German Oxford. At the beginning of the 20th century, a colony of villas was built on the fields of the Dahlem domain. When the Kaiser Wilhelm Society began to build institutes there in 1910, many scientists were also drawn to the new settlement in the countryside. Today, the Max Planck Society (the successor to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society), Freie Universität, and various other institutes characterize the Dahlem research campus.
 

Sources and additional information

After 1900, following an initiative by Friedrich Althoff, the Ministerial Director in the Prussian Ministry of Education, a unique research landscape “in the countryside” was created on the grounds of the Dahlem domain. Initially, several scientific administrative organs and the construction of two institutes of the Berlin University near the Botanic Garden contributed to the new settlement. The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science (KWG), founded in 1911, promoted the further implementation of Althoff’s plans for a “German Oxford.”

• The Extraordinary History of a “German Oxford” on the website of Freie Universität Berlin

• Book: Dahlem – Domäne der Wissenschaft; Ein Spaziergang zu den Berliner Instituten der Kaiser-Wilhelm-/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft im „deutschen Oxford“ by Eckart Henning and Marion Kazemi, available as a PDF file (in German)
• Information about walking tours: DahlemTour – 100 Jahre Wissenschaft im „deutschen Oxford“ der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (in German)