Official opening event with keynote lecture by historian Professor Miles Taylor

The new Center for the History of Freie Universität Berlin began work at the university this winter semester. The idea for the center was set in motion thanks to different initiatives spearheaded by members of the Department of Philosophy and Humanities, Department of Political and Social Sciences, and Department of History and Cultural Studies. "The history of Freie Universität Berlin is a truly fascinating research subject," says Professor Jan Lazardzig, co-initiator and chair of the steering committee. He notes that the university has been strongly influenced by "three great pivotal moments in its history," namely its founding in 1948 as a response to the crackdowns on academic freedom in the Soviet sector of divided Berlin; its reputation as a hotbed of student activism in the 1960s; and its consistent successes in the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments since 2007. The center is poised to apply a critical perspective in analyzing these kinds of established narratives.
The center is particularly interested in using contemporary approaches to writing the university’s history. It plans to incorporate such approaches systematically and apply them to both methodological and theoretical questions pertinent to historiography. This will allow for greater reflection on the transformations observed and put in place at universities as public institutions.
President of Freie Universität Berlin, Professor Günter M. Ziegler stated, "I am delighted that the Center for the History of Freie Universität Berlin has been set up in the wake of our university’s seventy-fifth anniversary and that we can now celebrate this wonderful occasion together. I am very much looking forward to the research that will be produced by this center. The researchers will pool existing initiatives and launch new projects. Their goal will be to competently and critically assess the complex and sometimes controversial history of our relatively young university, which has often been closely intertwined with the societal developments of the past almost eighty years."
The Latin words veritas, justitia, and libertas, which frame the seal of Freie Universität Berlin, stand for the values that have defined the academic ethos of Freie Universität since its founding in December 1948.