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"Student Number 1" Turns 90

Professor Dr. med. Stanislaw Kubicki, One of the Founding Students of Freie Universität Berlin, Will Celebrate a Special Birthday

№ 240/2016 from Jun 30, 2016

The founding student of Freie Universität Berlin with the student ID number 1, Prof. Dr. med Stanislaw Karol Kubicki, is celebrating a special birthday next week. On July 5, he will turn 90. Stanislaw Karol Kubicki still maintains close ties to Freie Universität. The president of Freie Universität, Prof. Dr. Peter-André Alt, paid tribute to Kubicki's involvement in the founding of Freie Universität. The university owes its founding in 1948 to the persistence, foresight, and courage of students such as Stanislaw Karol Kubicki.

After World War II, Stanislaw Karol Kubicki started studying medicine at the main university in Berlin, at that time called Universität Unter den Linden, re-named after the boulevard. The university was located in the eastern sector of the divided city and was increasingly being put under ideological pressure by the Communist leadership in that sector. After three students critical of the new system were expelled for political reasons, Kubicki along with many fellow students and instructors, urged that a new, ideologically free university be founded in one of the western sectors of the city. Their goal was to be able to study and do research without being subjected to political influence. With help from the American Allies and the support of Berlin politicians, a new university, Freie Universität Berlin, was founded on December 4, 1948, during the Berlin Blockade.

Stanislaw Karol Kubicki is the son of Stanislaw Kubicki, a writer, philosopher, translator, and Expressionist painter, who was murdered by the Gestapo in 1943. In 1948 he was officially the first student to enroll at Freie Universität, where he continued studying medicine. Kubicki was a member of the original student union, AStA, which had been founded in the wake of protests against the politically motivated expulsions of three student editors of the Colloquium magazine at Universität Unter den Linden. After completing his medical degree and earning a doctorate, Stanislaw Karol Kubicki became a professor of neurology. He was highly regarded for his research on sleep, and from 1974 to 1991, he headed the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology at the Charlottenburg University Hospital of Freie Universität.

Further Information, Photo and Interview Requests:

We are happy to accommodate interview requests. Please understand that out of consideration for the age of Professor Kubicki, such requests may be arranged exclusively through the Office of News and Public Affairs of Freie Universität: Freie Universität Berlin, Office of News and Public Affairs, Tel.: +49 30 838-73180, Email: presse@fu-berlin.de