Folkwang University of the Arts

Folkwang University of the Arts was founded in 1927, when opera director Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg, stage designer Hein Heckroth and choreographer Kurt Jooss opened the Folkwang School of Music, Dance and Speech in Essen, drawing on Karl Ernst Osthaus’s idea of all the arts under one roof. It gained university status in 1963 and has carried its present name since April 2010; its design strand descends from the Essen School of Trades and Applied Arts of 1911.

Some 1,600 students and more than 430 teachers work across four faculties: instrumental training, jazz and composition; music teaching and musicology; voice, music theatre, acting, directing and dance; and design. The design faculty teaches photography, industrial design, communication design and art and design science, from bachelor’s degrees in Photography, Intermedia Design and Product Design to a doctorate in Design Science.

Campuses spread across the Ruhr: Essen-Werden, in a former Benedictine abbey occupied since 1946; the Zollverein World Heritage site, where the design faculty moved into the 19,000 square metre Quartier Nord in 2017; Duisburg, Bochum and Dortmund. Seven stages host more than 400 public events a year.

Interdisciplinary cooperation between the arts remains the organising principle of teaching and research, and the Pina Bausch Professorship, run with the Pina Bausch Foundation, has existed since 2022.