University of Vienna

• 1. Introduction

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  The University of Vienna was born on the 12th of March 1365, when Duke Rudolf IV of Austria set his name to a founding document. He called it the Alma Mater Rudolphina, his maternal alma. What he could not have foreseen was that this single act of dynastic ambition would produce an institution still enrolling around 85,000 students more than six and a half centuries later. Sigmund Freud studied here. So did Gustav Mahler, Karl Popper, Stefan Zweig, and Gregor Mendel. Seventeen Nobel Prize laureates have walked these halls. How does a medieval duke's creation survive reformation, plague, siege, fascism, and revolution to become one of the largest universities in Europe? The answers stretch from a papal dispute in the 14th century to a student occupation of Austria's largest lecture hall in 2009.

• 2. A Pope, a Duke, and a Rival

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  Rudolf IV wanted a full university, but Pope Urban V refused to ratify the founding deed in one critical respect: he withheld approval for a theology faculty. The presumed reason was pressure from Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, who did not want a rival to his own Charles University in Prague, founded in 1347. Rudolf had gotten there third in Central Europe, after Prague and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, which opened in 1364. Papal assent for theology finally arrived in 1384, and with it the university achieved full standing. The first university building opened in 1385. By the mid-15th century, as Humanism spread through Europe, more than 6,000 students were enrolled, making it the largest university in the Holy Roman Empire.

• 3. Jesuits, Reformers, and Siege

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  The Reformation shook the university badly. Epidemics, economic stagnation, and the first Ottoman siege of Vienna together sent enrollment into sharp decline. Emperor Ferdinand I responded in 1551 by installing the Jesuit Order, binding the university still more tightly to the Church. Conflicts between the Jesuit school and the existing institution mounted for decades until Ferdinand II, in 1623, simply folded the Jesuit College into the university by law. The Jesuits held that position for well over a century. It was Empress Maria Theresa who finally broke their grip in the mid-18th century, bringing the university under the control of the monarchy. Her son Joseph II pushed further: by 1782 he had allowed Protestants and Jews to enroll, abolished official academic attire, and the following year made German the compulsory language of instruction.

• 4. Revolution, Women, and Dark Years

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  The Revolution of 1848 forced a structural reckoning. The Philosophical Faculty was elevated to equal standing with Theology, Law, and Medicine, a reform led by Leopold, Count von Thun und Hohenstein. The current main building on the Ringstrasse took shape between 1877 and 1884, designed by Heinrich von Ferstel. Women were admitted as full students in 1897, though only in Philosophy at first. Medicine followed in 1900, Law in 1919, Protestant Theology in 1923, and Roman Catholic Theology not until 1946. In 1907, Elise Richter became the first woman to receive habilitation at the university, taking the position of professor of Romance languages. By the late 1920s the campus had turned volatile. Philosophy professor Moritz Schlick was shot dead by a former student on the university steps while ascending to teach a class. The Nazi regime later released his killer. After the Anschluss in 1938, a large number of teachers and students were dismissed on political and racial grounds. In April 1945, a 22-year-old scholar named Kurt Schubert received permission from Soviet occupation forces to reopen the university for teaching, earning him recognition as the institution's unofficial first rector of the post-war period. The constitutional lawyer Ludwig Adamovich senior was formally elected rector on the 25th of April 1945.

• 5. The Library Behind the Library

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  Rudolf IV's founding deed of the 12th of March 1365 already called for a publica libraria, a public library where books bequeathed by deceased members would be collected. That original collection eventually became the old Libreye, housed alongside the student infirmary. By the 17th century, interest in those manuscripts had faded in favor of a newer library in the Jesuit College. In 1756, the old university library was closed and its 2,787 volumes were absorbed into the Court Library, then directed by Gerard van Swieten. After the Jesuit order dissolved in 1773, a new Academic Library assembled from the book collections of five Lower Austrian Colleges opened on the 13th of May 1777, the birthday of Maria Theresa. Its initial stock stood at some 45,000 books. When the main library moved into Ferstel's new Ringstrasse building in 1884, it carried approximately 300,000 volumes, and stacks for 500,000 had already been built in. Annual growth of up to 30,000 volumes filled that space quickly. By 2026, the University Library holds approximately 7.8 million volumes across the Main Library and 33 specialist libraries, making it the largest library in Austria. The oldest item in the collection is a Bible from the Dorothean monastery, dated 1392.

• 6. The Austrian School and Its Alumni

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  Carl Menger founded what became known as the Austrian School of economics, and the University of Vienna was its cradle. Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek all studied and later taught there. Hayek went on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974. The university's Nobel tally across all fields reached 17 laureates, spanning Physiology or Medicine, Chemistry, Physics, Economics, and Literature. Robert Bárány won in 1914; Emmanuelle Charpentier in Chemistry in 2020; Anton Zeilinger in Physics in 2022. The alumni lists extend well beyond economists and scientists: Theodor Herzl, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, Franz Grillparzer, and Elfriede Jelinek all passed through, as did filmmaker Michael Haneke and Austrian president Alexander Van der Bellen, who also taught there. In October 2025, the university entered the top 100 of global university rankings for the first time, placing 95th in the Times Higher Education rankings.

• 7. Campus, Occupation, and Today

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  On the 22nd of October 2009, students occupied the Audimax, Austria's largest lecture hall, which had opened in 1936. The protest followed a solidarity rally for occupiers of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Students demanded an end to tuition fees, more open access to higher education, and an increase in the higher education budget to 2% of GDP. The university today sprawls across more than 60 locations in Vienna. Its main building on the Ringstrasse, the Hauptuni, houses the Rectorate, most deaneries, the Main Library, and numerous lecture halls. The Campus on the site of the old general hospital opened in 1998. A new biology building opened in October 2021. In May 2025, the university relocated 2.7 million volumes from the Main Library to a new book depository on Kolingasse. In the 2024/2025 academic year, 185 degree programmes were on offer, spanning 15 faculties and five centres. That year, the university awarded 4,106 first degrees, 1,841 master's degrees, and 242 doctoral and PhD degrees. The institution that struggled for papal recognition of a single theology faculty in 1365 now ranks 31st in the world for Mathematics according to the Shanghai Ranking.