Berlin Institute of Technology - History

History

The "Technical University of Berlin" was formed through the merger of three independent founding colleges. The oldest of these is the Bergakademie Berlin, the "Prussian Mining Academy", which was created by the geologist Carl Abraham Gerhard in 1770 with the aid the the Prussian king Frederick II of Brandenburg-Hohenzollern. Before becoming a part of the "Technical University of Berlin", the mining college was, however, for a long time under the auspices of the "Humboldt-University" Berlin, before it was spun out again as of September, 1st 1860 and eventually merged with the "Berlin Polytechnic" in 1916. The other two founding colleges were the Bauakademie Berlin, the "College of Civil Engineering" established in 1799, and the Gewerbe Institut Berlin, the "Berlin College for Vocational Studies", founded in 1829. Both colleges were merged by the Prussian government in 1879 to form the "Royal Technical College of Charlottenburg", named after the borough of Charlottenburg just outside Berlin where the Polytechnic was situated. In 1899 the "Royal Technical College" was the first institution of Higher education in Germany that awarded the Diplom as the standard degree for graduates. After Charlottenburg's adsorption into metropolitan Berlin in 1920 and Germany being turned into a Republic, it became eventually know as the "Polytechnic Institution of Berlin". In 1927 the department of Geodesy of the "Agricultural College of Berlin" was incorporated into the "Berlin Polytechnic". The "Berlin Polytechnic" was closed after World War II on 20 April 1945 and re-opened on 9 April 1946 under the name of '"Technical University of Berlin".