Heidelberg University

Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It was founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI and is Germany's oldest university, the third established in the Holy Roman Empire after Prague and Vienna. The foundation became possible after the Great Schism of 1378, when German students and teachers lost their stipends in Paris and had to leave, and Rupert I of the Palatinate used the opportunity to ask the Curia for a university of his own. Today it consists of twelve faculties and offers degree programmes at undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral levels in some 100 disciplines, and it is a founding member of the League of European Research Universities and the Coimbra Group.