The Faculty of artes liberales, the general liberal arts, was one of the University of Greifswald’s founding faculties when it opened in 1456. In 1547, after the Reformation, the Faculty had eight professorial chairs.
As a result of a decree passed by sovereign, King Charles XII of Sweden, in 1702, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities was reduced to five professorial chairs. These chairs had to ensure teaching in the subjects of Theoretical Philosophy, Rhetoric and Poetry, Practical Philosophy and History, Elementary and Higher Mathematics, including Civil and Military Architecture, as well as Greek and Oriental Languages. In 1763, the university received its first Botanical Garden, in 1765 its first independent professorial chair for History, and in 1775 its first Observatory.
In the Early Modern period, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities formed the “lower faculty”, which students had to pass through and graduate with the degree of Baccalaureus (Bachelor) before they could prepare for a career as a clergyman, judge or (medical) doctor in one of the three “higher faculties”. In 1750, thirteen-year-old Christina Ehrenfried von Balthasar was the first female recipient of a doctorate in Baccalaurea artium et philosophiae. During the Age of Enlightenment, the faculties of arts and humanities in Germany developed a new self-confidence as a place of fundamental research in the humanities and natural sciences. From this point onwards, the Doctor of Philosophy was the entry ticket to research-related careers in these subjects. Important scholars of the Enlightenment period were the librarian Johann Carl Dähnert and the poet Thomas Thorild. Ernst Moritz Arndt taught at the university during the transition from Enlightenment to Romanticism, having been appointed Adjunct Professor of History in 1806. He left Greifswald in an attempt to flee Napoleonic rule in 1811.
In 1880, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities had 18 full professors, five adjunct professors and four senior lecturers. The classical philologists and historians Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff and Otto Seeck as well as the historical theorist Ernst Bernheim were some of the prominent figures who taught at the University of Greifswald. In 1914, Felix Hausdorff from Greifswald published Die Grundzüge der Mengenlehre (The Basics of Set Theory). In 1919, the incumbent Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Johannes Stark, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.
In the winter semester of 1932/33, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities employed 33 full professors, 10 “non-civil servant adjunct professors” and 19 senior lecturers. Between the summer semester of 1933 and the summer semester of 1939, the percentage of NSDAP members in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities rose from 16.4% to 62.3%.
In 1945, NSDAP members were initially dismissed. However, they received state research contracts ensuring they didn’t go bankrupt and were partially reintegrated. In 1951, the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences was separated from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Hildegard Emmel, Professor of German Studies, was dismissed in 1958 at the request of the Faculty Council because she had “rejected the advice and help of the working class party”.
In 1968, as part of the GDR’s “Third University Reform”, the faculty structure was abolished in favour of the sectional structure. It was restored in 1990. In 2016, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, now excluding the natural sciences, had 38 professors.