Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen

“Attempto!” (I will try) was the Latin motto that Count Eberhard gave his new university at its foundation in 1477. It must indeed have taken a certain amount of courage 528 years ago to found a university in a little-known provincial town in southwestern Germany. Yet, what was once Germany’s smallest university town has since become one of the best known centres of higher education in the country. The project management of the excavations in the ancient city of Troy has made Tübingen as internationally famous as the countless personalities that have taught, researched and studied on the river Neckar. Among others, they have included Federal President Horst Köhler, Nobel Prize winners Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Günter Blobel, scholars like Ernst Bloch, Johannes Kepler and Georg Wilhelm Hegel as well as the poets Hölderlin and Mörike.

Today, some 22,000 students are registered at the university in Tübingen, which has just over 87,000 inhabitants. There is therefore more than a little truth in the local adage that “All Tübingen is a university.” More than 70 different courses are offered in the university’s 14 departments, and there are also 12 postgraduate research centres. Teaching and research at Eberhard-Karls-Universität are excellent. Whether you study the league tables produced by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, the Centrum für Hochschulentwicklung, or the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Tübingen always occupies one of the top places. Especially in English studies, chemistry, mathematics, pharmacy, political science, German studies and medicine, its results are far above average. The university is also committed to international interchange: it maintains a global network of partnerships with more than 140 higher education institutions in 42 countries.

FACTS

Students: 22,000

Foreign students: 3,146

Professors: 450

Departments: 14

Year of foundation: 1477

Population: 87,262

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