Berlin – While much was going on in this blog's other capital cities (in Washington, a top federal student loan official quit to run for the Senate; and in Lincoln, the Board of Regents picked a new NU president), I spent the day of October 25th on a walking tour of the Berlin university campus where I studied and wrote a dissertation three decades ago.
• From the U-Bahn at Thielplatz, the Harnack Haus is only a short walk. It is a conference center now, but once was an American military officers' club where my family and I had privileges. It was often a welcome place of respite from the academic pressures at Freie Universität Berlin.
• Onward to the Audimax, a large auditorium noted for the famous speakers it has accommodated. President Kennedy spoke here in 1963 before his more famous speech at Schöneberger Rathaus. Rudi Dutschke changed German politics forever with his 1967 protest speeches on behalf of the student movement. Some two dozen portraits of famous Audimax speakers hang suspended in the grand staircase, above the comings and goings of present-day students.
• Across a campus mall of grasses and forbs in the direction of Corrensplatz is the forgotten site of the home of Fritz Haber, the German scientist whose reputation is still disputed despite his Nobel prize. During WWI, he was on the faculty of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, a research organization that was converted after WWII into the FU Berlin campus.
• Adjacent to Corrensplatz are two buildings with small plaques to explain their significance. One is the former Kommandantura, where after WWII the four victorious powers administered the city. It now houses the FU president's office. Across the street is the Hahn-Meintner building, once a physics laboratory for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, where the atom was first split in 1938. Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel prize for physics.
• Across Habelschwerterallee is the huge classroom complex known as the Rostlaube and the Silberlaube. Here I once made friends with many other foreign students who were working on their German language requirements (necessary for all exams).
• Toward the U-Bahn at Dahlem-Dorf is the JFK Institute, where my advisor, Professor Dr. Ekkehart Krippendorff, had his office. A political scientist and peace researcher, he was also famous for his own academic freedom case.
FU Berlin has, for me, the feel of a real university, dedicated solely to education and research. Its current president is a mathematician, from the ranks of the faculty. It has been designated as one of Germany's elite universities and therefore qualifies for extra funding from the government. It has no football team. Translated into English, it is known as the Free University of Berlin. The word free does not refer to its cost of attendance (although fees are minimal, if one is admitted), but to the freedom of ideas and to political freedoms.
