Today, the New University is the main lecture building for the humanities.
During the Weimar Republic, Heidelberg was considered a stronghold of the democratic spirit, shaped by such professors as Karl Jaspers, Gustav Radbruch, Martin Dibelius, and Alfred Weber. The New University, built with American donations, bore the dedication "Dem lebendigen Geist" ("To the living spirit") as formulated by Friedrich Gundolf.
The Third Reich led to the dismissal of a large number of lecturers in Heidelberg and the expulsion of students for political and racial reasons. Many had to emigrate, two professors became direct victims of Nazi terror. Due to the activities of high-profile supporters of the regime, Heidelberg was discredited as a "brown university"; the "living spirit" was officially replaced by "the German spirit," to which many then paid homage, as they did everywhere.
At the end of World War II, the university was physically undamaged but in need of spiritual renewal. Under Jaspers' leadership, a new constitution was drafted, in which the university pledged to "serve the living spirit of truth, justice, and humanity." The first post-war rector was the surgeon Karl Heinrich Bauer.
In the course of its extension and expansion, the university was spatially divided: A campus was established in Neuenheimer Feld for the natural sciences and part of the medical faculty, while the humanities retained their traditional quarters in the old town.
Reforms changed the university's previous structures. If the university had consisted of four faculties (theology, law, medicine, philosophy) since its founding and the natural sciences were added as a fifth faculty in 1890, it was restructured into 16 faculties in 1969.
The traditionally large proportion of international students also returned after the war. The fact that, despite the high numbers, teaching and research are still understood as a unified task today is seen by the university and all its members as a challenge and an obligation.
