Heidelberg University - in Fiction and Popular Culture

In Fiction and Popular Culture

In 1880, Mark Twain wrote as detailed as humorously about his impressions of Heidelberg's student life in A Tramp Abroad. He painted a picture of the university as a school for aristocrats, whose students pursued a dandy-like lifestyle, and described the great influence the student corporations exerted on the whole Heidelberg student life.

In William Somerset Maugham's 1915 masterpiece novel Of Human Bondage, he described the one-year stay of the protagonist Philip Carey at Heidelberg University, in a largely autobiographical way. Heidelberg also featured in the respective film versions of the novel, released in 1934 (starring Leslie Howard as Philip, and Bette Davis as Mildred), 1946 (with Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker in the lead roles), and 1964 (with Laurence Harvey and Kim Novak in the lead roles).

The 1927 silent film The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, based on Wilhelm Meyer-Förster's play Alt Heidelberg (1903), starring Ramón Novarro and Norma Shearer, continued Mark Twain's image of Heidelberg, showing the story of a German prince who comes to Heidelberg to study there, but falls in love with his innkeeper's daughter. Having been very popular in the first half of the 20th century, it presents the typical student life of the 19th and early 20th century, and it is today considered a masterpiece of the late silent film era. MGM's 1954 color remake The Student Prince, featuring the voice of Mario Lanza, is based on Sigmund Romberg's operetta version of the story.

The university is also featured in Naoki Urasawa's 1994–2001 manga series, Monster, and its subsequent 2004–2005 anime adaptation, wherein it features as the university Nina Fortner (Anna Liebert) is attending to get her degree in law. By the end of the series, despite the turmoil she's faced and her professor's initial displeasure at her consistent tardiness, she graduates with her degree.

In Bernhard Schlink's semi-autobiographical 1995 novel The Reader, Heidelberg University is one of the main scenes of part II. Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, Michael Berg, a law student at the university, re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial, which he observes as part of a seminar. The university is also featured in the Academy Award-winning 2008 film version The Reader, starring Kate Winslet, David Kross and Ralph Fiennes.

In 2000, the university was the main scene of the award-winning German thriller Anatomy. The medical student Paula Henning (played by Franka Potente) wins a place in a summer course at the prestigious Heidelberg Medical School. When the body of a young man she met on the train turns up on her dissection table, she begins to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death, uncovering a gruesome conspiracy perpetrated by an antihippocratic secret society operating within the university.

The character, Sheldon Cooper, from the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory has referenced his studies at Heidelberg University, where he received his first Ph.D.