The university was modelled on the University of Prague, from which the German-speaking faculty members withdrew to Leipzig after the Jan Hus crisis and the Decree of Kutná Hora. The Alma mater Lipsiensis opened in 1409, after it had been officially endorsed by Pope Alexander V in his Bull of Acknowledgment on (September 9 of that year). Its first rector was Johann von Münsterberg. From its foundation, the Paulinerkirche served as the university church. After the Reformation the church and the monastery buildings were donated to the university in 1544.
As many European universities, the university of Leipzig was structured into colleges (Collegia) which were responsible for organising accommodation and collegiate lecturing. Among the colleges of Leipzig were the Small College, the Large College, the Red College (also known as the New College), the College of our Lady and the Pauliner-College. There were also private residential halls (Bursen, see engl. bursaries). The colleges had jurisdiction over their members. The college structure was abandoned later and today only the names survived.
During the first centuries the university grew slowly and was a rather regional institution. This changed, however, during the 19th century when the university became a world-class institution of higher education and research.
Leipzig University was one of the first German universities to allow women to register as "guest students".assembly in 1873 the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein thanked the University of Leipzig and Prague for allowing women to attend as guest students. This was the year that the first woman in Germany obtained her JD, Johanna von Evreinov.
Until the beginning of the Second World War, Leipzig University attracted a number of renowned scholars and later Nobel Prize laureates. Many of the university's alumni became important scientists.
The university reopened after the war on February 5, 1946, but it was affected by the uniformity imposed on social institutions in the Soviet occupation zone. In 1948 the freely elected student council was disbanded and replaced by Free German Youth members. The chairman of the Student Council, Wolfgang Natonek, and other members were arrested and imprisoned, but the university was also a nucleus of resistance. Thus began the Belter group, with flyers for free elections. The head of the group, Herbert Belter, was executed in 1951 in Moscow. The German Democratic Republic was created in 1949, and in 1953 the University was renamed by its government the Karl-Marx-University, Leipzig. In 1968, the partly damaged Augusteum, including Johanneum and Albertinum and the intact Paulinerkirche, were demolished to make way for a redevelopment of the university, carried out between 1973 and 1978. The dominant building of the university was the University Tower (now City-Hochhaus Leipzig), built between 1968 and 1972 in the form of an open book.
In 1991, following the reunification of Germany, the University's name was restored to the original Leipzig University (Alma mater lipsiensis). The reconstruction of the University Library, which was heavily damaged during the war and in the GDR barely secured, was completed in 2002. In 2008 the university was able to prevail in the nationwide "Initiative of Excellence" of Germany and it was granted the graduate school "BuildMoNa: Leipzig School of Natural Sciences – Building with Molecules and Nano-objects".In addition the university was able to receive grants from the Saxon excellence initiative for the "Life" project – a project that tries to explore common diseases more effectively. Also in 2008 the "Bach Archive" was associated with the university. With the delivery of the University Tower to a private user, the university was forced to spread some faculties over several locations in the city. It controversially redesigned its historical centre at the Augustusplatz. In 2002 Behet Bonzio received the second prize in the architectural competition; a first prize was not awarded by the jury. A lobby with partial support of the provincial government called for the rebuilding of St. Paul's Church and Augusteum. This caused the resistance of the university leadership, the majority of the students and population of Leipzig. These disputes led to a scandal in early 2003; the Rector Volker Bigl, and the pro-rectors resigned in protest against the government. This was exacerbated by severe tensions that built up because of the Saxon university treaty on the future funding of higher education. As a compromise a second competition was agreed upon, which only covered the Augustusplatz front of the university. On March 24, 2004 a jury chose the design by Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat, which was well received by almost all parties. He recalls the outer form of the St. Paul's Church and Augusteum, and abstracted the original building complex. Renovations began in the summer of 2005. In 2009 the Leipzig University celebrated its 600th anniversary with over 300 scientific and cultural lectures and exhibitions,reflecting the role of the university's research and teaching from its beginning.Today, the university has 14 faculties. With over 29,000 students, it is Saxony's second-largest university. There are now more than 150 institutes and the university offers 190 study programs leading to Bachelor's degrees, Master's degrees,
Staatsexamen, Diplom[9] and Ph.D.s, for which there are no charges for tuition. The university offers a number of courses in English and other foreign languages, and there are several programs allowing foreign students to study at the university. Exchange partner universities include the universities of Arizona, Oklahoma, Houston, Alberta, Ohio, and Edinburgh. Traditionally contacts to universities in Eastern Europe and the Far East are strong as well, e.g. there are cooperations with leading institutions such as Moscow's Lomonosov University and Renmin University in Beijing.
The university is ranked second in Germany, twentieth in Europe, and 105th in the world by the web-based Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, a ranking evaluating universities' scientific online publications. The 2010 ARWU-Ranking
ranks the university in the 201-300 tier of world universities, and within the top 25 in Germany. Leipzig has constantly been ranked among the German top 10 in various university sport disciplines over the past decades.
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