine. The purchase by the Free State of Bavaria was completed on 13 September 2018, at the latest. Renovation and conversion of the building for the purposes of the Faculty of Philosophy were to take place from 2021, with the move scheduled for 2026/27. The renovation and expansion of the Himbeerpalast began on 4 November 2024. Accompanying the relocation of the Faculty of Philosophy to Werner-von-Siemens-Straße in Erlangen, the construction of a new central lecture hall building on Henkestraße is being considered. In addition, land on the Siemens Campus Erlangen was acquired by the State of Bavaria in 2023. The existing buildings on this land were first used by the central university administration and management of FAU from the end of 2024. A move was necessary because renovation of Erlangen Castle is planned during which the building will not be accessible. This opportunity was also used to consolidate the administration in a single building moving forward. Previously, it was spread across several locations in Erlangen
Expansion in Nuremberg The campus of the Faculty of Philosophy for teacher training at FAU (known as the "Faculty of Education" from 1972 to 2007, and since then as the "Regensburger Straße Campus"), located in the south of Nuremberg, is home to both educational science subjects and humanities and social science subjects involved in teacher training. In 2020, the Bavarian state government decided that FAU should receive a new building in the north of the city for this purpose, which will be realised in the form of a public-private partnership project to accelerate the process. The public tender for the commissioned construction took place in 2021, and the process has now been completed. The new building complex was initially to be leased for at least 20 years. After this period, the Free State would have had an option to purchase. The university expected the new campus to be completed and handed over in 2026. The new building was planned at the intersection of Bucher Straße and Nordring in the north of Nuremberg and was to accommodate approximately 400 employees and up to 3,000 students. The site has been an industrial wasteland for many years and was to be redeveloped into a "campus-like green space".
Timeline Below is a short timeline of FAU from its inception to its present form: • 1700–1704: The Schloss of the Margraves at Erlangen is built. • 1743: Friedrich, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, issues an edict whereby the Academia Fridericiana, founded by him in 1742 in
Bayreuth, is transferred to Erlangen and renamed as a university,
Universität Erlangen. It has the four faculties of Protestant Theology, Jurisprudence, Medicine and Philosophy. • 1769: The
Universität Erlangen is given the new name of
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität in honour of Alexander, Margrave of Ansbach and Bayreuth. • 1818: The library of the
University of Altdorf, dissolved in 1809, is moved to Erlangen. • 1824: The first hospital is built. • 1825: The university moves into the Schloss. • 1920: The WiSo Faculty (Business Administration, Economics & Social Sciences) is established. • 1927: Science is taken out of the Faculty of Arts thus creating the new Faculty of Science. • 1961: FAU acquires a further faculty through merger with the Nuremberg College of Economics and Social Sciences (founded in 1919). The university's name is now
Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. • 1966: The Faculty of Engineering is established. (FAU is thus the first of the traditional universities of the old federal republic to incorporate engineering as an independent faculty.) • 1972: The Teacher Training College in Nuremberg is incorporated into the Faculty of Education. • 1993: FAU celebrates its 250th anniversary. • 1994: The Free State of Bavaria purchases for the university 4.4 hectares of land in Erlangen previously owned by the US military. The area is now called
Röthelheim Campus. • 2000: The Bavaria-California Technology Centre opens its headquarters at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. • 2000: Inauguration of the Research Centre in Clinical Molecular Biology in Erlangen. • 2001: Opening of the
Röthelheim Campus on the site of the old artillery barracks. • 2004: Inauguration of the new building at the WiSo Faculty of Business Administration, Economics & Social Sciences in Nuremberg. =="Erlangen Schools" and "Erlangen Program"==