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Rupert I, Elector Palatine established the university when Heidelberg was the seat of one of the Prince-Electors of the Holy Roman Empire. Consequently, it served as a center for theologians and law experts from throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Matriculation rates declined with the Thirty Years' War, and the university did not overcome its fiscal and intellectual crises until the early 19th century. Subsequently, the institution once again became a hub for independent thinkers, and develeloped into a "stronghold of humanism", and a center of democratic thinking. At this time, Heidelberg served as a role model for the implementation of graduate schools at American universities. However, the university lost many of its dissident professors and was marked a NSDAP cadre university during the Nazi era between 1933 and 1945. It later underwent an extensive denazification after World War II-Heidelberg serving as one of the main scenes of the left-wing student protests in Germany in the 1970s. Modern scientific psychiatry; psychopharmacology; psychiatric genetics; environmental physics; and modern sociology were introduced as scientific disciplines by Heidelberg faculty. Associated with 30 Nobel Prize laureates, the university continues to emphasize research. It is consistently ranked among Europe's top overall universities, and is an international education venue for doctoral students, with approximately 1,000 doctorates successfully completed every year, and with more than one third of the doctoral students coming from abroad. International students from some 130 countries account for more than 20 percent of the entire student body. Heidelberg comprises two major campuses: one in Heidelberg's Old Town and another in the Neuenheimer Feld quarter on the outskirts of the city. The university's noted alumni include eleven domestic and foreign Heads of State or Heads of Government. |
