Hochschule Mittweida

Carl Georg Weitzel, who was an engineer from Mannheim, founded the „Technikum Mittweida“ in the old city theatre on 7 May 1867. He was supported by local enterprises and the municipality. This privately run training centre for mechanical engineers had soon attracted numerous students because the “Technikum Mittweida” had already been one of the biggest educational institution in Germany at the turn of the century. At that time, the Free State of Saxony was one of the leading states in mechanical engineering. In 1870, it owned the densest railway network of all German states. Moreover, Chemnitz was the centre of the German mechanical engineering in 1871.

Carl Georg Weitzel recognized that the industry was in need of engineers familiar with and connected to industrial experience next to qualified workers and masters. For centuries, education felt obliged to keep this image up, sometimes fighting against the view of the official educational policy and occasionally against chicanes. By no means, it was strived to approximate the “Technikum” as a “higher technical institution” to a technical university. Nevertheless, compared to diverse vocational schools, it was taught on a much higher level.

New features in the interdependent of municipalities and colleges could be emphasised by a common distinction of the teacher and architect Johann Nepomuk Bürtel from the Fichte-Schule in Mittweida that year in May.

In June the senate confirmed the request for obtaining the right to award doctorates in the area of physics and laser technology. The board of trustees agreed to these ideas in December. Another improvement for the training could be achieved by opening the EMV laboratories in Mittweida at the end of that year.

At the beginning of the lectures in the academic year 2006/2007, 5,300 students have been studying at the college in Mittweida. More than 750 are enrolled in Bachelors and Masters. At present about 10 from 31 courses of studies are accredited as Bachelors and Masters. The college in Mittweida participates in international projects to promote the educational training of Bachelors and Masters. In the European programme “Alfa”, the college is a coordinator for developing a cooperative and international study path for undertaking its Master in “Industrial Management” to achieve a degree as “Master of Science”. All courses of studies are thought to undergo a changeover until the academic year 2007/2008.

Modern teaching and research facilities are available to all students at the college of Mittweida and in associated research centres. The centres for laser application, sensor technology, conveyor and structural-design technology, media development and media management are well-known by now. The doctorates connected to cooperative doctorate procedures also stand for the efficiency of the college in Mittweida. It is one of the big endeavours of the university administration in the nineties that the cooperative doctorate procedure was enabled in the higher education act of the state of Saxony. Special attention is valid for the practise-oriented research and for the re-construction of the college as a place for academic teaching.