Higher education began in 1632 in Osnabrück when the Gymnasium Carolinum was upgraded into a Jesuit university. However, the Academia Carolina Osnabrugensis was closed just one year later when Swedish troops recaptured Osnabrück for the Protestant side in the Thirty Years' War.[4]
The government of the state of Lower Saxony decided to set up a university in Osnabrück in 1970, and by 1973 had laid down the legal basis for such an institution. The university opened for the summer semester in 1974 as a successor institution to the Adolf Reichwein Teachers' College, which had occupied the former palace of the Prince-Bishopric since 1953.
Location
The main building of Osnabrück University is the baroque castle (built 1667–1675), formerly home and office to the Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück, nowadays housing mainly university administration. It is located close to the city center. In summer, the (mostly grass-covered) castle court is used for open air cinema and
concerts.
Most faculty buildings are scattered in close vicinity of the castle. Sport stadium and gymnasium are a bit farther away; the mathematical and natural-scientific faculties as well as the botanical garden are located in the western part of the city in the borough "Westerberg" (the "Western Mountain", which is rather a hill than a mountain). The campus at Westerberg is in parts shared with the neighbouring University of Applied Sciences. The distance between castle and the Westerberg campus is about 1.2 miles.
Departments and Institutes
Osnabrück University consists of ten schools (Fachbereiche) and four interdisciplinary institutes. Schools are split up into subjects or institutes or both.
^MacDonald, Alasdair A.; Martels, Zweder R.W.M. von; Veenstra, Jan R., eds. (2009). Christian Humanism Essays in Honour of Arjo Vanderjagt. Leiden: Brill. p. xviii. ISBN9789047429753. Ere long the Jesuits made the Carolinum an important educational stronghold in the cause of the Counter-Reformation and in the middle of the seventeenth century, during the Thirty Years War, the Carolinum was raised to the status of Jesuit University. ... A year after its official opening, the university was closed down again, as the city, having the misfortune to be in the frontline between warring Protestants and Catholics, suffered the fate of repeated power changes.