Charles University in Prague

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Charles University in Prague
Univerzita Karlova v Praze
Charles University seal
Latin: Universitas Carolina Pragensis
Motto --
Established 1347 or 1348
Type Public
Rector Professor Václav Hampl
Staff --
Students ~42,500
Location Prague, Czech Republic (EU)
Campus Urban
Affiliations Coimbra Group, EUA, Europaeum
Website http://www.cuni.cz/

Charles University in Prague (also simply Charles University; Czech: Univerzita Karlova; Latin: Universitas Carolina) is the oldest, largest and most prestigious Czech university and among the oldest universities in Europe, being founded in the late 1340s (for the exact year, see below).

As the first university in Central Europe, it attracted number of scholars from the region, mostly from neighbouring German states of the Holy Roman Empire, of which Bohemia was a part of at that time, and therefore it is in Germany sometimes mentioned as the oldest German university as well (Karlsuniversität), despite the fact that the first university in the German-speaking world was established in Vienna (1365) and the first university in present-day Germany in Heidelberg (1386).

According to the recent Academic Ranking of World Universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University it was qualified as the leading university not only in the Czech Republic, but in the whole region of Central and Eastern Europe, together with the University of Szeged in Hungary.

Contents

[edit] History

Most Czech sources since at least the 19th century - encyclopedias, general histories, materials of the University itself - give 1348 as the year of the founding of the university. On April 7 of that year, Charles I, the King of Bohemia (later known as Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor) issued a Golden Bull (transcription of the Latin original) granting its privileges. A minority however sees the papal bull of Pope Clement VI on January 26 of the previous year (1347) as primary, as for the foundation of any other Church institution, with the King's later bull only exempting it from secular authority; these suggest an anticlerical shift in the 19th century as an explanation for 1348 usually considered the founding year.

Based on the model of the University of Paris, the university was opened in 1349 and sanctioned by king Charles I in 1349.

Archbishop Arnost of Pardubice took an active part in the foundation by obliging the clergy to contribute. The lectures were held in the colleges, of which the oldest was named for the king the Carolinum. The university was sectioned into Czech, Bavarian, Saxon and Polish parts called nations.

Monument to the founder of the university, Emperor Charles IV
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Monument to the founder of the university, Emperor Charles IV

In 1403 the university forbade its members to follow the teachings of Wycliff, but his doctrine continued to gain in popularity. Jan Hus had translated Wycliff's Trialogus into the Czech language. He was dean and rector of the university. The other nations of the university declared their support for the side of Pope Gregory XII. Hus knew how to make use of king Wenceslaus' opposition to Gregory. By the decree of Kutná Hora (Dekret Kutnohorský in Czech) in 1409, Hus and the Czech nation had three votes in all affairs of the university, while only a single vote was for all the other nations combined where before each nation had one vote. The result of this was the emigration of the German professors and students to the University of Leipzig in May 1409. The Prague university lost the largest part of its students and the faculty. From then on the university declined to a merely national institution with a very low status. For decades no degrees were given and only the faculty of arts remained. Emperor Sigismund, son of Charles IV, took what was left into his personal property and some progress was made, and again later under emperor Rudolph II, when he took up residence in Prague. The emperor Ferdinand I called the Jesuits to Prague and they opened an academy. Soon they took over, were expelled 1618 - 1621, but by 1622 they had a predominant influence over the emperor. An Imperial decree gave the Jesuits supreme control over the entire school system of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. The last four professors at the Carolinum now resigned and all of the Carolinum and nine colleges went to the Jesuits. The right of handing out degrees, of holding chancellorships and of appointing the secular professors was also granted to the Jesuits.

Cardinal Ernst, Count von Harrach actively opposed this union of power and prevented the drawing up of the Golden Bull for the confirmation of this grant. Cardinal Ernst funded the Collegium Adalbertinum and in 1638 emperor Ferdinand III limited the teaching monopoly enjoyed by the Jesuits. He took from them the rights, properties and archives of the Carolinum making the university once more independent under an imperial protector. During the last years of the Thirty Years' War the Charles Bridge in Prague was courageously defended by students of the Carolinum and Clementinum.

The dilapidated Carolinum was rebuilt in 1718 at the expense of the state. Since 1650 those who received any degrees took an oath to maintain the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, renewed annually. The rebuilding and the bureaucratic reforms of universities of Austria in 1752 and 1754 deprived the university of many of its former privileges.

Doctoral diploma from 1905 for the astronomer Friedrich Hopfner
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Doctoral diploma from 1905 for the astronomer Friedrich Hopfner

(date 1806?) For the first time Protestants were allowed and soon after Jews. The university funded an additional Czech professorship. By 1863 out of 187 lecture courses 22 were held in Czech, the remainder in German. The Czechs were not satisfied. Consequently after long negotiations the Carolo-Ferdinandea was divided into a German and a Czech Charles-Ferdinand University by a law of 1882. Each section was entirely independent of the other, only the aula and the library were used in common. By 1909 the Czech students at the Czech Charles-Ferdinand University (Karlo-Ferdinandova univerzita) numbered 4,300 and the students at the German Charles-Ferdinand University (Karl-Ferdinand Universität) numbered 1,800. The two institutions continued to operate independently until 1939.

After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Czech part of the university was closed with all Czech higher-education institutions on November 17, 1939, after the demonstrations at the burial of its student shot in an earlier October 28 demonstration; many of its students and teachers were imprisoned in concentration camps and several student leaders executed. The German part of the institution proclaimed itself a university of Reich and was abolished after the liberation in 1945.

By Commandment No.112 Edvard Beneš ordered the German Part to be closed after the German Inhabitans of Prague and Bohemia hat been mostly driven out of the Country or murdered.

Although the university began to recover rapidly after 1945, it did not enjoy academic freedom for long. After the communist putsch in 1948, the new regime started to arrange purges and repress all forms of disagreement with the official ideology, and continued to do so for the next four decades, with the most painful wave of purges during the "normalization" period in the beginning of the 1970s. Only in the late 1980s did the situation start to improve; students organized various activities and several peaceful demonstrations. This initiated the "Velvet revolution" in 1989, in which both students and faculty of the university played a large role. Václav Havel - a writer, dramatist and philosopher - was recruited from the independent academic community and appointed president in January 1990.

[edit] Organisation

Seal of the Faculty of Medicine
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Seal of the Faculty of Medicine
Seal of the Faculty of Evangelical Theology
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Seal of the Faculty of Evangelical Theology

Today, Charles University comprises 17 faculties:

[edit] Notable alumni

Facade of the aula of the university.
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Facade of the aula of the university.

[edit] Notable professors

[edit] Leadership

  • Prof. RNDr. Václav Hampl, DrSc., took over the position of rector of Charles University on 1st February 2006 after Prof. Ing. Ivan Wilhelm, CSc.

[edit] External links

[edit] See also


Europaeum

Bologna | Bonn | HEI, Geneva | Helsinki | Kraków (Jagiellonian) | Leiden | Madrid (Complutense) | Oxford | Paris I: Panthéon-Sorbonne | Prague
Coimbra Group (of European research universities)
Aarhus | Barcelona | Bergen | Bologna | Bristol | Budapest | Cambridge | Coimbra | Dublin | Edinburgh | Galway | Geneva | Göttingen | Granada | Graz | Groningen | Heidelberg | Jena | Kraków | Leiden | Leuven | Louvain-la-Neuve | Lyon | Montpellier | Oxford | Padua | Pavia | Poitiers | Prague | Salamanca | Siena | Tartu | Thessaloniki | Turku I | Turku II | Uppsala | Würzburg
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