Frankfurt's university was founded by its citizens, not a king or church
Most old German universities owe their existence to princes or the church. Frankfurt's was paid for by its own wealthy, liberal townspeople, with Jewish families supplying two thirds of the founding money. It went on to host the Frankfurt School of Adorno and Horkheimer, and lost more academics to the Nazis than any other German university.
The contract for a Royal University at Frankfurt was signed at the Römer, the town hall, on 28 September 1912. Royal consent followed on 10 June 1914, and students first enrolled that October. Among the Jewish benefactors were Wilhelm Ralph Merton, the Speyer family, and two industrialists, Arthur von Weinberg and Leo Gans. In 1932 it added the name of the city's most famous son, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Its roots arguably go deeper: a council library founded with a bequest in 1484 eventually became the university library, so by some reckonings the institution dates from then, although German practice counts from the right to award doctorates.
Its best-known offspring is the Institute for Social Research, set up in 1923 as the home of the Frankfurt School of critical social thought. Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Jürgen Habermas are the names most associated with it, and Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm and Walter Benjamin were linked to it as well. The philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, the sociologist Norbert Elias and Martin Buber also taught there. The sciences flourished too: the Stern-Gerlach experiment was done there, and Nobel laureates Max von Laue and Max Born are among 20 connected to the university.
A reputation for liberal, Jewish and Marxist scholarship made it a target after 1933. Almost a third of its academics, and many students, were dismissed on racial or political grounds, a higher share than at any other German university. Decades later it was a centre of the 1968 student movement. In February 2026 its library returned five Nazi-looted books to Frankfurt's Jewish community, including volumes owned by the lawyer Julius Blau and his son Ernst, a first direct restitution to the local community.
Today about 48,000 students study across four campuses in 16 faculties. Birgitta Wolff became its first female president in 2015. Located near one of Europe's financial centres, it is pushing to lead Germany in finance and economics, including an MBA run with Duke University.
Source: Goethe University Frankfurt
