Largest University in
Germany, the
Alma Mater of
the Author of this Node and one of the oldest. Founded in 1388 by the request of the
city, it featured the 4 major
faculties right from the beginning:
Law,
Medicine,
Theology and
Artes liberales.
Artes liberales had to be passed to enter the other faculties. It consisted of a course in
Rhetorics,
Didactics,
Grammar and even
juggling to give you a sound
studium generale.
If you lived in the
14th century and you were a young
bloke with a bit of
cash and some academic interest,
Cologne was the place for you, as it featured some excellent lecturers like
Albertus Magnus and
Meister Eckhart.
Unfortunately the French were not so impressed and closed the place down in 1798 after invading Cologne in 1794. It stayed a humble polytechnic until 1919, when Konrad Adenauer, then Mayor of Cologne (and later first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany) received permission by Prussia to again found it as the city's university.
Today the university features 7 faculties for over 63000 students and attracts the most applications due to its attractiveness: it's situated slap bang in the middle of the city and is surrounded by approximately 1 million bars. Ok, maybe not that much, but certainly enough get all 63000 students drunk from about early lunchtime on.
As with every great university, this one has its rivalries. In this case, the largest amount of friction is between the faculty of medicine and the department of business studies, as they represent the most diametral approach to life, the universe and everything, and regular punch-ups were regulated into a yearly hockeymatch, were aggressions could be ventilated with plenty of free beer and scantily clathed cheerleaders.
With other words, it's probably the one place were you'll never want to leave again.
Sniff