University of Cologne

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University of Cologne
Universität zu Köln
	University seal of 1392
	Latin: Universitas Coloniensis
Type	Public
Established	1388; 636 years ago
Academic affiliation	U15
Budget	€897.9 million
Rector	Joybrato Mukherjee
Academic staff	7,393
Students	44,569
Location	Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany; 50°55′41″N 6°55′43″E / 50.92806°N 6.92861°E
Campus	Urban
Website	university.cologne

The University of Cologne (German: Universität zu Köln) is a university in Cologne, Germany. It was established in 1388. It closed in 1798 before being re-established in 1919. It is now one of the largest universities in Germany with around 44,000 students.^[2] The University of Cologne is a member of the German U15 association of major research-intensive universities and was a university of excellence as part of the German Universities Excellence Initiative from 2012 to 2019. It is constantly ranked among top 20 German universities in the world rankings.

University of Cologne has 4 Clusters of Excellence; CECAD Cluster of Excellence for Aging Research, Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy, CEPLAS Cluster of Excellence for Plant Sciences and Cluster of Excellence Matter and Light for Quantum Information (ML4Q). As of 2022, among its notable alumni, faculty and researchers are 4 Nobel Laureates, 11 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners, 7 Humboldt Professorship winners, 2 Humboldt Research Awards winners and 1 Rhodes Scholar.

History

First building of the new university

1388–1798

The university of Cologne was established in 1388 as the fourth university in the Holy Roman Empire, after the Charles University of Prague (1348), the University of Vienna (1365) and the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (1386). The charter was signed by Pope Urban VI. The university began teaching on 6 January 1389, and operated for several hundred years.

In 1798, the university was abolished by the French First Republic, who had invaded Cologne in 1794, because under the new French constitution, many universities were abolished all over France. The last rector Ferdinand Franz Wallraf was able to preserve the university's Great Seal, now once more in use.

1919–today

Main building, by architect Adolf Abel, 1934

In 1919, the Prussian government endorsed a decision by the Cologne City Council to re-establish the university. This was considered to be a replacement for the loss of the University of Strasbourg on the west bank of the Rhine, which contemporaneously reverted to France with the rest of Alsace. On 29 May 1919, the Cologne Mayor Konrad Adenauer signed the charter of the modern university.

At that point, the new university was located in Neustadt-Süd, but relocated to its current campus in Lindenthal on 2 November 1934. The old premises are now being used for the Cologne University of Applied Sciences.

Initially, the university was composed of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences (successor to the Institutes of Commerce and of Communal and Social Administration) and the Faculty of Medicine (successor to the Academy of Medicine). In 1920, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Arts were added, from which latter the School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences was split off in 1955 to form a separate Faculty. In 1980, the two Cologne departments of the Rhineland School of Education were attached to the university as the Faculties of Education and of Special Education. In 1988, the university became a founding member of the Community of European Management Schools and International Companies (CEMS), today's Global Alliance in Management Education.

The university is a leader in the area of economics and is regularly placed in top positions for law and business, both for national and international rankings.

Organization

University campus between main building and mensa (the university canteen)

The University of Cologne is a statutory corporation (Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts), operated by the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Faculties

The university is divided into six faculties, which together offer 200 fields of study. The faculties are those of Management, Economics and Social Sciences, Law, Medicine (with the affiliated university clinic), Arts, Mathematics and Natural Sciences and Human Sciences.

Faculty	Students
Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences	c. 10,000
Faculty of Law	c. 5,000
Faculty of Medicine with University Hospital of Cologne	c. 3,200
Faculty of Arts and Humanities	c. 16,500
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences	c. 7,500
Faculty of Human Sciences	c. 2,800

Rectors

Joybrato Mukherjee, 2024

On 10 May 2023, Joybrato Mukherjee was elected as Rector of the University.

Academic profile

The University of Cologne is member of the association German U15 e.V. which is a coalition of fifteen major research-intensive and leading medical universities in Germany with a full disciplinary spectrum.

Especially the faculties of law and economics are renowned and leading in Germany. Leading researchers are affiliated to Cologne: e.g., Angelika Nußberger, Thomas von Danwitz, Claus Kreß, Martin Henssler, Ulrich Preis, Heinz-Peter Mansel.

Apart from these, affiliated persons with the university have won various awards including Max Planck Research Award, Cologne Innovation Prize (City of Cologne), Postbank Finance Award (Deutsche Postbank), Ernst Jung Prize in Medicine (Jung Foundation), SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, Wilhelm Vaillant Prize (Wilhlem Vaillant Foundation), Heinz Maier Leibnitz Prize (DFG), Alfried Krupp Prize for the Advancement of Young Professors, Innovation Prize of the State of NRW, Karl Arnold Prize (North Rhine-Westphalia Academy of Sciences and Arts).

Rankings

According to the QS World University Rankings, the university held the 268th position globally and the 17th position nationally in 2024.^[3] The Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2023 saw the university at the 160th place globally and 15th place at the national level.^[4] In the Academic Ranking of World Universities, more commonly known as the ARWU rankings, for the year 2022, the university was ranked within the 151-200 range globally and between 6th and 9th in the national ranking.^[5]

By subject

QS World University Rankings by Subject 2023^[6]
Subject	Global	National
Arts & Humanities	156	9–10
Linguistics	101–150	4–10
Archaeology	51–100	6–8
Classics and Ancient History	24	5
English Language and Literature	251–300	10–12
History	151–200	9–12
Modern Languages	201–250	10–13
Philosophy	101–150	8–12
Engineering and Technology	N/A	N/A
Life Sciences & Medicine	185	10
Biological Sciences	144	11
Medicine	151–200	8–13
Psychology	151–200	8–9
Natural Sciences	N/A	N/A
Geography	151–200	8–10
Social Sciences & Management	246	9
Accounting and Finance	201–250	6–7
Anthropology	101–150	6–7
Business and Management Studies	251–300	9
Communication and Media Studies	201–250	9–10
Economics and Econometrics	151–200	5–8
Law and Legal Studies	201–250	9–12
Sociology	151–200	9–11

THE World University Rankings by Subject 2023^[7]
Subject	Global	National
Arts & humanities	85	7
Business & economics	201–250	10–14
Education	151–175	9–10
Law	151–175	7–8
Social sciences	176–200	9–13
Clinical & health	201–250	12–16
Life sciences	101–125	11–12
Physical sciences	251–300	22–26
Psychology	126–150	14–16

ARWU Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2022^[8]
Subject	Global	National
Natural Sciences
Physics	201–300	13–23
Chemistry	301–400	26–30
Earth Sciences	101–150	5–12
Geography	151–200	8–13
Atmospheric Science	151–200	11–14
Engineering
Materials Science & Engineering	401–500	22–30
Biotechnology	201–300	14–25
Life Sciences
Biological Sciences	76–100	6–11
Human Biological Sciences	101–150	13–20
Agricultural Sciences	151–200	9–18
Medical Sciences
Clinical Medicine	201–300	14–22
Public Health	301–400	12–22
Dentistry & Oral Sciences	201–300	22–28
Medical Technology	51–75	9–12
Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences	301–400	24–29
Social Sciences
Economics	151–200	6–8
Law	201–300	3–7
Political Sciences	101–150	5–7
Sociology	35	1
Education	201–300	8–15
Communication	151–200	11–14
Psychology	101–150	5–11
Business Administration	101–150	1–2
Management	151–200	2–3

Museums and collections

GeoMuseum: The only natural history museum in Cologne
Theatre Collection in Schloss Wahn: images and text from European theater from the 16th century
Max Bruch Archive of the Institute of Musicology: autographs and writings from and about Max Bruch
The Kathy Acker Reading Room, the personal library of author Kathy Acker.
Musical Instrument Collection of the Musicology Institute
Egyptian collection: Papyri and parchments, ceramics and small sculptures
Prehistoric collection artefacts from all periods of prehistoric and early history also from foreign sites, from the Neanderthal fist to the bronze sword and iron weapons of the early Middle Ages
Papyrus collection of the Institute of Antiquity
Barbarastollen: Under the main building, a mining gallery was built as part of a museum for trade and industry in 1932

Main building (east view)
Building of the WiSo Faculty
Building of the Faculty of Philosophy
The building of the university and City Library of Cologne
The seminar building (built in 2009 by Paul Böhm )
Building of the Center for Organic Electronics (COPT)

Students and faculty

Campus of the Cologne University Hospital in Lindenthal

In 2022, the university enrolled 48,214 students. 7,010 Students earned their graduate or undergraduate degrees in 2022.

There were 5,265 students with non-german citizenship in the 2022 Summer Semester. The largest contingents of first year students came from Italy (10.3%), Turkey (8.8%), Poland (9,8%), France (6.6%) and Spain (5,5%).

There are 613 professors at the university, 31% of the professors are female. Including the professors the university employs a total of 4,667 research assistants.^[9]

Partner universities

The University of Cologne maintains twenty official partnerships^[10] with universities from ten countries. Of these, the partnerships with Clermont-Ferrand I and Pennsylvania State are the oldest partnerships. In addition, Cologne has further cooperations^[11] with more than 260 other universities.

Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil (since 1990)
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Sofia, Bulgaria (since 1985)
Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China (since 2005)
Fudan University, Shanghai, China (since 2010)
Université d'Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand I, France (since 1962)
Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand II, France (since 1980)
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece (since 1992)
National Law School of India University, Bangalore, India
Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan (since 1987)
Keio University, Tokyo, Japan (since 1981)
University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland (since 2003)
University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi, Bangladesh
Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland (since 1990)
Maxim Gorky Literature Institute, Moscow, Russia
Volgograd State University, Russia (since 1993)
University of Seville, Spain
Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic (since 1999)
Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey (since 2003)
University of California at Berkeley, School of Law, Berkeley, CA, U.S.
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, U.S. (since 2001)
Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, U.S. (since 1961)

Notable alumni and professors

Albertus Magnus monument in front of the main building

Albertus Magnus
Thomas Aquinas
Kurt Alder (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1950)
Eberhard Becker (Rector of University of Dortmund from 2002 to 2008)
Peter Grünberg (Nobel Prize in Physics 2007)
Heinrich Böll (Nobel Prize for Literature)
Karl Carstens (president of the Federal Republic of Germany 1979–1984)
Gustav Heinemann (president of the Federal Republic of Germany 1969 to 1974)
Benjamin List (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021)
Karolos Papoulias (former president of the Hellenic Republic)
Martin Broszat (1926–1989), historian
Ute Deichmann, historian
Erich Gutenberg (founder of modern German business studies)
Amos Grunebaum, obstetrician and gynecologist
Dirk M. Guldi, chemist
Jenny Gusyk, a Jewish woman of Turkish citizenship, was the first female and foreign student to be enrolled in 1919.^[12]
Sasa Hanten-Schmidt, lawyer and publicist
Leonhard Harding, (born 1936), historian and scholar in African studies
Hans Mayer (1907–2001), literary scholar
Stephan Noller (born 1970), internet-entrepreneur, founder and former committee chairman
Ernst Alfred Philippson (1900–1993), philologist
Axel Ockenfels
Katja Terlau (born 1970), art historian and provenance researcher
Andreas Kaplan, German economist
Eberhard Voit
Eberhard Wagner, German linguist and author

In popular culture

The University of Cologne was commemorated on the Federal Republic of Germany's postage stamp in 1988, celebrating university's 600 years.^[13]

References

^ "Search". Internet Archive.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d "UoC at a Glance". University of Cologne (in German). Retrieved 17 October 2020. Cite error: The named reference "at_a_glance" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
^ ^a ^b "QS World University Rankings 2024". QS World University Rankings. Retrieved 16 July 2023.
^ ^a ^b "World University Rankings 2024". Times Higher Education World University Rankings. 27 September 2023. Retrieved 27 September 2023.
^ ^a ^b "2023 Academic Ranking of World Universities". Academic Ranking of World Universities. Retrieved 15 August 2023.
^ "QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022". QS World University Rankings. 23 March 2023.
^ "World University Rankings by subject". Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
^ "ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2022". Academic Ranking of World Universities.
^ https://strategy.uni-koeln.de/e143393/e143429/e61599/ZDF_2022komplettWEB_ger.pdf ^{[bare URL PDF]}
^ "University of Cologne, partner universities". www.portal.uni-koeln.de. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
^ "Partneruniversitäten". Archived from the original on 17 February 2013. Retrieved 1 February 2013.
^ "Who was Jenny Gusyk?". University of Köln. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
^ "600 Jahre Universität zu Köln" (in German). Retrieved 17 October 2020.

External links

Official website (in German and English)
Absolventennetzwerk der Universität zu Köln (in German)

[1] "Search". Internet Archive.

[at_a_glance-2] "UoC at a Glance". University of Cologne (in German). Retrieved 17 October 2020. Cite error: The named reference "at_a_glance" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).

[QS-3] "QS World University Rankings 2024". QS World University Rankings. Retrieved 16 July 2023.

[THE-4] "World University Rankings 2024". Times Higher Education World University Rankings. 27 September 2023. Retrieved 27 September 2023.

[ARWU-5] "2023 Academic Ranking of World Universities". Academic Ranking of World Universities. Retrieved 15 August 2023.

[QSSubject-6] "QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022". QS World University Rankings. 23 March 2023.

[THESubject-7] "World University Rankings by subject". Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

[ARWUSubject-8] "ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2022". Academic Ranking of World Universities.

[9] ttps://strategy.uni-koeln.de/e143393/e143429/e61599/ZDF_2022komplettWEB_ger.pdf ^{[bare URL PDF]}

[10] "University of Cologne, partner universities". www.portal.uni-koeln.de. Retrieved 17 October 2020.

[11] "Partneruniversitäten". Archived from the original on 17 February 2013. Retrieved 1 February 2013.

[12] "Who was Jenny Gusyk?". University of Köln. Retrieved 11 May 2020.

[13] "600 Jahre Universität zu Köln" (in German). Retrieved 17 October 2020.

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