CITIZENS ON A MISSION THE HISTORY OF GOETHE UNIVERSITY From its inception as a foundation university, established by Frankfurt citizens, Goethe University was unique. It was born out of the belief that solutions to contemporary problems can be found at a university. For the city of Frankfurt and its residents, cham- pioning the cause of founding a university and also making a financial commitment was a no-brainer. Politicians like mayor Franz Adickes, industrialists like Wilhelm Merton and citizens, especially those of Jewish origin, all donated their wealth to establish an institution of higher learning. In 1914, a university emerged in Frankfurt that was financed purely from private funds, becoming the first foundation university in Germany. The way the new institution was constituted was also remarkable: In addition to the rector and the deans of the five faculties, there was also a board of trustees and a "grand council," in which founding families, entrepreneurs and politicians of the city were involved in guiding the universi- ty. This civic engagement was a key to the university's success, despite the difficult political atmosphere. Along with Berlin, Goethe University was considered to be the best-funded university in Germany. When instruction began in the winter semester of 1914/15, some 600 students began their studies in Frankfurt, including 100 women. Teaching and curriculum were organized in a modern way. The founders stressed the importance of teaching new and preliminary, practice-relevant disciplines in addition to traditional ones. Unlike other schools, the natural sciences were not organized within the arts faculty, but were given their own faculty. Alongside the faculties of medicine and law, the citizens of Frankfurt established Germany's first faculty of economics and social sciences. Further, there were numerous institutes that belonged to the universi- ty, for example an institute for social research, an academy of labor, an institute for cultural morphology (Frobenius Institute), and an Alsace-Lorraine institute. The staff directories of the Goethe University before 1933 read like a "Who's Who" of the German scholarly world: Before the rise of National Socialism, the Nobel Prize winners Paul Ehrlich (medicine), Max von Laue, Max Born and Otto Stern (physics) taught and conducted research in Frankfurt. Other members of the faculty included Martin Buber, Paul Tillich, Adolph Löwe, Franz Oppenheimer, Karl Mannheim, Kurt Goldstein, Karl Herxheimer, and Max Dehn – the list goes on and on. The matriculation 16 Goethe University