[14] Past and present faculty and notable alumni include 57 Nobel Prize laureates[5] (the most of any German university), as well as scholars and academics including Albert Einstein, Hermann von Helmholtz, Emil du Bois-Reymond, Robert Koch, Theodor Mommsen, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Otto von Bismarck, W. E. B.

[15] The main building of Humboldt-Universität is the Prinz-Heinrich-Palais (English: Prince Henry's Palace) on Unter den Linden boulevard in the historic centre of Berlin.

Du Bois and European unifier Robert Schuman, as well as the influential surgeon Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach in the early half of the 1800s.

Further, it has been claimed that "the 'Humboldtian' university became a model for the rest of Europe [...] with its central principle being the union of teaching and research in the work of the individual scholar or scientist.

"[22] In addition to the strong anchoring of traditional subjects, such as science, law, philosophy, history, theology and medicine, the university developed to encompass numerous new scientific disciplines.

Famous researchers, such as the chemist August Wilhelm Hofmann, the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, the mathematicians Ernst Eduard Kummer, Leopold Kronecker, Karl Weierstrass, the physicians Johannes Peter Müller, Emil du Bois-Reymond, Albrecht von Graefe, Rudolf Virchow, and Robert Koch, contributed to Berlin University's scientific fame.

The preexisting Tierarznei School, founded in 1790 and absorbed by the university, in 1934 formed the basis of the Veterinary Medicine Facility (Grundstock der Veterinärmedizinischen Fakultät).

"[23] In 1887, chancellor Otto Bismarck established the Seminar für Orientalische Sprachen [de] (SOS), (usually known in English as the Oriental Seminary) to prepare public servants for posting to Kamerun (later Cameroon), then part of the German colonial empire.

[24][25] Various Asian languages were taught there, and in 1890, there were 115 students, which belonged to various faculties, including law; philosophy, medicine and physical sciences; and theology (as part of their training to be missionaries).

The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (German "Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums") resulted in 250 Jewish professors and employees being fired from the university during 1933–1934, as well as numerous doctorates being withdrawn.

It was from the university's library that some 20,000 books by "degenerates" and opponents of the regime were taken to be burned on 10 May of that year in the Opernplatz square (now called the Bebelplatz) for a demonstration that was protected by the SA and featured a speech by Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

It consists of a glass panel embedded in the pavement that looks into a large, subterranean white room with empty shelf space for 20,000 volumes, along with a plaque bearing an epigraph taken from an 1820 work by the great German-Jewish writer Heinrich Heine: "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen."

It reopened in 1946 as the University of Berlin, but faced repression from the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, including the persecution of liberal and social democrat students.

The Soviet Military Tribunal in Berlin-Lichtenberg ruled the students were involved in the formation of a "resistance movement at the University of Berlin", as well as espionage, and were sentenced to 25 years of forced labor.

Many of the students targeted by Soviet persecution were active in the liberal or social democratic resistance against the Soviet-imposed communist dictatorship.

The German communist party had long regarded the social democrats as their main enemies, dating back to the early days of the Weimar Republic.

[31] Because the historical name, the Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, had monarchic origins, the school was officially renamed in 1949.

[34][35] For departments on social sciences and humanities, the faculty was subjected to a "liquidation" process, in which contracts of employees were terminated and positions were made open to new academics, mainly West Germans.

[35][36] The East German higher education system included a much larger number of permanent assistant professors, lecturers and other middle level academic positions.

Its main building is located in the centre of Berlin at the boulevard Unter den Linden and is the heart of Campus Mitte.

Campus Nord is located north of the main building close to Berlin Hauptbahnhof and is the home of the life science departments including the university medical center Charité.

In 2001, the university acquired the Archive for Sexology from the Robert Koch Institute, which was founded with a large private library donated by Erwin J. Haeberle.