Leipzig University

Leipzig University , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. Famous alumni include Leibniz, Goethe, Ranke, Nietzsche, Wagner, Angela Merkel, Raila Odinga, Tycho Brahe^{[citation needed]} and nine Nobel laureates are associated with this university.
The university was founded on December 2, 1409 by Frederick I, Elector of Saxony and his brother William II, Margrave of Meissen, and originally comprised the four scholastic faculties. Since its inception the university has engaged in teaching and research for over 600 years without interruption.

Nazi period

 

Under Nazi rule many Jews' degrees were cancelled;^[3] some were later reinstated as Karl-Marx University degrees by the GDR.
The university was kept open throughout World War II, even after the destruction of its buildings. During the war the acting rector, Erich Maschke
, described the continuation of the university in a memo on May 11, 1945, announcing the vote for a new rector:

Since 4 December 1943 a fixed determination not to abandon the Leipzig University in the most difficult hour of its more than five-hundred-year history has bonded the professors with each other and with the students. The special task of repairing the damage caused by air attacks has now broadened out to the more general duty to save the continuity of our university and preserve its substance, at the very least its indestructible kernel, through the crisis that has now reached its fullest stage. After the destruction of most of the buildings and the majority of its libraries, this kernel is represented by the professoriate alone. This is what must be preserved as the great repository of value in the university.^[4]

By the end of the war 60 per cent of the university's buildings and 70 per cent of its books had been destroyed.