The faculty was divided into Czech and German parts in 1882, and the Faculty of Natural Sciences became a separate institution between 1920-1939. In 1939, the school was closed by the occupying forces of Nazi Germany, and brutal persecution of teachers and students followed. Following the end of the occupation in 1945, the Faculty of Arts flourished again for a few years; this was forcibly terminated in 1948 by the Communist coup in 1948. The prestige of the faculty rapidly decreased as a result of the forced departure of numerous respected teachers and the introduction of Marxist–Leninist studies. In the 1960s, the faculty slowly began to open to prominent thinkers of the time, but this trend was reversed by the Soviet occupation in 1968, which Jan Palach, a student of the faculty, protested against by setting himself on fire. After the end of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1989, and the departure of its representatives in the faculty, it was re-established as one of the country's most highly regarded university institutions.