12 - The Free University of Berlin: A German Experiment in Higher Education, 1948–1961

Summary

The Free University of Berlin was a product of divided Berlin and the Cold War, a fact that should surprise no one. However, the new institution of higher learning that emerged in the autumn of 1948 - in the midst of the blockade and airlift - was a reform institution, one intended by its founders not only to provide an alternative to the Soviet zone's universities but also to influence German universities in what soon became the Federal Republic of Germany. While certain of the Free University's novel features proved enduring and influential, on the whole the reform institution of 1948 did not long survive the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Given the fact that the Free University was perhaps the most ambitious experiment ever undertaken in German higher education, it is instructive to examine the conditions that led to its creation and to trace the fate of its reform characteristics down to the watershed event of August 13, 1961. To be sure, the situation that gave rise to divided Berlin and to a division in higher education in Berlin assumes new immediacy now that the status of the former capital and its universities has once again come under intense discussion.