The University of Bonn (German: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn am Rhein) was founded on October 18, 1818, by the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm III, who had been ruling the Rhineland as a part of Prussia since 1815.
The university's forerunner was the Academy of the last Cologne Kurfürst (elector), which he had founded in 1777, and which had been turned into a university in 1786. A mere decade later, the first university became a victim of the radical change brought about by the French Revolution.
The new Rhenish Friedrich-Wilhelm-University was founded in the spirit of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Idealism and the Enlightenment dominated the age. Because of the open zeitgeist of the time, the alma mater on the Rhine attracted famous men like August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Ernst Moritz Arndt, Karl Marx, and Heinrich Hertz, to name a few.
Today, the university has about 30,000 students, making it one of the largest German universities. Each year, it has about 5,500 international students from 130 nations.
The University of Bonn does not have a centralised campus. The main building only accommodates the Theological and Philosophical faculties as well as the administration; the other faculties are situated in various parts of the city of Bonn.
The university is divided into seven faculties, which consist of various seminars, institutes and hospitals. The faculties are:
- Catholic-Theological Faculty
- Protestant-Theological Faculty
- Law and Economics Faculty
- Faculty of Medicine
- Philosophical Faculty
- Mathematics and Natural Science Faculty
- Agricultural Faculty
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