The Institute of Religious Studies was founded in 1912 and has an exciting history. The existence of religious studies was particularly uncertain during the GDR era. Find out more in the interview with Dr Heinz Mürmel (1944 - 2019).
- 2021 Markus Dreßler receives the Heisenberg Professorship for Modern Turkey Research
- 2019 Sebastian Schüler receives the Professorship for General and Comparative Religious Studies as a specialist in Evangelicalism
- 2018 Horst Junginger is appointed to the Endowed Professorship of Religious Studies and Criticism of Religion
- 2016 Establishment of the DFG Collaborative Research Centre ‘Multiple Secularities: Beyond the West, beyond Modernities’
- 2014 Retirement of Hubert Seiwert
- 2013 Introduction of the Bachelor's degree programme in Religious Studies
- 2011 Establishment of the DFG Research Training Group ‘Religious Nonconformism and Cultural Dynamics’
- 2008 Appointment of Christoph Kleine to the Chair of History of Religions as a specialist in the religions of Japan
- 2006 Introduction of the Master's degree programme in Religious Studies
- 1994 Appointment of Hubert Seiwert to the Chair of General and Comparative Religious Studies as a specialist in Chinese religious history
- 1993 Re-establishment of the Institute of Religious Studies in the Faculty of History, Art and Oriental Studies
- 1985 Appointment of the Islamic scholar Holger Preißler (1943 - 2006) to the Chair of History of Religion
- 1984 Kurt Rudolph does not return to the GDR from a trip to the USA
- 1961 Kurt Rudolph (born 1929) receives a professorship with a teaching assignment
- 1953 Kurt Rudolph specialises in Gnosticism and Manichaeism and becomes a research assistant at the Institute for the History of Religions at the Faculty of Philosophy at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig
- 1946 Walter Baetke (1884 - 1978) receives the Chair of Nordic Philology at the Faculty of Philology at Karl Marx University Leipzig as a specialist in Germanic religious history
- 1935 Joachim Wach (1898 - 1955) emigrates to the USA due to National Socialist racial legislation
- 1924 Joachim Wach is a co-founder of the sociology of religion and becomes a private lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy at Leipzig University
- 1915 Appointment of the Protestant theologian Hans Haas (1868 - 1934) to the Chair of History of Religion as a specialist in Japanese Buddhism
- 1912 Foundation of the Department of History of Religions with the appointment of the Swedish Protestant theologian Nathan Söderblom (1866 - 1931) as a specialist in Zoroastrianism