Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen

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Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen (German: Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, sometimes quotes as "Eberhardina") is a public university located on the Neckar river, in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The Eberhard-Karls-University is one of Germany´s oldest and most prestigious Universities, internationaly noted in medicine, natural sciences and the humanities. Tübingen is one of four classical "university towns" in Germany; the other three being Marburg, Göttingen, and Heidelberg.

The University of Tübingen was founded in 1477 by Count Eberhard VI (Eberhard in the Beard, 1445 - 1496), later the first Duke of Württemberg, a civic and ecclesiastic reformer who established the school after becoming absorbed in the Renaissance revival of learning during his travels to Italy. Its present name was conferred on it in 1769 by Duke Karl Eugen who appended his first name to that of the founder (Karls = genitive of Karl). The university later became the principal university of the kingdom of Württemberg. Today, it is one of nine state univerities funded by the German land (state) of Baden-Württemberg.

The University of Tübingen has a history of innovative thought, particularly in theology, in which the university and the Tübinger Stift are famous to this day. Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), the prime mover in building the German school system and a chief figure in the Protestant Reformation, helped establish its direction. Among Tübingen's eminent students (and/or professors) have been the astronomer Johannes Kepler; Gabriel Biel; Paul Scriptoris; Johann Heynlin; Joseph Ratzinger, former Cardinal and currently Pope Benedict XVI, poet Friedrich Hölderlin, and the philosophers Friedrich Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. "The Tübingen Three" refers to Hölderlin, Hegel and Schelling, who have been roommates in the Tübinger Stift.

The university rose to the height of its prominence in the middle of the 19th century with the teachings of poet and civic leader Ludwig Uhland and the Protestant theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur, whose beliefs and disciples became known as the "Tübingen School" which initiated historical analysis of Biblical texts, an approach also generally referred to as the Higher criticism. The University of Tübingen also was the first German university to establish a faculty of natural sciences, in 1863. DNA was discovered in 1868 at the University of Tübingen by Friedrich Miescher. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, the first female Nobel Prize winner in medicine in Germany, also works in Tübingen.

In the 20s and 30s of the 20th century, at Tübingen as in most other German universities the faculty, and the student body's activities, became dominated first by nationalist / right wing politics and then by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime until the beginning of the Allied occupation in 1945.

In 1970 the university was restructured into a series of independent departments of study and research after the manner of French universities.

Currently, about 22,000 students are enrolled, roughly one quarter of the total population of the city. The 17 hospitals in Tübingen affiliated with the university's faculty of medicine have 1,500 patient beds, and yearly cater to 66,000 in-patients and 200,000 out-patients.

1 Famous alumni
2 External links

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Famous alumni

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Nobel laureates

Günter Blobel, (1999, Physiology or Medicine)
Karl Ferdinand Braun, (1909, Physics)
Eduard Buchner, (1907, Chemistry)
Adolf Butenandt, (1939, Chemistry)
Hartmut Michel, (1988, Chemistry)
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, (1995, Physiology or Medicine)
William Ramsay, (1904, Chemistry)
Bert Sakmann, (1991, Physiology or Medicine)
Georg Wittig, (1979, Chemistry)

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Theology

Karl Barth, Swiss Christian theologian
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran theologian, preacher and opponent of the Nazi-Regime
Walter Cardinal Kasper, Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church
Hans Küng, Roman Catholic theologican, critic of the catholic doctrine (now banned from teaching Roman Catholic theology)
His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, formerly known as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Philip Schaff, Church historian
Jan Paulsen, Seventh-day Adventist Church President

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Law

Martin Bangemann, German minister of economy (1984-1988) and EU commissioner (1989-1999)
Herta Däubler-Gmelin, German minister of justice (1998-2002)
Roman Herzog, President of Germany (1994-1999)
Philipp Jenninger, President of the German federal parliament (1984-1988)
Klaus Kinkel, vice-chancellor and minister of foreign affairs of Germany (1993-1998)
Gebhard Müller, President of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (1959-1971)
Carlo Schmid, German politician and one of the "fathers of the constitution"

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Economics

Helmut Haussmann, German minister of economy (1988-1991)
Friedrich List
Horst Köhler, director of the IMF (2000-2004) and current President of Germany (since 2004)
Wilhelm Rall, McKinsey senior partner
Jürgen Stark, vice president of Deutsche Bundesbank
Klaus Töpfer, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive-Director of the United Nations Environment Programme

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