History

The Catholic University of Applied Sciences Freiburg (KH Freiburg) was founded in 1971 and created by merging several predecessor institutions.

The oldest predecessor institution of today's KH Freiburg is the Women's School of Social Work Heidelberg, which was initiated by Countess Maria von Graimberg and founded in 1911. It existed until 1971 as a higher technical school for social work under the auspices of the German Caritas Association and was integrated into the KH Freiburg as the Heidelberg Department from 1971 until its dissolution in 1979.
In 1929, another predecessor institution of the KH Freiburg was founded with the Youth Leadership Seminar at the German Caritas Association. In 1971, this institution was also integrated into the University as the Department of Social Pedagogy.

The makeup of today’s Catholic University of Applied Sciences Freiburg was completed by the integration of the Curative Seminar of the German Caritas Association. This seminar had been founded in 1965 and was integrated into the University as the Department of Curative Education. In 1973, the Department of Religious Education was added, in 1992 the Department of Nursing, which was the first in Germany to be established with innovative courses of study, and in 2003 the Department of Management. In 2003, in accordance with the requirements of the state of Baden-Württemberg, the previously separate degree programs in Social Work and Social Pedagogy were reformed and merged into one degree program in Social Work.

On September 1, 2015, a new constitution and structure of the KH Freiburg came into effect. The current University structure combines organizational principles of hierarchy and self-organization with special regard to the academic freedom of universities and the guidelines of the University Rectors’ Conference.