The university was founded in by the Habsburg dynasty as the second university in Austrian-Habsburg territory after the University of Vienna. Today, Freiburg is the fifth-oldest university in Germany , with a long tradition of teaching the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences and technology and enjoys a high academic reputation both nationally and internationally.
The university is made up of 11 faculties and attracts students from across Germany as well as from over other countries. Foreign students constitute about As of October , 22 Nobel laureates are affiliated with the University of Freiburg as alumni, faculty or researchers, and 15 academics have been honored with the highest German research prize, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize , while working at the university.
Originally Albrechts University, the university started with four faculties theology, philosophy, medicine, and law. Established by papal privilege papal bull , the university in Freiburg actually was β like all or most universities in the Middle Ages β a corporation of the church body and therefore belonged to the Roman Catholic Church and its hierarchy.
At its founding, the university was named after Albert VI of Austria. He provided the university with land and endowments , as well as its own jurisdiction. The university soon attracted many students, such as the humanists Geiler von Kaysersberg , Johann Reuchlin , and Jakob Wimpfeling. When Ulrich Zasius was teaching law until , Freiburg became a centre of humanist jurisprudence. From to , Erasmus of Rotterdam after having left Basel, lived and taught in Freiburg , however, never at the university.
The importance of the university decreased during the time of the Counter-Reformation. To counter reformatory tendencies, the administration of two faculties was handed over to the Roman Catholic order of the Jesuits in In , Freiburg temporarily became French territory, along with the southern parts of the upper Rhine.
