The Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen–Nuremberg (, FAU) is a public research university in the cities of Erlangen and Nuremberg in Bavaria, Germany. The name Friedrich-Alexander is derived from the university's first founder Friedrich, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, and its benefactor Alexander, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach.
With around 40,000 studentsFacts and Figures, University website, access date 2025-12-19 and over 275 degree programsFacts and Figures | Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. in five faculties,Faculties access date 2025-12-19 FAU is one of the 15 largest universities in Germany. It is the third largest university in Bavaria. It was established in Bayreuth in 1742 and moved to Erlangen in 1743.Karl Muessel: Bayreuth in acht Jahrhunderten. 1. Edition. Gondrom, Bayreuth 1993, ISBN 3-8112-0809-8, p. 100 ff. FAU expanded to Nuremberg in 1961 and to Fürth in 2004.Historisches Lexicon Bayern, access date 2025-12-19 About two-thirds of students mainly use the campus in Erlangen and one-third use the one in Nuremberg.
In the winter semester of 2024/25, around 50 percent of the nearly 40,000 students were female, and around 9,200 came from abroad.Facts and Figures, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, access date 2025-11-28 As a comprehensive university, FAU offers a wide range of subjects across 272 degree programs,Facts and Figures, university website, access date 2025-12-19 including 82 bachelor's degrees, 98 master's degrees, and 92 degrees leading to a state examination, such as teaching, law, or medicine (as of 2023). To reduce the risk of technology drain, the admission of scholarship holders from the China Scholarship Council (CSC) was initially suspended in 2023, but only temporarily.correctiv.org, access date 2025-12-19 An exception is made for students who come to Germany with an additional scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
FAU is a member of the German Research Foundation DFG. Based on DFG funding, FAU has been one of the top ten universities in Germany for many years now. A total of 117.7 million euros in funding were approved in 2023.DFG projects, university website, access date 2025-12-19 The university has seven DFG research groups and several graduate colleges. Due to numerous collaborations with other universities, colleges, and technical colleges in the region, Friedrich-Alexander University has outposts throughout northern Bavaria. The FAU Language Center enables students of all disciplines to obtain international language qualifications with UNIcert certification. FAU is a member of MedienCampus Bayern, the umbrella organization for media education and training in Bavaria.Medien Campus Bayern, access date 2025-12-19
History
18th century
The university was founded in 1742 as Academia Fridericiana in Bayreuth by Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. On February 21, 1743, it was granted university status by Charles VII. Alongside the universities in Altdorf and Würzburg, Friedrich University was the third university in the Franconian region. In November 1743, it was relocated to Erlangen and housed in the premises of the former Knight Academy on Erlanger Hauptstraße. From the outset, the entire traditional range of subjects—theology, law, medicine, and philosophy—was taught, although the number of students in the early days remained consistently below 200. The first chancellor of the institution, which had only modest resources at its disposal, was the physician Daniel de Superville.
In 1769, responsibility for the university fell to Christian Frederick Charles Alexander, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, who provided significant support to the early university and therefore became the university's second namesake. The Margrave of Ansbach-Bayreuth's privy councilor and Royal Prussian minister to the Franconian Circle, Karl Wilhelm, Baron Buirette von Oehlefeld (1724–1782), Lord of the Wilhelmsdorf Manor, bequeathed a foundation of over 20,000 guilders to the university in his will. As the arrangements for this had already been made with the Margrave, the latter awarded Buirette the highly coveted Grand Cross of the Order of the Red Eagle.Hans-Otto Keunecke: Mäzenatentum und Stiftungen an der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen 1743–1820, Erlangen 2007, p. 25–30.
19th century After the city of Erlangen was transferred to the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1810, the university only narrowly managed to avoid closure – unlike the University of Nuremberg in Altdorf – because it was the only Bavarian state university to have a Lutheran theological faculty going forward. It was therefore indispensable for the training of Protestant theologians in the new state. The university remained Lutheran for a long time, but gradually lost its original Lutheran confessional character.
Even today, the Friedrich-Alexander University has only a Protestant theological department and no Catholic theological department. However, it is still possible to study Catholic religious education for teaching at elementary, secondary, and vocational schools, as a subject in educational studies, and as an elective for business educators. For this purpose, there are four chairs at the Nuremberg campus, which now belong to the Faculty of Philosophy, to which the Department of Theology has been affiliated.
In 1818, the margrave's castle became the property of the university. After a long period of modest development, Erlangen University, like other German universities, experienced an upswing in the early 1880s. In this context, it is also worth mentioning the founding of the long-overdue History Seminar on behalf of King Maximilian II of Bavaria by the historian Karl Hegel, who had been working here since 1856 and who established modern historical studies at the University of Erlangen. After Hegel had served as vice-rector of the university in 1870/71, the department was founded in 1872. Karl Hegel remained director of the Department of History until 1884.Helmut Neuhaus: Mit Gadendam fing alles an. Erlanger Geschichtswissenschaft von 1743 bis 1872, in: Ders. (Ed.), Geschichtswissenschaft in Erlangen. Erlangen 2000, p. 9–44, hier p. 32–42. Marion Kreis: Karl Hegel. Geschichtswissenschaftliche Bedeutung und wissenschaftsgeschichtlicher Standort. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2012, p. 159–316, ISBN 978-3-525-36077-4.
Student numbers rose in the 1880s from 374 at the end of the winter semester of 1869/70 to 1,000 in 1890.University (Erlangen): Übersicht des Personalstandes der Königlich Bayerischen Friedrich-Alexanders-Universität Erlangen: nebst dem Verzeichnisse der Studierenden. 1869/70. WS. 1869 (google.de [access-date: 2022-07-03]). While law students were in the majority in the early years, the Faculty of Theology was the most popular at the beginning of the Bavarian period. It was not until 1890 that it was overtaken by the Faculty of Medicine. The number of full professors rose from 20 in 1796 to 42 in 1900, almost half of whom were employed by the Faculty of Philosophy, which also included the natural sciences. It was not until 1928 that the latter formed a separate faculty.
Jakob Herz became the first Jewish professor at a university in Bavaria in 1863. After his death, a monument was unveiled in his honor on May 6, 1875. The larger-than-life bronze statue, erected on what is now Hugenottenplatz, was removed after the National Socialists came to power and was presumably melted down for war purposes in 1944.
In 1897, the first women were admitted to study, and the first woman received her doctorate in 1904. From the second half of the 19th century onwards, several large university buildings were erected on the edges of the palace gardens, including the Kollegienhaus and the university hospital.
20th century Around 75% of the university's students volunteered or were conscripted during the First World War. 384 members of the university lost their lives in the war. In the post-war period, many of the students at Friedrich-Alexander University (around 350) took part in the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic as members of the Freikorps Epp.Florian Schreiner: Erlanger Studenten und das Freikorps Epp. In: Sebastian Sigler (Ed.): Beiträge zur deutschen Studentengeschichte. Volume 32. Munich 2015, p. 153. As a result of the Bavarian Concordat (1924) with the Catholic Church, several Catholic "concordat chairs" still exist at the university to this day. In 1927, the natural sciences were separated from the Faculty of Philosophy and transferred to a joint Faculty of Natural Sciences.
Period of National Socialism The National Socialist movement had already spread to the University of Erlangen in the early 1920s. An Erlangen Sturmabteilung (SA) division, consisting mainly of students, had been in existence since 1922. After Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, a spontaneously formed radical nationalist list won twelve of 25 seats in the Erlangen AStA elections on 20 November 1923 and appointed Ludwig Franz Gengler as its first chairman. On 24 September 1924, 120 student members of the NSDAP founded the National Socialist Student Group Erlangen, which disbanded after Gengler moved to LMU Munich and was only re-established in 1928 as a university group of the National Socialist German Students' Union (NSDStB).Bernhard Grün: „In Treue zu Führer und Bewegung" – Zur Geschichte des Erlanger NSD-Studentenbundes und seiner Kameradschaften 1937–1945, Einst und Jetzt. Special printing Volume 66 (2021), p. 204–205.
In the winter semester of 1928/29, the NSDStB won eight seats. In the subsequent university elections in 1929, the NSDStB finally won 14 seats, making the University of Erlangen the first German university to have a student parliament dominated by National Socialists.Michael Grüttner: Studenten im Dritten Reich, Schöningh, Paderborn 1995, p. 496. With around 200 members, the Erlangen university group had reached a considerable size by 1930 and was one of Baldur von Schirach's internal party opponents, led by the former Erlangen university group leader Reinhard Sunkel. After Sunkel and his supporters were expelled from the NSDStB, a splinter group of National Socialists called Revolutionary Students also ran in the university elections in Erlangen in November 1931 in competition with the Student Union and won a seat in the student parliament.Bernhard Grün: „In Treue zu Führer und Bewegung" – Zur Geschichte des Erlanger NSD-Studentenbundes und seiner Kameradschaften 1937–1945, Einst und Jetzt. Special printing volume 66 (2021), p. 205–206.
The University of Erlangen was less affected by the purge of German universities that began in 1933 than most other universities. Of the 121 members of the teaching staff in the winter semester of 1932/33, 9 people (7.4 percent) were expelled.Michael Grüttner (2022). "The Expulsion of Academic Teaching Staff from German Universities, 1933–45". Journal of Contemporary History. 57 (3): 513–533. doi:10.1177/00220094211063074. S2CID 245419038.Michael Grüttner, Ausgegrenzt: Entlassungen an den deutschen Universitäten im Nationalsozialismus. Biogramme und kollektivbiografische Analyse. de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2023, ISBN 978-3-11-123678-0, p. 12. Namensliste: p. 339 f. However, 162 former students had their doctoral degrees revoked, mostly in 1939 (examples include the Jewish doctor Ernst Alfred Seckendorf and the lawyer and monarchist Catholic resistance fighter Adolf von Harnier). After the Second World War, the university denied this however, and it was not until the 1990s that this dark chapter of history was finally addressed.Clemens Wachter: Aberkennung der Doktorwürde an der Universität Erlangen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. In: Thomas A. H. Schöck (Ed.): Dokumentation der Gedenkakte der Medizinischen Fakultät und des Fachbereichs Rechtswissenschaft. VDS Verlagsdruckerei Schmidt, Neustadt an der Aisch 2010, ISBN 978-3-9808453-1-1, p. 76 (kobv.de [PDF]).