An 18-year-old student opened fire in a lecture hall at Heidelberg University in southwestern Germany on Monday, killing a young woman and injuring three others before fleeing the scene and turning the weapon on himself, France 24 reported.
The gunman fired shots "wildly" around the amphitheater, a police spokesman told AFP.
The shooting took place during an organic chemistry class for bioscience students, a course the assailant himself was enrolled in, university president Bernhard Eitel told reporters.
The motive for the attack was not immediately clear but police said there were early indications the gunman had previously suffered from psychiatric problems.
The assailant had sent an alarming text message to his father shortly before the rampage.
In the WhatsApp message, the gunman wrote that "people have to be punished now", Mannheim police chief Siegfried Kollmar told a press conference. The message also said, "He doesn't want to be buried in a cemetery but at sea."
The shooting shocked the picturesque town of Heidelberg and left students traumatized.
Thirty people were attending the lecture at the Neuenheimer Feld campus when the gunman burst in and fired multiple shots using "a long weapon", Kollmar said.
Police received the first emergency calls from inside the lecture hall at 12:24 pm and officers were at the scene within 10 minutes, he added.
They discovered the gunman's body outside the building after he killed himself.
The rampage left four people wounded, including a young woman, 23, who died of her injuries in hospital several hours later.
The three others suffered wounds to the legs, back, and face, Kollmar said.
RHM/PR