Oldenburg University

The first teachers training was held in Oldenburg as early as 1793, launched by Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig. A garden seminar for teachers training was created in 1882. During the Weimar Republic, the establishment of the Pedagogical Academy (Pädagogische Akademie) in Oldenburg in 1929 enabled the vocational training of teachers. On 1 October 1945, the institution reopened in postwar Germany. In 1948 it was renamed the Pedagogical College Oldenburg (Pädagogische Hochschule Oldenburg). The first step towards the university was taken on 23 February 1959 with the decision of the city council to launch a university project, which was followed in 1970 with the Memorandum establishing the University of Oldenburg from the Minister of Culture of Lower Saxony. The university was finally founded in 1973. Enrollment and teaching started in the summer semester of 1974, with an education curriculum for 2,400 students. In 1991, the university was officially named after pacifist, writer and Nobel laureate Carl von Ossietzky, having been denied to take on his name by previous (both left-leaning and right-leaning) state governments.^[3] That same year, the number of students passed the mark of 10,000. The eleven departments of the university were reorganized into five faculties in 2002. By the end of 2011, there were about 11,325 students.