On 25 January 1858, prince
Frederick William of Prussia (later
German emperor), was given a donation of 5,000
talers from the
Aachener und Münchener Feuer-Versicherungs-Gesellschaft, the precursor of the
AachenMünchener insurance company, for charity. In March, the prince chose to use the donation to found the first
Prussian
institute of technology somewhere in the
Rhine province. The seat of the institution remained undecided over years; while the prince initially favored
Koblenz, the cities of
Aachen, Bonn,
Cologne and
Düsseldorf also applied, with Aachen and Cologne being the main competitors. Aachen finally won with a financing concept backed by the insurance company and by local banks.
Groundbreaking for the new
Polytechnikum took place on 15 May 1865 and lectures started during the
Franco-Prussian War on 10 October 1870 with 223 students and 32 teachers. The new institution had as its primary purpose the education of engineers, especially for the mining industry in the
Ruhr area; there were schools of
chemistry,
electrical and mechanical engineering as well as an introductory
general school that taught mathematics and
natural sciences and some
social sciences. The unclear position of the new Prussian
polytechnika (which officially were not universities) affected the first years. Polytechnics lacked prestige in society and the number of students decreased. This began to change in 1880 when the early RWTH, amongst others, was reorganized as a
Royal Technical University, gained a seat in the
Prussian House of Lords and finally won the right to bestow
Dr.-Ing. (1899) degrees and
Dipl.-Ing. titles (introduced in 1902). In the same year, over 800 male students enrolled. In 1909 the first women were admitted and the artist
August von Brandis succeeded Alexander Frenz at the Faculty of Architecture as a "professor of figure and landscape painting", Brandis became dean in 1929.
World War I, however, proved a serious setback for the university. Many students voluntarily joined up and died in the war, and parts of the university were shortly occupied or confiscated. While the (then no more royal)
TH Aachen (Technische Hochschule Aachen) flourished in the 1920s with the introduction of more independent
faculties, of several new institutes and of the
general students' committee, the first signs of
nationalist radicalization also became visible within the university.
Nazi Germany's
Gleichschaltung of the TH in 1933 met with relatively low resistance from both students and faculty. Beginning in September 1933, Jewish and (alleged)
Communist professors (and from 1937 on also students) were systematically
persecuted and excluded from the university. Vacant
Chairs were increasingly given to
NSDAP party-members or sympathizers. The freedom of research and teaching became severely limited, and institutes important for the regime's plans were systematically established, and existing chairs promoted. Briefly closed in 1939, the TH continued courses in 1940, although with a low number of students. On 21 October 1944, when Aachen
capitulated, more than 70% of all buildings of the university were destroyed or heavily damaged. After
World War II ended in 1945 the university recovered and expanded quickly. In the 1950s, many professors who had been removed because of their alleged affiliation with the
Nazi party were allowed to return and a multitude of new institutes were founded. By the late 1960s, the TH had 10,000 students, making it the foremost of all German technical universities. With the foundation of philosophical and medical faculties in 1965 and 1966, respectively, the university became more "universal". The newly founded faculties in particular began attracting new students, and the number of students almost doubled twice from 1970 (10,000) to 1980 (more than 25,000) and from 1980 to 1990 (more than 37,000). Now, the average number of students is around 42,000, with about one third of all students being women. By relative terms, the most popular study-programs are engineering (57%),
natural science (23%), economics and
humanities (13%) and medicine (7%). In 2007, RWTH Aachen was chosen as one of nine German
Universities of Excellence for its future concept
RWTH 2020: Meeting Global Challenges, earning it the
connotation of being a "University of Excellence". However, although the list of universities honored for their future concepts mostly consists of large and already respected institutions, the
Federal Ministry of Education and Research claimed that the initiative aimed at promoting universities with a dedicated future concept so they could continue researching on an international level. Having won funds in all three lines of funding, the process brought RWTH Aachen University an additional total funding of €180
million from 2007 to 2011. The other two lines of funding were
graduate schools, where the
Aachen Institute for Advanced Study in Computational Engineering Science received funding and so-called "clusters of excellence", where RWTH Aachen managed to win funding for the three clusters:
Ultra High-Speed Mobile Information and Communication (UMIC),
Integrative Production Technology for High-wage Countries and
Tailor-Made Fuels from Biomass (TMFB). RWTH was selected to receive funding from the German federal and state governments for the third Universities of Excellence funding line starting 2019. RWTH's proposal was called "The Integrated Interdisciplinary University of Science and Technology – Knowledge. Impact. Networks." and has secured funding for a seven-year period. from
SuperC, a central building for students next to the main building at the midtown campus 2019 Clusters of Excellence: • The Fuel Science Center (FSC) Adaptive Conversion Systems for Renewable Energy and Carbon Sources • Internet of Production • ML4Q – Matter and Light for Quantum Computing RWTH was already awarded funding in the first and second Universities of Excellence funding lines, in 2007 and 2012 respectively. The RWTH itself has a University agreement with the
Harbin Institute of Technology since 2019. In June 2024 a research by
Correctiv journalists showed Chinese military involvement in several RWTH projects. From 100 RWTH professors in
Mechanical- and
Electrical engineering 19 had cooperated with researchers from
NUDT and the
Seven Sons of National Defence initiative and 45 had benefited from Chinese government funding. The money, in some cases channelled through
companies privately held by RWTH professors, went, among other things, to projects with military applications, including radar technology for
drones. == Campus ==