page_title: Aarhus University
section_title: The main building and World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Aarhus University / History / The main building and World War II
caption_attribution_description: Dansk: Buerne mod parkenEnglish: The arches at the park
context_page_description: Aarhus University is the largest and second oldest research university in Denmark. The university belongs to the Coimbra Group, the Guild, and Utrecht Network of European universities and is a member of the European University Association.
  The university was founded in Aarhus, Denmark, in 1928 and comprises five faculties in Arts, Natural Sciences, Technical Sciences, Health, and Business and Social Sciences and has a total of twenty-seven departments. It is home to over thirty internationally recognised research centres, including fifteen Centres of Excellence funded by the Danish National Research Foundation. The university is ranked among the top 100 world's best universities. The business school within Aarhus University, called Aarhus BSS, holds the EFMD Equis accreditation, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business and the Association of MBAs. This makes the business school of Aarhus University one of the few in the world to hold the so-called Triple Crown accreditation. Times Higher Education ranks Aarhus University in the top 10 of the most beautiful universities in Europe.
context_section_description: In 1938, the university management acknowledged it was time to consider an expansion due to lack of space and overcrowding of the auditoriums. The solution was The Main Building (Hovedbygningen), containing both rooms and facilities for new academic areas, as well as housing for the general administration, an assembly hall and a canteen. The building was to be organized according to a principle of institutes so that teaching and research took place in certain rooms with their own library and study for the professor.
  The construction of the building took place during the German occupation of Denmark (1940–45) in World War II, which affected the process in more than one way. No state funds had been involved in the construction of the first university building and a second building for physiology, biochemistry, and a high voltage laboratory, but because the Nazis were against civil use of materials and work forces, the state contributed to the main building. In 1943, the Gestapo, Sicherheitsdienst, Geheime Feldpolizei and Abwehr set up their regional headquarters in the five student halls of residence on campus. Fearing that the same would happen to the new main building, its completion was delayed. C. F. Møller later wrote that for once there was plenty of time to work on the details of the building, like patterned brickwork, acoustic screens and furniture. Furniture designer Aage Windeleff, designed the furniture specially for the main building, while Børge Mogensen's industrially produced furniture designs are the most commonly used elsewhere on campus.
  The presence of the Gestapo in Aarhus led to multiple arrests of Danish resistance fighters and the resistance movement soon realized they needed outside assistance. On 15 October, the leader of the illegal Danish underground army in Jutland, Niels Bennike, sent the following telegram to London:
  Undergrunden i Jyland ved at blive revet op af Gestapo. Vigtigere at få ødelagt arkiver og bevare vore folk end at bevare arkiver og få ødelagt vore folk. Jeg beder indtrængende om, at kollegium 4 og 5, gentager 4 og 5, må blive ødelagt ved luftangreb. Det er de to vestligste, gentager vestligste, bygninger i universitetskomplekset. Haster, gentager haster.
  
  ("Underground in Jutland getting torn up by the Gestapo. More important to get the archives destroyed and save our people than getting our people destroyed and save the archives. I implore that residence hall 4 and 5, repeat 4 and 5, be destroyed by air strike. They are the two farthest to the west, repeat farthest to the west, buildings of the university complex. Urgent, repeat urgent.")
  On 31 October 1944, the Royal Air Force bombed the Gestapo's headquarters in residence halls 4 and 5, also killing ten civilian workers. 2 Group Bomber Command carried out the bombing by using 25 Mosquito planes. The air strike on the University of Aarhus took place in a heavily populated area and the campus was surrounded by three hospitals. To avoid civilian casualties, the RAF prepared with a model of the campus, shooting at residence halls 4 and 5 with chalk bags. The architect C. F. Møller was in the main building during the air strike but survived and was later dug free from the rubble. The reconstructed main building opened on 11 September 1946.
caption: The brick colonnades
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