1946 - 1999

By decision of the Hohenheim Senate, a memorial to those who died in the Second World War was unveiled in the Palace foyer.

The sculpture “Der Jüngling” (The Youth) was created by the Stuttgart sculptor Fritz von Graevenitz. He maintained active links with the Nazi regime until 1945. The history of the sculpture’s creation is also closely linked to National Socialism. In 2023, the Hohenheim Senate decided to leave the sculpture in its current location as a document of contemporary history, but to add further information.

At the beginning of the 1960s, a large-scale restoration of the Palace facilities began.

The former state rooms had become apartments for professors, holes had been torn in the roof for chimneys, and parts of the Palace were dilapidated. Only the laws protecting historical monuments prevented the demolition of the Palace in the 1960s. From 1960-1975 the wings around the outer courtyards were renewed, and between 1967-1987 the main Palace building. There, the state rooms were restored and used for celebrations. Which Palace parts are old and new can be seen by looking at the roofs: The original builders used tiles for the roofs. For the reconstruction, slate was used.

The Nazi agricultural historian and SS Hauptsturmführer Günther Franz was successful in being appointed to Hohenheim and later elected President.

During the National-Socialist period, Franz was a confessing National-Socialist and member of the SA, later SS. In his agricultural historical writings, he propagated the “Third Reich” as a realization of the utopia dreamt of by the peasants in the Peasant Wars, whose goal was to “eliminate the economic power of the Jews”.

In the 1940s, he was key to Nazi research on studying their enemies, which increasingly focused on “solving the Jewish problem” under his direction.

At the end of the war, Franz lost his professorship, which he last held at the “Reich University Strasbourg”. In 1957, he had a successful scientific comeback with the newly created Professorship for Agricultural History in Hohenheim. From 1963-67 he even led the University as its president.

The most well-known work about Günther Franz was written by Wolfgang Behringer (“Bauern-Franz und Rasen-Günther” in Winfried, Schulze, Otto G. Oexle: Deutsche Historiker im Nationalsozialismus. Frankfurt a.M. 1999).

In her research project Hohenheim and National Socialism and the publication “Erschreckend einwandfrei,” from 2015 until 2018 historian Dr. Anja Waller looked into how the University of Hohenheim conducted itself in general vis-à-vis scientists involved with the Nazis during the Nazi era - and how it dealt with people who unjustly had to leave Hohenheim in the 1930s and wanted to return.

Two faculties were established: one in natural sciences and one in agricultural sciences.

In the 1950s, the scientific specialization was so far developed in all areas that the expansion of the University beyond only the agricultural sciences could be considered. In 1964, the opportunity arose to expand education in biology. In the same year, two faculties - a natural science and an agricultural science faculty - were established. In particular in the area of natural sciences, several new departments then had to be created. From the end of the war until 1964, the number of departments more than doubled.

The Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences was established as the third and last faculty.

It developed out of the applied business and economic sciences in the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences. Today, it is the largest of the three faculties at the University of Hohenheim, with over forty departments.

At the same time, the State Higher Education Act brought significant changes: It overrode the constitution from 1922. In place of the President (Rektor) annually elected from among the full professors, a President (Präsident) elected by the Great Senate for 8 years was instituted. The University committees were then: Great Senate (election and supervisory organ, decisions about changes to the charter), Administrative Council (financial and human resource matters), and the Senate (general competence).

In the year of its 150th anniversary, the “Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule Hohenheim” (Hohenheim Agricultural College) received the name “Universität Hohenheim (Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule)” (University of Hohenheim (Agricultural College)”.

After the business and economic sciences and natural sciences were integrated as independent faculties, the Hohenheim Agricultural College received the name “University of Hohenheim (Agricultural College)”. The addition in parentheses has since been deleted by the University Act.

The University of Hohenheim expanded its campus by adding the Biology Building with space for institutes and labs and an area for lecture halls.

Since the 1990s, the building has been continually renovated to conform to new legal standards for fire protection. The fourth and for the time being the last renovation started in 2014 and was completed in 2017. Additional construction measures: Four Kavaliershäuser buildings for Business, Economics, and Social Sciences (1987), the Technical Center for Food Technology (1989), the Fruwirthbau for Plant Breeding and the State Plant Breeding Institute (1991), the Verfügungsgebäude Building for third-party-funded research and early career researchers (1996), the Euroforum Building for events (1994), the Ecology Center for Natural Sciences (1996), a new lab center on the Garbenstraße (2009), a new, large lecture hall, the Otto Rettenmaier Audimax (2020), and the Phytotechnical Center as the University’s new research greenhouse (2020). A new Center for Animal Sciences has also been under construction on campus since 2021.

The former Öhmd Scheuer became the Thomas Müntzer Scheuer and thus also a teaching, cultural, and communication meeting place for University students.

For almost 40 years, the Student Services Tübingen-Hohenheim managed the barn, but after years of disputes, discussions, and demonstrations by the students, in 2016 the University of Hohenheim’s Student Parliament took over the management. The barn is named after the social revolutionary and theologian Thomas Müntzer (1489-1525).