page_title: University of Mannheim
section_title: Municipal Commercial College Mannheim (1907-1933)
hierarchical_section_title: University of Mannheim / History / 20th century / Municipal Commercial College Mannheim (1907-1933)
caption_attribution_description: English: Dr. Otto Beck - Senior mayor of Mannheim (1891-1908)
context_page_description: The University of Mannheim, abbreviated UMA, is a public research university in Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1967, the university has its origins in the Palatine Academy of Sciences, which was established by Elector Carl Theodor at Mannheim Palace in 1763, as well as the Handelshochschule, which was founded in 1907.
  The university offers undergraduate and graduate programs in business administration, economics, law, social sciences, humanities, mathematics, computer science and information systems. The university's campus is located in the city center of Mannheim and its main campus is in the Mannheim Palace. In the academic year 2016/2017 the university had 12,000 full-time students, 907 academic staff, with 194 professors, and a total income of around €123 million. It is organized into five schools and two graduate colleges.
context_section_description: In 1907, the Städtische Handelshochschule Mannheim (Municipal Commercial College) was founded on the initiative of Mannheim's senior mayor Otto Beck (1846–1908) and the economics professor Eberhard Gothein (1853–1923) as a college for future merchants. It conducted teaching and research in business administration, economics, pedagogy, psychology, law, languages and the humanities. From the beginning, women had a strong standing at the Handelshochschule. In 1908, it was the first college of higher education in Germany to employ a female professor; one quarter of all students were female.
  In 1933, the Handelshochschule was merged into the University of Heidelberg by the Nazi municipal administration. Otto Selz, a German philosopher and psychologist with a Jewish background, who had been a professor at the Handelshochschule since 1923 and its rector in 1929/30, was discharged on April 6, 1933 – following the Badischen Judenerlass administered by NSDAP politician Robert Heinrich Wagner, a waiver designed to ban Jewish academics from German universities. In 1943, Selz was executed in Auschwitz concentration camp; only 3 of the 14 Jewish docents at Mannheim's Handelshochschule survived the Holocaust. With the transfer of all institutes, inventory and staff to Heidelberg University the merging process was completed, the "Jews released" and the Handelshochschule closed.
caption: Otto Beck, one of the Founding Fathers of the Handelshochschule Mannheim
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