Folkwang University of the Arts

The Folkwang University of the Arts is a university for music, theater, dance, design, and academic studies, located in 4 German cities of North Rhine-Westphalia. Since 1927, its traditional main location has been in the former Werden Abbey in Essen in the Ruhr Area, with additional facilities in Duisburg, Bochum, and Dortmund, and, since 2010, at the Zeche Zollverein, a World Heritage Site also in Essen. The Folkwang University is home to the international dance company Folkwang Tanz Studio (FTS). Founded as Folkwangschule, its name was Folkwang Hochschule (Folkwang Academy) from 1963 until 2009.

The university shares its unusual name with the Museum Folkwang founded in 1902 by arts patron Karl Ernst Osthaus. The term Folkwang derives from Fólkvangr, the Old Norse name of a mythical meadow where the dead gather who are chosen by Freyja, the Norse goddess of love and beauty, to spend the afterlife with her. The school's founders, opera director Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg and choreographer Kurt Jooss, regarded this Folkwang as a symbol for the arts as a unified whole, rather than divided into separate classes. The Folkwangschule für Musik, Tanz und Sprechen (Folkwang School for Music, Dance, and Speech) opened in 1927 in Essen, and in 1928 a previously established school of design merged with the institution.

In 1963 the Folkwang school was renamed Folkwang-Hochschule (Folkwang Academy). In 2010 the institution began offering graduate studies and was renamed Folkwang University of the Arts. This coincided with Ruhr.2010, the festival in which the Ruhr district was designated the European Capital of Culture for the year 2010.

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