In the autumn of 1899 Kaiser Wilhelm II ended a long dispute. He gave the Prussian technical universities the right to award a doctorate, the Doktor-Ingenieur, or Dr.-Ing. With this right the technical universities reached the standing of the universities. Hesse followed for Darmstadt on 25 November 1899.
The first doctoral examinations at Darmstadt took place on 8 March 1902. Two engineers, Julius Adolf Möllinger from Nuremberg and Ernst Vetterlein from Leipzig, became doctors of engineering.