Goethe University Frankfurt

Goethe University Frankfurt, positioned among the top international research universities, offers a wide variety of academic programmes, a diverse group of research institutes, and a focus on interdisciplinary approaches to solving complex problems. The university is named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the Frankfurt-born polymath renowned for his exceptional contributions to literature, science, and philosophy.

Today, Goethe University is one of the only universities in Germany that enjoys significant public funding alongside administrative autonomy and the ability to create a private endowment.

Situated in Germany’s most cosmopolitan and international city, the university attracts a diverse body of students and researchers from around the world. Students at Goethe benefit from studying and living in Frankfurt, the largest financial and trading centre in Europe—with plenty of opportunities to learn and practise speaking German. Today, Frankfurt is ratedamong the top 10 most liveable cities in the world (according toMercer Human Resource Consulting).

With the exception of some master programs which are held in English, all applicants have to provide proof of German language skills, at least at the level B1 (basic knowledge).

Goethe University was founded in 1914 as a unique “citizens’ university,” financed by wealthy citizens in Frankfurt, Germany. Named in 1932 after one of the city’s most famous natives, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, today the university has over 38,000 students. Looking at the timeline of Goethe University’s history, it is clear that the last decade has produced significant changes for the university—and that there is a clear forward momentum.

Once considered a liberal or left-leaning institution, Goethe University is perhaps best known as the birthplace of the influential Frankfurt School, part of the Institute for Social Research—which spawned some of Europe’s leading thinkers of the 20thcentury (including, for example, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Buber, and Paul Tillich).

In recent years, Goethe University has maintained its reputation in the social sciences, but added important new facilities and research institutes in the natural sciences as well as law, history, languages, humanities, the arts, and economics. Its “clusters of excellence”, interdisciplinary research centres, have helped to sharpen the university’s academic profile, achieving outstanding results in diverse areas ranging from natural sciences (“Macromolecular Complexes”) to medicine (“Cardio-Pulmonray System”, a cluster of excellence in collaboration with the University of Giessen and the Max-Planck-Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim, which conducts cutting edge research for novel therapy of heart and lung diseases) and humanities and social sciences (“The Formation of Normative Orders”).

Faculties & Programmes

• Law (German)
• Economics and Business Administration
• Social Sciences
• Educational Sciences (German)
• Psychology and Sports Sciences (German)
• Protestant Theology (German)
• Roman Catholic Theology (German)
• Philosophy and History (German)
• Modern Languages09 Faculty of Linguistics, Cultures, and Arts (German)
• Geosciences and Geography
• Computer Science and Mathematics (German)
• Physics (German)
• Biochemistry, Chemistry and Pharmacy
• Biological Sciences (German)
• Medical Science (German)

Every year in August, Frankfurt University offers a one-month International Summer School. Qualified faculty from institutions in Germany and abroad offer credit-bearing courses in English and German on upto- date topics in economics and business administration. In addition, the summer school offers an intensive German language course.