History

The Catholic University of Applied Sciences Freiburg was founded in 1971. It was created by merging several predecessor institutions.

The oldest predecessor of today's university is the Social Women's School in 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: the Youth Leaders' Seminar at the German Caritas Association. In 1971, this institution was also integrated into the university as the Department of Social Pedagogy.

The range of courses offered by the new Catholic University of Applied Sciences Freiburg, which was established in 1971, was completed by the integration of the curative education seminar at the German Caritas Association. This seminar had been founded in 1965 and was integrated into the university as the Department of Curative Education. The Department of Religious Education was added in 1973, the Department of Nursing in 1992, which was the first in Germany to be established with innovative courses of study, and the Department of Management in 2003. In 2003, the previously separate degree courses in Social Work and Social Pedagogy were reformed in accordance with the requirements of the state of Baden-Württemberg and merged into one degree course in Social Work.

A new constitution and structure of the KH Freiburg came into effect on September 1, 2015. The current university structure combines organizational principles of hierarchy and self-organization with special consideration of the academic freedom of universities and the guidelines of the HRK.