FREIBURG, fri-boorg, or FREYBURG, or FREIBURG IM BREISGAU, Baden, a town in the circle of the upper Rhine, in the valley of the Dreisam, and on the railway from Carlsruhe, in one of the most beautiful and fertile districts of south Germany, at the west foot of the Black Forest. It consists of the town proper, the fortifications of which have been converted into pleasure-grounds, and of two suburbs, and is the seat of a superior civil and criminal court, and of several public offices. The buildings most deserving of notice are the miinster or cathedral, a large and beautiful Gothic structure built of red sandstone, ad mired for its delicate symmetry, with a magnifi cent portal richly sculptured, and surmounted by a tower, partly of exquisite open work, 380 feet high; the university, founded in 1457, the merchant house, now the chief tax office, a quaint Gothic structure, resting on pointed arches, and decorated externally with fresco portraits of the Emperor Maximilian, his son Philip I, Charles V and Ferdinand I; and the grand-ducal palace and government buildings.
Freiburg is the see of an archbishop, and the seat of the courts and offices for the circle of the upper Rhine. Pop. 83,324; pop. of the entire District of Freiburg being 564,580 and area 1,830 square miles. Its university had, in the winter semester 1914-15: professors and teachers, 151; students, 2,237 (theology 250, jurisprudence 469, medicine 960, philosophy 301, and the remainder students of the faculties of mathematics and natural science). The faculty of theology in the University of Freiburg, as in the universities of Munich, Munster and Wiirzburg, is Roman Catholic.