University Main Building
About This Site
The main building of the Friedrich Schiller University on Fürstengraben was built between 1905 and 1908 to plans by the architect Theodor Fischer on the site of Jena's former palace, and it counts among the most important German university buildings of the early twentieth century.[1] Raised for the university's 350th anniversary in 1908, it gathers its wings around two courtyards, takes up the scale of the old town and carries sculpture by artists from Stuttgart and Weimar.[2][1] Ferdinand Hodler's mural of German students setting out for the War of Liberation of 1813 hangs in its Aula, and in its front garden stands the oldest Burschenschaft monument in Germany, made by the Weimar sculptor Adolf Donndorf in 1883.[1][3]
A new main building on the palace site, 1905–1908
Since its founding in 1558 the University of Jena had grown steadily in students and staff, and the lack of space led to the decision to build a new main building for its 350th anniversary in 1908, on the grounds of the old Jena palace. Theodor Fischer won the competition with a design that joined new ideas of architecture with old traditions and fitted seamlessly into Jena's old town.[2] The building follows the basic forms of the demolished grand-ducal palace and opened in 1908.[4]
Courtyards and fronts, 1908
With a keen sense of how a university works, Fischer designed a varied building without the show of grandeur usual at the time. Its wings are grouped around two courtyards of different size, divided by the central wing with the Aula; the whole reads as closed yet is deliberately asymmetrical, built on balanced proportions and lively sequences of spaces instead of strict axes. The north and east fronts, the representative sides, are faced with natural stone laid in an irregular pattern, while the plastered south and west sides take their cue from the neighbouring houses.[1]
The tower and the palace fountain, 1908
The 42-metre tower on a square plan marks the main entrance and serves as a landmark in the town; its curving, baroque-looking cap with four small corner turrets shapes the skyline of the centre, and the signs of the zodiac run in relief below its gallery. In the large courtyard stands the old palace fountain, crowned by a copy of the palace tower's former cap, with reliefs of the Thuringian rivers Saale, Werra and Ilm and a portrait of Bismarck.[1]
The faculties and the main portal, around 1908
Fischer held that a building should speak through its outline and proportions, so the sculpture was to stress only what the architecture set out: portals, gables, window arches. He planned its placing and forms himself and left the execution to four sculptors, Ludwig Habich and Ernst Neumeister from Stuttgart and Adolf Brütt and Arno Zauche from Weimar; at his request the plaster models were kept. High on the north front stand robed women personifying the four faculties of 1908: Theology with a cross pressed to her breast, Law with sword and book, Medicine with bared breast and a skull, Philosophy with an Egyptian headdress and an open book. The main portal below has a canopy on two columns whose bases carry a lion and, most likely, a hydra; on the pillar between its doors stands a woman holding a mirror, read as Truth, flanked by a pair of lovers and by an old and a young man, perhaps the passing on of knowledge.[2]
The west, south and east fronts, around 1908
On the west front Neumeister's head of Christ looks towards the Stadtkirche; the south gables carry Habich's resting youth and resting girl and a Diana of Ephesus, and the east portal, designed as the entrance to the archaeological museum, shows Odysseus and Polyphemus, Prometheus, Ariadne, a phoenix and ancient masks.[2]
Hodler's mural and the interiors, 1908–1914
Inside, staircases, vestibules and corridors form a carefully composed sequence; Fischer's assistant Bruno Taut worked on their colour scheme, and the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau took part in the fittings. Parts of the old palace were kept and built into the new architecture, among them a baroque door of 1738, stucco ceilings and a sixteenth-century building inscription. The high point is the Aula with Ferdinand Hodler's mural Departure of German Students for the War of Liberation of 1813, and the Senate Hall holds works by Auguste Rodin and Ludwig von Hofmann.[1] At the start of the First World War a campaign backed by scholars including Ernst Haeckel and Rudolf Eucken had Hodler's painting, in the building since 1908, boarded over.[4]
Damage and restoration, 1945–2015
The main building was hit in the air raids on Jena in February and March 1945.[4] It was repaired in 1949 and restored with care for the monument from 1990 to 1993; for its matter-of-fact, functional transitional style it is seen as a forerunner of modern architecture and is protected as a total work of art.[1] Further work followed in 2015, adding zones for self-study.[4]
The Burschenschaft monument, 1815–1883
The monument recalls the founding of the first German Burschenschaft, the student fraternity of 12 June 1815, in Jena. The Weimar sculptor Adolf Donndorf made it in 1883: a figure 3.30 metres high, cut from a single block of Carrara marble, shows a student gazing into the distance in the old-German dress banned in 1819, holding the fraternity's flag in his right hand and its sword before his breast in his left. The flag reads Von den Frauen und Jungfrauen zu Jena am 31. März 1816, the sword Fürs Vaterland; on the limestone pedestal four bronze medallions show the fraternity's arms and its three co-founders Karl Hermann Scheidler, Heinrich Riemann and Carl Horn. It is the oldest monument of its kind in Germany.[3]
From the Eichplatz to Fürstengraben, 1883–1951
The monument first stood on the Eichplatz, before the Burschenschaft oak.[3] In 1947, when the Eichplatz was redesigned for the centenary of the Carl Zeiss firm, the statue was taken down and stored in the inner courtyard of the university main building, and in 1951 it was set up again in the front garden on Fürstengraben.[5]
The monument in its housing, 2009–2022
In October 2009 the Deutsche Burschenschaft paid for a protective housing to shield the marble in winter. After a large paint attack in June 2011, restorers judged that the monument should in future stand indoors, and it was fully restored in 2015 and 2016.[5] Since then it has stayed in its housing all year, and the covers that protect it show a picture of the statue.[6] Where the monument should stand and how it should be shown has been debated in the town, among other occasions at a public panel in the Rathausdiele on 31 October 2022.[6]
The university's historic main building, today
Founded in 1558, the Friedrich Schiller University is one of the oldest universities in Germany; its historic main building at Fürstengraben 1 belongs to it together with the Collegium Jenense, where the university was founded, and the campus on Ernst-Abbe-Platz. Visit Jena offers a virtual tour of the main building.[7]
Questions visitors ask
- Who designed the university main building in Jena?
- Theodor Fischer, who won the competition for the new building; it was built between 1905 and 1908, and four sculptors from Stuttgart and Weimar carried out the sculpture he had planned.[1][2]
- What stood on the site before?
- Jena's palace. The new building follows the basic forms of the demolished grand-ducal palace, and parts of it were built in, among them a baroque door of 1738, stucco ceilings and a sixteenth-century building inscription.[4][1]
- Where is Ferdinand Hodler's painting of the students of 1813?
- In the Aula of the main building, where it has been since 1908; the Senate Hall holds works by Auguste Rodin and Ludwig von Hofmann.[1][4]
Sources (7)
- Universitätshauptgebäude — Kulturdenkmale in Jena (JenaKultur), retrieved 13 September 2026
- Bauplastik am Universitätshauptgebäude — Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Burschenschaftsdenkmal (Jena) — Wikipedia, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena — Wikipedia, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Burschenschaftsdenkmal — JenaKultur, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Kontroverses Denkmal in Jena: Der Bursche am Universitätshauptgebäude — JenaKultur-Blog, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena — JenaKultur / Visit Jena, retrieved 13 September 2026
Visit Information
Fürstengraben 1, 07743 Jena
In the history of Jena
Historic sites
Löbstedter Straße 67, 07749 Jena
The first Sommer-Imaginata of June 1995 filled the main building and the streets around it, and the Imaginata's first sphere was built in front of it on Fürstengraben.
Around Weimar
19 km East
The main building of the Friedrich Schiller University, built by Theodor Fischer in 1905–1908 on the site of Jena's palace, with Hodler's mural in the Aula and the Burschenschaft monument in its front garden.