Faculty of Modern LanguagesThe Faculty, Past and Present

Since the Renaissance, studia litterarum in Heidelberg have been part of an educational mission that defined knowledge of languages and literatures as an indispensable characteristic of human understanding, indeed, as a gauge of a country’s culture. The Faculty of Modern Languages stands in this tradition.

Beyond the practical aim of conveying modern languages and literatures, in teaching and research, it thus serves the need to develop, well-founded categories of knowledge, judgment, and action in relation to languages, literatures, and cultures in our changing world. As an institution of the oldest German university, the Faculty is particularly committed to the challenges of European history. Reflecting on present-day problems and seeking further knowledge always means taking into account the great intellectual impulses of the past. Scholars from Heidelberg in particular have contributed to this. Their charisma and their presence, often still atmospheric, set the level of scientific discussion and cosmopolitanism in their thought.

Although the Faculty was founded in 1968, when it split off from the Faculty of Philosophy, the organizational roots of academic research and teaching of modern languages at Heidelberg University go back further. As early as 1873, the Seminar for Modern Languages was established under the direction of Karl Bartsch. It brought together the professorships and lectureships in the field of modern languages that had existed since the 1850s. The independent philological institutes – Department of German Studies, English Department, Department of Romance Studies –, which emerged from this seminar during the 1920s, together with the Slavic Institute (founded in 1931), form the core of the Faculty today.

The prehistory and history of the Faculty show how the Heidelberg University has met and advanced new developments in the field of research and teaching of philological disciplines. For instance, not only was the canon of languages expanded in 1957, for example, by the addition of Medieval (and, since 1973, Modern) Latin philology; the requirements of the changing academic world also have been and are taken into account, for example, through the establishment of the Institute for German as a Foreign Language in 1974, in order to tailor education in German language and literature to the requirements of foreign students, traditionally many in number. Last but not least, the degree course in Computational Linguistics, which deals with the problems and advances of machine language processing, shows the breadth of research and teaching within the Faculty.

Today, about 30 professors, as many associate professors and private docents, and about 200 other academic staff-members as well as numerous adjunct lecturers teach and conduct research at the Faculty. Almost 5000 students are enrolled (headcount). This makes the Faculty one of the largest in Baden-Württemberg. The majority of students are enrolled in English Studies, German Studies, Romance Studies and the Institute for Translation and Interpreting. The Faculty of Modern Languages has a very high proportion of foreign students at 30%, the highest of all faculties at Heidelberg University. Following the Institute of German as a Foreign Language Philology, most of the foreigners are studying at the Institute for Translation and Interpreting. The proportion of female students is over 80%.