Leipzig University

Leipzig University main building (1917). It was demolished by the socialist administration in 1968.

The university was modelled on the University of Prague, from which the German-speaking faculty members withdrew to Leipzig after the Jan Hus crisis and the Decree of Kutná Hora. The Alma mater Lipsiensis opened in 1409, after it had been officially endorsed by Pope Alexander V in his Bull of Acknowledgment on (9 September of that year). Its first rector was Johann von Münsterberg. From its foundation, the Paulinerkirche served as the university church. After the Reformation, the church and the monastery buildings were donated to the university in 1544. In order to secure independent and sustainable funding, the university was endowed with the lordship over nine villages east of Leipzig (university villages). It kept this status for nearly 400 years until land reforms were carried out in the 19th century.

Like many European universities, the University of Leipzig was structured into colleges (collegia) responsible for organising accommodation and collegiate lecturing. Among the colleges of Leipzig were the Small College, the Large College, the Red College (Rotes Kolleg, also known as the New College), the college of our Lady (Frauenkolleg) and the Pauliner-College (Pauliner Kolleg). There were also private residential halls (bursen, see English 'bursaries'). The colleges had jurisdiction over their members. The college structure was abandoned later and today only the names survive.

During the first centuries, the university grew slowly and was a rather regional institution. This changed, however, during the 19th century when the university became a world-class institution of higher education and research. At the end of the 19th century, important scholars such as Bernhard Windscheid (one of the fathers of the German Civil Code) and Wilhelm Ostwald (viewed as a founder of modern physical chemistry) taught at Leipzig.

Formerly organized as a collegiate university, the Red College of Leipzig University was established in the 16th century.

Leipzig University was one of the first German universities to allow women to register as "guest students".[3] At its general assembly in 1873, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein thanked the University of Leipzig and Prague for allowing women to attend as guest students. This was the year that the first woman in Germany obtained her JD, Johanna von Evreinov.

During the decline and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and first decade of 20th century together with some other German universities Leipzig University turned into one of the centers of higher education for state administrations and elites of newly independent Balkan states (Romania, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia) educating over 5,500 students from the region in 1859–1909 period.[4]

Until the beginning of the Second World War, Leipzig University attracted a number of renowned scholars and later Nobel Prize laureates, including Paul Ehrlich, Felix Bloch, Werner Heisenberg and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. Many of the university's alumni became important scientists.

Under Nazi rule many degrees of Jews were cancelled.[5] Some were later reinstated as Karl-Marx University degrees by the GDR. Noteworthy Nazis, such as Max Clara (chair of anatomy) taught at the university and were appointed to positions with great authority.

The university was kept open throughout World War II, even after the destruction of its buildings. During the war the acting rector, Erich Maschke, described the continuation of the university in a memo on 11 May 1945, announcing the vote for a new rector:

Since 4 December 1943 a fixed determination not to abandon the Leipzig University in the most difficult hour of its more than five-hundred-year history has bonded the professors with each other and with the students. The special task of repairing the damage caused by air attacks has now broadened out to the more general duty to save the continuity of our university and preserve its substance, at the very least its indestructible kernel, through the crisis that has now reached its fullest stage. After the destruction of most of the buildings and the majority of its libraries, this kernel is represented by the professoriate alone. This is what must be preserved as the great repository of value in the university.[6]

By the end of the war 60 per cent of the university's buildings and 70 per cent of its books had been destroyed.

The university reopened after the war on 5 February 1946, but it was affected by the uniformity imposed on social institutions in the Soviet occupation zone. In 1948 the freely elected student council was disbanded and replaced by Free German Youth members. The chairman of the Student Council, Wolfgang Natonek, and other members were arrested and imprisoned, but the university was also a nucleus of resistance. Thus began the Belter group, with flyers for free elections. The head of the group, Herbert Belter, was executed in 1951 in Moscow. The German Democratic Republic was created in 1949, and in 1953 for Karl Marx Year the university was renamed by its government the Karl Marx University, Leipzig after Karl Marx. In 1968, the partly damaged Augusteum, including Johanneum and Albertinum and the intact Paulinerkirche, were demolished to make way for a redevelopment of the university, carried out between 1973 and 1978. The dominant building of the university was the University Tower (now City-Hochhaus Leipzig), built between 1968 and 1972 in the form of an open book.

Main building of Leipzig University since 2012, the Augusteum at Augustusplatz.

Leipzig's classicist university library, the Bibliotheca Albertina.

In 1991, following the reunification of Germany, the university's name was restored to the original Leipzig University (Alma mater lipsiensis). The reconstruction of the University Library, which was heavily damaged during the war and in the GDR barely secured, was completed in 2002.

With the delivery of the University Tower to a private user, the university was forced to spread some faculties over several locations in the city. It controversially redesigned its historical centre at the Augustusplatz. In 2002, Behet Bonzio received the second prize in the architectural competition; a first prize was not awarded by the jury. A lobby with partial support of the provincial government called for the rebuilding of St. Paul's Church and Augusteum. This caused the resistance of the university leadership, the majority of the students and population of Leipzig. On 24 March 2004 a jury chose a design by Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat, which was well received by almost all parties. He recalls the outer form of the St. Paul's Church (today called Paulinum) and Augusteum, and abstracted the original building complex. Renovations began in the summer of 2005.

In 2008 the university was able to prevail in the nationwide "Initiative of Excellence" of Germany and it was granted the graduate school "BuildMoNa: Leipzig School of Natural Sciences – Building with Molecules and Nano-objects".[7] In addition, the university was able to receive grants from the Saxon excellence initiative for the "Life" project – a project that tries to explore common diseases more effectively. Also in 2008 the "Bach Archive" was associated with the university. In 2009, the Leipzig University celebrated its 600th anniversary with over 300 scientific and cultural lectures and exhibitions,[8] reflecting the role of the university's research and teaching from its beginning.

• International Max Planck Research School- Mathematics in the Sciences (IMPRS MiS), in association with Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences[17]
• International Max Planck Research School on Neuroscience of Communication: Function, Structure, and Plasticity, in association with Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences[18]
• International Max Planck Research School "The Leipzig School of Human Origins", in association with Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology[19]
• Institute of Non-Classical Chemistry e.V[20]
• Institute for Applied Informatics[21]
• Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture at Leipzig University
• Leipzig Centre for the History and Culture of East Central Europe
• Translational Centre for Regenerative Medicine
• German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv)
• Institute of East Asian Studies of the Leipzig University
• Institute of Classical Archaeology of the Leipzig University
• Institute for International Law, European Law and Foreign Public Law (InVEA) of the Leipzig University

The university is ranked 18th in Germany, 98th in Europe, and 264th in the world by the web-based Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, a ranking evaluating universities' scientific online publications.[31][32] The 2018 ARWU ranking sees Leipzig climbing in the 151–200 tier being among the top 14 German universities.[33] Leipzig has constantly been ranked among the German top 10 in various university sport disciplines over the past decades.

• Johann Christoph Altnickol, German composer, son-in-law to Johann Sebastian Bach
• Johann Friedrich Agricola, German composer, pupil of Johann Sebastian Bach
• Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, German composer, second famous son of Johann Sebastian Bach
• Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, German composer, 3rd famous son of Johann Sebastian Bach
• Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, German composer, first famous son of Johann Sebastian Bach
• Lorenz Christoph Mizler, German composer and music theorist, pupil of Johann Sebastian Bach
• Friedrich Blume, German music theorist
• Robert Schumann, German music composer
• Christoph Graupner, German composer
• Johann Kuhnau, German composer, Thomaskantor
• Johann David Heinichen, German composer and music theorist, Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon Kapellmeister
• Richard Wagner, German composer
• Georg Philipp Telemann, German composer, godfather to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

• Theodor Mommsen, German historian, Nobel Prize in Literature
• Franz Delitzsch, German Theologian and Hebrew Scholar
• Michael Ranft, German historian and theologian.
• Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German poet and polymath
• Max Muller, philologist and Orientalist who wrote authoritative works on Indology.
• Leonard Bloomfield, American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. He is considered to be the father of American Distributionalism.
• Hans-Georg Gadamer, German philosopher and rector of the university
• Johann Christoph Gottsched, German poet, author, and critic
• Christian Friedrich Henrici, German poet, Saxon Actuary, Postal clerk, Postal Commissioner, and Wine inspector
• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, German philosopher and writer
• Lin Yutang, Chinese author and linguist
• Nathan Söderblom, Swedish clergyman, Nobel Peace Prize
• C. F. W. Walther, first President of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod and its most influential theologian.
• Ferdinand de Saussure, linguist, founder of structuralism

• Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, German Mathematician who developed calculus, philosopher, polymath
• Felix Klein, German mathematician, known for his work in group theory, complex analysis and non-Euclidean geometry
• Sophus Lie, Norwegian mathematician who developed Lie algebra
• August Ferdinand Möbius, German mathematician and theoretical astronomer, known for the Möbius strip.
• Karl Mollweide, German mathematician and astronomer, known for the Mollweide projection
• Hermann Hankel, German mathematician, known for the Hankel transform
• Felix Hausdorff, German mathematician, one of the founders of modern topology, known for the Hausdorff space
• Bartel Leendert van der Waerden, Dutch mathematician
• Edgar Odell Lovett, American mathematician
• Wei-Liang Chow, Chinese mathematician and stamp collector born in Shanghai, known for his work in algebraic geometry.
• Johann Heinrich Winckler, German physicist
• Werner Heisenberg, German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics
• Felix Bloch, Swiss physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics
• Friedrich Hund, German physicist, discovered quantum tunnelling and is known for Hund's rules
• Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, Austro-Hungarian physicist
• Ludwig Boltzmann, Austrian physicist
• Tycho Brahe,[35] Danish astronomer
• Gustav Hertz, German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics
• Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Japanese physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics
• William Vermillion Houston, American physicist
• Edward Teller, Hungaro-American nuclear scientist, member of the Manhattan Project
• Peter Debye, Dutch-American physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry
• Wilhelm Ostwald, German chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry
• Paul Ehrlich, German doctor, Nobel Prize in Medicine
• Svante Pääbo, Noble prize in Medicine, currently teaches molecular evolutionary biology at the university
• Gustav Theodor Fechner, German psychologist, founder of Psychophysics
• Maximilian von Frey, physiologist, inventor of the esthesiometer
• Ernst Heinrich Weber, German physician and professor whose studies paved the way for the founding of Psychology
• Wilhelm Wundt, German psychologist, founded the first formal laboratory for psychological research
• Friedrich Trendelenburg, German surgeon, described surgical removal of pulmonary emboli[36]

• Luo Gan, Chinese Politician, Member of the Politburo Standing Committee
• Johann Major, German Lutheran theologian, a principal author of the so-called Leipzig Interim, and author of the Majoristic Controversy
• Angela Merkel, first female German Chancellor
• Hans-Dietrich Genscher, German politician, Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor
• Rudolph Sohm, lawyer and Church historian
• Cai Yuanpei, president of Peking University and leading thinker in the early Chinese communist movement
• Michelle Bachelet, first female President of Chile between 2006 and 2010
• Selig Brodetsky, Israeli President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Raila Amolo Odinga, Kenyan politician

• Luz Long, German Olympic long-jumper, noted for his sportsmanship