Advent, Advent! Your December 4th story

 

Advent, Advent! This day 77 years ago — on December 4, 1948 — Free University was founded in West-Berlin, in the district of Zehlendorf, with a festive act at the Titania Palast, a movie theater in Steglitz. Berlin's mayor Ernst Reuter was present as well as Lucius D. Clay (both depicted below). This was decided after the Soviets tried to take over the main University of Berlin that was soonafter named Humboldt University. This is an excerpt from our book The Cold War in Berlin.

 

 

The University as a Political Battlefield

 

Soon even Berlin University, where teaching had already resumed in January 1946, by order of the Soviet Military Administration (SMAD), became the scene of political disagreement between the East and the West.

 

The university, located on the Avenue Unter den Linden and therefore in the Soviet sector, was subjected to increasing pressure by the Soviets and the SED, with regard to both course content and personnel. Professors or students who did not willingly submit to this influence were harassed and pressured. In March 1947, several students were arrested, most of them members of the SPD or the CDU.

 

In spring 1948, the situation intensified further when the SED reacted to student demands for more freedom in research and teaching by expelling numerous students and making serious threats. About two dozen students and lecturers took the initiative to found an independent university, free of any political influences, in the western part of the four-sector city. They were supported above all by the Americans, in particular by US Military Governor Lucius D. Clay, and the new institution was officially founded on December 4, 1948, as “The Free University,” situated in the idyllic area of Dahlem in the American sector, just a stone’s throw from the Allied Kommandatura building.

 

From then on, the Cold War in Berlin was also manifest in the existence of two competing universities. Both of the other two higher-level educational institutions, the Academy of Arts and the Technical University, were in West Berlin and were therefore shielded from the East–West confrontation, since the East did not have competing institutions.

 

 

 

 

 

And here is the actual book!