RWTH Aachen University - History

History

On 25 January 1858, prince Frederic William of Prussia, the later German emperor, was presented a donation of 5,000 talers for charity, raised by the Aachener und Münchener Feuer-Versicherungs-Gesellschaft, the precursor of the AachenMünchener insurance company. 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 local banks. Groundbreaking for the new Polytechnikum took place on 15 May 1865 and lectures started amidst the Franco-Prussian War on 10 October 1870 with 223 students and 32 teachers. Its primary purpose was to educate 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 few social sciences.

The first years were characterized by the unclear position of the new Prussian polytechnika (which officially were no universities). Their reputation in society was low 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 was finally granted the right to bestow PhD (1898) degrees and Diplom titles (introduced in 1902). The same year, over 800 male students had been enrolled; the first women were admitted in 1909. World War I, however, was a serious setback for the university. Many students voluntarily joined and died in the war and parts of the university were shortly occupied or confiscated.

While the (then no more royal) TH Aachen flourished in the 1920s with the introduction of the more independent faculties, several new institutes and the general students' committee, first signs of nationalist radicalization were also visible within the university. The Third Reich's Gleichschaltung of the TH in 1933 was 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 was severely limited and institutes important for the regime's plans were systematically established, existing chairs promoted. Shortly 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, 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, placing it on top of all German technical universities. With the foundation of a philosophical and a medical faculty in 1965 and 1966, respectively, the university became a bit more "universal". It was especially the newly-founded faculties that 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). Today, the average number of students is around 30,000, with exactly one third of all students being women in the winter term of 2007/2008. By relative terms, the most popular study programs are mechanical engineering (23.6%), medicine (9%), electrical engineering (8.8%), computer science (7.1%), economics (5.1%) and architecture (5%).