University of Frankfurt am Main

Goethe University

Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
Former name	Königliche Universität zu Frankfurt am Main
Type	Public
Established	October 18, 1914 (1914-10-18)
Budget	€ 602,6 Mio. (2014)
Chancellor	n/a
President	Birgitta Wolff
Vice-president	Tanja Brühl, Brigitte Haar, Enrico Schleiff, Manfred Schubert-Zsilavecz
Academic staff	3,462.6 (2014)
Administrative staff	1,921 (2014)
Students	44,428 (2016)
Undergraduates	19,442 (2016)
Postgraduates	5,494 (2016)
Doctoral students	2,371 (2016)
Other students	6,274 (Teacher education) (2016)
Address	Campus Westend: Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 1, Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, 60323, Germany 50°7′40″N 8°40′00″E / 50.12778°N 8.66667°E / 50.12778; 8.66667Coordinates: 50°7′40″N 8°40′00″E / 50.12778°N 8.66667°E / 50.12778; 8.66667
Campus	multiple sites
Language	German
Sports	Badminton, Basketball, Association football, Handball, Rowing, Water polo
Website	www.goethe-university-frankfurt.de

Goethe University (German: Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in Frankfurt, Germany.

It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means that, while a state university of Prussia, it was founded and funded by the wealthy and active liberal citizenry of Frankfurt, a unique feature in German university history. The original name was Universität Frankfurt am Main. In 1932, the university's name was extended in honour of one of the most famous locals of Frankfurt, the poet and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It is thus also referred to as the Goethe University in both formal and informal settings. The university currently has around 46,000 students, distributed across four major campuses within the city.

18 Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with the university, including Max von Laue and Max Born. The university is also affiliated with 11 winners of the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. The university celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2014. The first female president of the university, Birgitta Wolff, was sworn into office in 2015.

The University of Frankfurt has at times been considered liberal, or left-leaning, and has had a reputation for Jewish and Marxist (or even Jewish-Marxist) scholarship. During the Nazi period, "almost one third of its academics and many of its students were dismissed for racial and/or political reasons—more than at any other German university". The university also played a major part in the German student movement of 1968.

The university has historically best been known for its Institute for Social Research (founded 1924), the institutional home of the Frankfurt School, a preeminent 20th century school of philosophy and social thought. Some of the well-known scholars associated with this school include Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Jürgen Habermas, as well as Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Walter Benjamin. Other well-known scholars at the University of Frankfurt include the sociologist Karl Mannheim, the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, the philosophers of religion Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Paul Tillich, the psychologist Max Wertheimer, and the sociologist Norbert Elias.