Coping with German reunification. In the 1990s the Berlin Senate’s university structure plan forced the universities in the western part of the city to cut their budgets radically. The money was needed to modernize and restructure Humboldt-Universität. Freie Universität reacted with massive cuts and restructuring. The university was able to save many of its smaller subjects: Turkic studies, Egyptology, Semitic and Arabic studies, and others continue to shape the university.

Sources and additional information

According to the Berlin Senate’s university structure plan, the Berlin universities were required to save one billion German marks within ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. For Freie Universität that meant the number of students had to be reduced greatly: from 62,000 in the 1991/1992 winter semester to 43,000 in the 2001/2002 winter semester. There were many demonstrations against the austerity policy of the Berlin Senate.

• Website: 75 Years of Free Thinking at Freie Universität Berlin | History | The 1990s

• Website about the consolidation of the “smaller subjects” in the Holzlaube (2015): section on the development of the “small subjects” (in German)