Campus Westend and City of Frankfurt
Campus Westend
Campus Westend of Goethe University Frankfurt nestles in a burst of parkland, yet directly borders Frankfurt's downtown, boasting a wealth of eateries, shops, theatres and other recreational facilities. The buildings of Campus Westend are based around the Neo-Realist IG Farben Building, while immediately beyond the campus boundaries you can find splendid art deco residences and cutting-edge modernist architecture.
The House of Finance building is part of a gigantic investment by the State of Hesse to build a new site for Goethe University. The House of Finance is an elegant five-story building, inaugurated in early 2008. Encompassing 14,000 square meters and featuring state-of-the-art technology, the building offers ideal working conditions. The House of Finance serves as an academic center, that also regularly brings together a network of the economic and financial community, politics, and science.
Directions to reach Campus Westend and the Houise of Finance with public transportation:
(i) From Airport and Hauptbahnhof: S-Bahn (Lines S8, S9) to Hauptwache; from Hauptwache U-Bahn (Lines U1, U2, and U3) to Holzhausenstraße.
(ii) From Hauptwache: U-Bahn (Lines U1, U2, and U3) to Holzhausenstraße.
(iii) From Westbahnhof: Bus (Line 36) to Campus Westend.
Detailed Directions to Campus Westend
City of Frankfurt
"Were someone to ask me what place I thought more comfortable for my cradle, more fitting for my bourgeois attitudes, more appropriate for my poetic view, I could not name a better city than Frankfurt." (Johann Wolfgang Goethe)
Top 50 cities in the world offering the best quality of life: 1. Zurich (Switzerland), Geneva (Switzerland), 3. Vancouver (Canada), Vienna (Austria), 5. Frankfurt (Germany), and others. (Mercer Consulting)
In the course of its history, the city of Frankfurt on the river Main has developed into a multifaceted and highly versatile European metropolis (at 569,000, Frankfurt features almost as many employees as it has inhabitants - 650,000), specifically having become the financial center of Continental Europe. Over 370 credit institutes from 53 countries run operations here. This enormous number of financial institutions includes almost all German private and public banks as well as many of the internationally well-known players from both Europe and United States. Frankfurt also has been home to an exchange for more than 400 years. Today, over 90% of the total stock exchange turnover in Germany is handled in Frankfurt. With both the stock exchange "Deutsche Börse" and the futures and options exchange "Eurex", Frankfurt is home to an exchange of major global importance. Also located in Frankfurt is one of the key global economic policy institutions, the European Central Bank, as several key national economic policy institutions, such as Deutsche Bundesbank and the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau. The proximity of Goethe University to Frankfurt’s economic and financial institutions provides unique opportunities to foster the exchange between academics, professional economists, and economic and financial decision makers.
Everyday life in Frankfurt is international and multilingual, given that almost every third person in Frankfurt holds a non-German passport. Frankfurt’s airport is the “Gateway to Europe”, as its more than 45 million passengers a year make it the largest airport on the European continent. The Frankfurt Trade Fair, one of the oldest in the world, organizes world famous fairs like the Book Fair or the IAA International Motor Show; the fair grounds attract approximately 2.7 million visitors to Frankfurt in peak years. The new media, too, have not by-passed Frankfurt: the German heart of the internet is here, the internet node DE-CIX, which handles 85% of inner-German internet communications and is thus Germany’s largest online-hub.
Yet the Main metropolis is not just a business city and European transportation hub, it also has a unique and thriving social scene. Frankfurt’s cosmopolitan atmosphere makes it easy for newcomers to settle in and make friends in the community. The city’s cultural life is nurtured by a total of 37 museums, 109 galleries, 33 theatres, more than 50 cinemas and numerous other attractions, including the Frankfurt opera. Numerous publishing houses, including Suhrkamp and Campus, help mould the city’s cultural profile. The leisure potential further includes countless bars, cafés and restaurants scattered throughout the city’s various residential quarters. The zoo, the Main promenade, the botanical gardens and other municipal parks are much-loved oases in the city. Both local and international stores on shopping streets like Frankfurt’s Zeil and Goethestrasse guarantee that a stroll through the city is an exciting one. Just 20 kilometers from downtown Frankfurt lie the Taunus mountains, with their broad expanses of woodland, and the beautiful Rheingau wine-growing region is just a stone’s throw away.
And surely not to be forgotten: Being in Frankfurt, one cannot fail to meet up with him in some form or other: Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Frankfurt’s most famous former citizen. Goethe, poet and thinker, clandestine state minister and universal genius, writer and politician, was born in Frankfurt on August 28, 1749. Some of Goethe’s most famous works were written in Frankfurt, like the play “Goetz v. Berlichingen” and the novel “Die Leiden des jungen Werther”. In 1772 Goethe witnessed on the Rossmarkt near the Hauptwache the execution of Susanna Margaretha Brandt for infanticide; Brandt became the model for Gretchen in his play “Faust”. Adding further to this list of local connections in Goethe’s writings: his bitter-sweet love affair with Marianne von Willemer (“West-Östlicher Divan”), that had as its backdrop some of the most romantic spots in Frankfurt, the Gerbermühle (a mill on the river Main) and the Willemer House. First and foremost among the many places in Frankfurt recalling the life and work of Goethe, however, is his birthplace, now known as “Goethehaus”.