University of Giessen
University of Giessen, official name Justus Liebig University Giessen (German: Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), is a large public research university in Giessen, Hesse, Germany. It is one of the oldest institutions of higher education in the German-speaking world.[3] It is named after its most famous faculty member, Justus von Liebig, the founder of modern agricultural chemistry and inventor of artificial fertiliser. It covers the areas of arts/humanities, business, dentistry, economics, law, medicine, science, social sciences and veterinary medicine. Its university hospital, which has two sites, Giessen and Marburg (the latter of which is the teaching hospital of the University of Marburg), is the only private university hospital in Germany.
Interdisciplinary Research Center (IFZ) with the physics buildings in the background
Zeughaus, a historic building in Giessen used by the agriculture departments and the university library
Surgery building of the university hospital
Department of Economics, Law and Business Studies
Audimax, the large auditorium of the arts/humanities campus
University hospital
University eye clinic
The student services building
The Biomedical Research Center (BFZ)
The chemistry building
The main university library
Giessen site
Although the university has no defined campus, buildings and facilities are grouped together according to their subject areas and situated in various locations around Giessen. Philosophikum II, for example is an area on the outskirts of the city bordering the city forest. A number of faculty buildings and lecture theaters are located there, including Audimax, a building containing several lecture halls whose atrium is often the venue for concerts and disco nights, locally known as "Uni-Party".
Student life[edit]
Myth[edit]
Two law students of University of Giessen, Karl Siegfrieden (4 June 1822 – 10 March 1840) and Karl von Müller (10 June 1799 – 10 March 1840), are buried in a double grave at Alter Friedhof cemetery in Giessen. That both died on the same day sparked the myth that they had fought against each other in a duel. However, in 2008 the local newspaper Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung, referencing a 1939 chronicle of the fraternity Corps Teutonia zu Gießen which Karl von Müller co-founded, revealed that both students had died of typhus. Von Müller had contracted the disease while nursing his sick friend. The Corps buried both students after a torch-lit funeral procession.[7][8]
Notable faculty and alumni[edit]
Next to Liebig, famous professors at the university included the physician Georg Haas (who carried out the world's first human hemodialysis in Giessen in 1924), the theologian Adolf von Harnack, the lawyer Rudolf von Jhering, the economist and statistician Etienne Laspeyres, the physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, the mathematicians Moritz Pasch and Alfred Clebsch, the gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka, the philologist and archaeologist Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, the orientalists Friedrich Schwally, Paul E. Kahle and Eberhard Schrader, and the president of Hebrew University of Jerusalem Benjamin Mazar.
Recent alumni in the area of politics include current President of Germany and former Vice Chancellor and Minister for Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Brigitte Zypries, current Federal Minister of Economic Affairs and Energy and former Federal Minister of Justice.
Notable alumni of the university include organic chemist August Kekulé, X-ray physicist Simone Techert, health sociologist Thomas Abel, romantic dramatist and revolutionary Georg Büchner, literary and political historian Georg Gottfried Gervinus and botanist Johann Jacob Dillenius. Ernest Rutherford, the Rutherford atomic model's creator, studied in Giessen. Alumnus William Schlich founded Oxford University's forestry program. Ruth Kajander was a psychiatrist who pioneered use of chlorpromazine as a treatment for schizophrenia. Carl A. Schenck, who received his PhD in forestry from Giessen, founded the Biltmore Forest School, the first such school in the United States. Fitsum Assefa is an Ethiopian teacher and politician who leads the FDRE Minister of Planning and Development. Also Hans-Joachim Preuss, former Secretary General of Welthungerhilfe and managing director of the giz (gtz) graduated and worked at the University of Giessen.
(in German and English)
