Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main
The
Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (commonly called the University of Frankfurt) was founded in
1914 as a Citizens' University, which means that while it was a State university of
Prussia, it had been founded and financed by the wealthy and active liberal citizenry of
Frankfurt am Main, a unique feature in German university history. It was named in
1932 after the most famous native Frankfurtian, the greatest German poet and writer
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (who would have hated being denied his
title in the name). Today, the university has some 36,000 students and is one of Germany's largest universities.
The University of Frankfurt has always been considered liberal, or left-leaning, and has had a reputation for Jewish and Marxist scholarship (or even Jewish-Marxist). Thus, during Nazi times, "almost one third of its academics and many of its students were dismissed for racist and/or political reasons - more than at any other German university." (University homepage) It also played a major part of the German student riots of 1968.
AfE-Tower at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University
The University of Frankfurt is best known for the
Institute for Social Research (founded
1924), institutional home of the
Frankfurt School, one of the most important 20th century schools of
philosophy and social thought at all. The most famous University of Frankfurt scholars are associated with this school, including
Theodor Adorno,
Max Horkheimer, and
Jürgen Habermas, as well as
Herbert Marcuse,
Erich Fromm, and
Walter Benjamin. Others 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 anthropologist
Norbert Elias.
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