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The Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg (also referred to as the University of Würzburg; German: Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg) is a public research university in Würzburg, Germany. Founded in 1402, it is one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in Germany. The university initially had a brief run and was closed in 1415. It was reopened in 1582 on the initiative of Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn. Today, the university is named for Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn and Maximilian Joseph.
The University of Würzburg is part of the U15 group of research-intensive German universities. The university is also a member of the Coimbra Group. In the winter semester 2025/2026, 25,281 students are enrolled, of which 15,489 are women, 3,078 are international students and 2,919 are first semester university students. 15 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the university.
Its official name is Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (or "Julius-Maximilian University of Würzburg") but it is commonly referred to as the University of Würzburg. This name is taken from Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn, Prince-Bishop of Würzburg, who reestablished the university in 1582, and Prince Elector Maximilian Joseph, the prince under whom secularization occurred at the start of the 19th century. The university's central administration, foreign student office, and several research institutes are located within the area of the old town, while the new liberal arts campus, with its modern library, overlooks the city from the east. The university today enrolls approximately 25,000 students, out of which more than 3,000 are international students.
The university was founded as the "High School of Würzburg" on an initiative started in 1401 by Prince Bishop Johann von Egloffstein. He wanted to transform the "Gymnasium herbipolense" into a university with four faculties hoping that an influx of teaching staff and students in his territory would cover the need for qualified lawyers and clerics and thus lead to an upturn in the city's economy. He bought the buildings needed for teaching from members of his cathedral chapter.
On 10 December 1402, he was granted the required privilege from Pope Boniface IX. This put Würzburg among the cities with the oldest universities in the then German-speaking area – Prague (1348), Vienna (1365), Heidelberg (1386), Cologne (1388) and Erfurt (1392), and made Würzburg the oldest university in Bavaria. Among the teachers at the university were Winand von Steeg, Johannes Ambundi and Bartholomäus Fröwein.
Already before 1430, however, teaching was suspended shortly after the death of Prince Bishop von Egloffstein. The reason for the decline was primarily the lack of funding, since it had not been possible to establish a foundation that had its own benefice. On 30 November 1413, the rector of the university, Johann Zantfurt, was murdered by his valet; the circumstances were never clarified. Later, Lorenz Fries bought the university building. In 1427, the "Hohe Schule" was mentioned for the last time in a document. By that time, it had not been dissolved yet, but had become insignificant. Friedrich von Wirsberg, who became prince-bishop in 1558, was the first to consider rebuilding the university. Due to problems with the clergy and administration, however, he was unable to realize his plans
After classes had been resumed in some of the subjects in 1551 and the first doctorates had already been awarded in 1567, the Würzburg Prince-Bishop Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn, during the Counter-Reformation, in 1575, first obtained the imperial and then, in 1576, the papal privileges to re-establish the university (see also Erasmus Neustetter called Stürmer). This time, financing was better ensured, and student regulations were stricter. On 2 January 1582, first the theological and philosophical faculties were reopened, and their deans appointed. The name of the university was "Academia Iulia" (Julius University). The university seal was not created until the following year, and thus bears the year 1583. Statutes for the medical faculty were drawn up in 1587. Although the number of lecturers was not complete until 1593, the first medical student, Georg Leyerer from Ebersbrunn, was already enrolled on 2 October 1585.
In 1591, the four-winged university building and the associated church (Neubaukirche) in one of its angles, both commissioned by Julius Echter, were completed. It seems certain that the architect of the building was Georg Robin. Theologians, lawyers and humanities scholars were accommodated in this complex which today is called "Alte Universität". The medical faculty found its home in Juliusspital.
Initially, the university was only open to Catholic students. In 1734, Prince Bishop Friedrich Karl von Schönborn issued new study regulations which opened it up to non-Catholics, too. First, theology in Würzburg was determined by Jesuits. But in 1773, the Würzburg Jesuit College was dissolved, and Adam Friedrich von Seinsheim hired followers of the Enlightenment for the theological faculty and thus laid the foundation for its future orientation. From then on, and especially under his successor Franz Ludwig von Erthal, Enlightenment theologians became increasingly active in Würzburg. Nevertheless, it was only in the early 19th century, after Würzburg had come under Bavarian rule, that the university gave up its ecclesiastical-Catholic character.
The modern development of medical subjects began in the 18th century with the establishment of the medical clinic – in 1767, the "internist" and chemist Franz Heinrich Meinolf Wilhelm became the first head of the Juliusspital hospital. The surgical university clinic was established in 1769 under Carl Caspar von Siebold. In 1796, the physician and court medicus Anton Müller (1755–1827) began working at Juliusspital in Würzburg; although he never belonged to the university, he became the first psychiatrist in the hospital and the first to publish on his specialty. Franz Heinrich Meinolf Wilhelm, who as a professor held lectures in German for the first time from 1785, was the first to practice experimental chemistry at the University of Würzburg.
Around 1800, the first student associations were founded in Würzburg. The Scientific dentistry in Würzburg began with the appointment of Carl Joseph Ringelmann as professor in 1807. In 1822, a faculty of political science was established at the university.
During the coalition wars, the university was renamed several times: First "Churfürstliche Julius-Universität" (1803), "Julius Maximilians Universität" (1803/04–1805/06), then "Kurfürstliche Universität zu Würzburg" (1806–1806/07), "Großherzogliche Universität zu Würzburg" (1807–1814), and finally "Königliche Universität zu Würzburg" (1815–1838). The names reflected the different affiliations of the university to the Electorate of Bavaria, which perished in 1806, to the Grand Duchy of Würzburg, which existed as a Rhineland state until 1814, and then to the Kingdom of Bavaria.
In the winter semester of 1838/39, the "Königliche Universität zu Würzburg" was renamed "Königliche Julius-Maximilians-Universität" and two years later "Königlich Bayerische Julius-Maximilians-Universität" which was to be its name for almost 80 years.
After 1850, the university experienced a strong upswing. Numerous new buildings were created: for medicine in the vicinity of Juliusspital and Pleicherwall, for the natural sciences on today's Röntgenring and on Koellikerstraße, for dentistry at Pleichertor (demolished in 1879), and for the mental hospital on Schalksberg. Basic medical subjects were taught and researched in the "Kollegienhaus", which was completed in 1853 and was the first modern "biocentre" in Germany. The first full professor of ophthalmology, appointed in 1866 by the Bavarian king, was Robert Ritter von Welz, a student of Albrecht von Graefe.
In 1857, the doctor, who had been teaching ophthalmology and dentistry in Würzburg since 1850, opened a private eye clinic in the former birthing house of Adam Elias von Siebold on Klinikstraße 6. On 4 January 1858, he acquired the building, which was donated by the Welzsche Marienstiftung for Poor People with Eye Diseases according to Welz' will in 1878 and became the first Würzburg university eye clinic. The former delivery house, which had been founded in 1805 as the first maternity clinic in Würzburg and a training center for midwives and obstetricians, in 1857, under Friedrich Wilhelm Scanzoni von Lichtenfels, moved to a new building on Klinikstraße 8. As an assistant to the surgeon Cajetan von Textor, Robert von Welz was also one of the pioneers of ether anesthesia in the German-speaking world. He developed an inhaler and, after testing it on himself and others in the winter of 1846/47, published the first work on it, and thus established modern anesthesiology in Würzburg.
In the winter semester of 1876/77, the number of students at the University of Würzburg exceeded 1,000 for the first time. In 1888, the university, whose medical faculty was one of the most important after Vienna and Prague between 1850 and 1880, received its own pharmaceutical institute.
On 28 October 1896, a new main building, called "Neue Universität", was inaugurated on Sanderring (its construction began in 1892); it is still the seat of the university management today.
On 3 June 1896, Marcella O'Grady Boveri was the first woman to be admitted to the Würzburg Medical Faculty. The first woman to habilitate at the University of Würzburg was the psychologist Maria Schorn in 1929.
A new eye clinic was opened on Röntgenring 12 in 1901, with the portrait of Welz engraved over the portal. Welzhaus on Klinikstraße 6 was affiliated to the women's clinic on Klinikstraße 8, which existed there until 1934, and connected to it by a corridor on the first floor, which was destroyed in World War II and restored in 1974. Welzhaus which was also destroyed except for its outer façade on 16 March 1945, was rebuilt in 1953/1954. The Mathematical Institute was accommodated there until 1974, when the building was affiliated to the Medical Polyclinic.
Between 1901 and 1911, five Würzburg researchers, whose appointment was mainly due to the mathematician Friedrich Prym (dean and rector), were awarded Nobel Prizes. This strongly contributed to the international importance of the University of Würzburg, particularly of its philosophical faculty.
After the November Revolution of 1918/19, which ended monarchy in Bavaria, the university also lost its title "Königlich Bayerisch" and was given its current name: "Julius-Maximilians-Universität".
The medical faculty separated from Juliusspital and in 1921 moved to the new University Hospital of Würzburg on the outskirts of the city. It was called "Luitpold Krankenhaus". The State Luitpold Hospital was solemnly handed over on 2 November 1921, and within one year the various clinics moved into it. By the summer semester that year, the proportion of students enrolled in medicine had risen to 60 percent.
In 1934, under its director Carl Joseph Gauss, the university women's clinic and the affiliated midwifery school moved from Welzhaus on Klinikstraße to the Grombühl district.
An Institute for Genetics and Race Research was set up in Welzhaus on Klinikstraße 6 in November 1938 and inaugurated in May 1939.
Between 1933 and 1945, the University of Würzburg deprived 184 scientists of their doctoral degrees. Above all, scientists of Jewish origin were thus degraded. After the critical processing of these events in 2010, the university posthumously rehabilitated these researchers in a public ceremony in May 2011.
After the Second World War, the faculty of theology was the first to start anew on 1 October 1945. The faculty of medicine (dean: Jürg Zutt) followed; it was officially reopened with the constitutive faculty meeting on 11 January 1947, and began its lectures in the winter semester of 1946 /47. On 12 March 1947, the university was solemnly reopened.
According to a report by rector Josef Martin (philologist), the military government had dismissed 123 of the 150 professors who had worked before 1945 and only allowed 27 back to lecture at the university.
In 1955, Julius Büdel significantly developed Africa Research in Würzburg. It was mainly due to the results of Büdel's and Horst Mensching's research trips, that Würzburg had become an important center for geographical research on Africa by the late 1970s.
Text from the Wikipedia article “University of Würzburg”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.