Splitting of The University
The East-West conflict in post-war Germany led to a growing communist influence in the university. This was controversial, and incited strong protests within the student body and faculty. Soviet NKVD secret police arrested a number of students in March 1947 as a response. The Soviet Military Tribunal in Berlin-Lichtenberg ruled the students were involved in the formation of a "resistance movement at the University of Berlin", as well as espionage, and were sentenced to 25 years of forced labor. From 1945 to 1948, 18 other students and teachers were arrested or abducted, many gone for weeks, and some taken to the Soviet Union and executed.
In the spring of 1948, after several university students with admission irregularities were withdrawn, the opposition demanded a Free university. Students, with support from especially the Americans, the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, and the governing Mayor Ernst Reuter founded the Free University of Berlin in Dahlem (part of the American sector). The decades-long division of the city into East and West Berlin finally cemented the division into two independent universities permanently.
Read more about this topic: Humboldt University Of Berlin
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