History of the faculty

Hamburg's humanities can look back on a long and remarkable tradition dating back to the early modern period: important institutional forerunners of our faculty include the city library founded in 1479, the academic grammar school established in 1613 and the general lecture system initiated by Johann Georg Büsch in 1764. Further lines of development can be traced back to Hamburg's richly endowed museums and art collections as well as the civic cultural life in the city's theaters and concert halls.

At the beginning of the 20th century, numerous professorships in the humanities were created in the course of the founding of the Colonial Institute, which was established in particular for the study of non-European languages and cultures, until the University of Hamburg was finally founded in 1919 by resolution of the first democratically elected Hamburg Parliament. Important personalities such as Ernst Cassirer, Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky, Agathe Lasch, Emil Wolff and Bruno Snell had a decisive influence on the founding phase and achieved international recognition.

Today's Faculty of Humanities was founded in 2005 from the former departments of Protestant Theology, Linguistics, Literature and Media Studies, Philosophy and History, Cultural History and Cultural Studies and Oriental Studies. Until the university reforms in 1969, they were part of the Faculty of Philosophy, which continued the tradition of the university founded in 1919 after the reopening of the University of Hamburg in 1945. The Faculty of Protestant Theology, founded in 1954, was merged into the Faculty of Protestant Theology at this time. The formation of the joint faculty was possible on the basis of understanding-oriented, collegial behavior. For the future, too, the faculty is committed to taking seriously the requirements of the university's mission statement, according to which the cooperation of all its members, affiliates and bodies is based on information and transparency, democratic participation and the will to resolve conflicts.

You can find out more about the history of the humanities at the University of Hamburg at the Center for the History of Universität Hamburg.