Tübingen, University of

▪ university, Tübingen, Germany

German  in full Eberhard-karls-universität Tübingen,  

      state-supported university at Tübingen, Ger. It was founded in 1477 by Count Eberhard (Eberhard I) VI (1445–96), 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.

      The university has a history of innovative thought, particularly in theology. Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), 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 have been astronomer Johannes Kepler, poet Friedrich Hölderlin, and philosophers Friedrich Schelling and G.W.F. Hegel. The university rose to its height of 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.” The University of Tübingen also was the first German university to establish a faculty of natural sciences, in 1863.

      In the 20th century, Tübingen became dominated first by Marxist-Leninist philosophy 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.

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