Marx and Engels studied here, and the Brothers Grimm and Albert Einstein taught here: Humboldt is Berlin’s oldest university, founded in 1810 in a palace built by Frederick the Great for his brother Heinrich. Statues of the uni’s founder, philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt, and his explorer brother Alexander flank the main entrance.
The university had produced 29 Nobel laureates by the 1950s, including Max Planck (physics, 1918) and Albert Einstein (physics, 1921). The last prize went to Werner Forssmann for medicine in 1956. These days, some 32,500 students try to follow this illustrious legacy.