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It was founded in 1948 by students and staff who were relegated because of their political views from Humboldt University, formerly the traditional Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität of Berlin, and at that time controlled by the authorities in the Soviet sector. In 1968, it was the center of the left-wing German student movement in parallel to that in Paris and Berkeley. By the 1980s, it had become the largest German university with 66,000 students. With the democratic restructuring of Humboldt University after the German reunification, Freie Universität Berlin was downsized to about 38,000 students in the 1990s. Its main campus is located in the Dahlem district of the borough Steglitz-Zehlendorf, although many institutions are scattered throughout the city.
Research at the Freie Universität Berlin is focused on humanities and social sciences. Prominent former scholars of the university include the philosopher Jacob Taubes , the philologist Peter Szondi , the German Supreme Court judge Jutta Limbach , former German president Roman Herzog and the 2004 German presidential candidate Gesine Schwan. The robot soccer players of the university's Computer Science department became vice world champions in 1999, 2000 and 2003.