| Ivan Franko National University of Lviv |
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|---|---|
| Львівський національний університет імені Івана Франка | |
| Latin: Universitas Leopoliensis | |
| Motto | Раtriаe dесоri сіvibus еducаndis |
| Motto in English | Educated citizens - glory of the Motherland |
| Established | 1661 |
| Type | Public |
| President | Ivan Vakarchuk |
| Students | 11649 |
| Location | Lviv, Ukraine |
| Specialty programs | 111 |
| Colors | Blue and Gold |
| Website | www.lnu.edu.ua |
Lviv University (Ukrainian: Львівський університет, Polish: Uniwersytet Lwowski) or officially the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (Ukrainian: Львівський національний університет імені Івана Франка) is the oldest continuously operating university in Ukraine. It is located in the historic city of Lviv in Lviv Oblast of western Ukraine.
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The university was founded on January 20, 1661 when King John II Casimir of Poland issued the diploma granting the city's Jesuit Collegium, founded in 1608, "the honour of the academy and the title of the university". The Jesuits had tried to create the university earlier, in 1589, but did not succeed. Establishing another college in Poland was seen as a threat by authorities of Kraków's Jagiellonian University, who did not want a rival and for many years managed to halt plans of the Jesuits.
King John II Casimir was a sympathizer of the Jesuits and his stance was crucial. The royal diploma was confirmed by another act issued in Częstochowa on February 5, 1661. Creation of the school was also stipulated by the Treaty of Hadiach. One of its articles stated that a Ruthenian academy was to be created in Kiev and another one should be created in an unspecified location, most likely in Lviv, which was an important center of the Greek Catholic church.
The Jesuit Collegium existed until 1758, when King Augustus III issued a decree, which described the Collegium as an Academic School, with two departments: theology and philosophy.
In 1772 Lviv was annexed by Austria (see: Partitions of Poland) and the Society of Jesus was dissolved by the government in Vienna. The school was renamed into Theresianum, i.e. State Academy. Twelve years later, Emperor Joseph II officially granted it a university status, with four departments - theology, philosophy, law and medicine. Most professors at the university were Austrian or German-speaking members of various of the Empire. Latin was the official language of the school, with Polish or Ukrainian were permitted only in certain classes.
In 1805 the university was closed, as Austria, then involved in the Napoleonic wars, did not have sufficient funds to support it. Instead, a high school was established. The university reopened in 1817; officially Vienna described it as an act of mercy, but reasons were different. The Austrian government were well-aware of the pro-Polish policies of Russian Emperor Alexander I and they wanted to counterbalance it. However, quality of education was not high; Latin was replaced by German and most professors were mediocre. The few good ones regarded their stay in Lviv as a springboard to other careers.
In 1848, when pan-European revolution reached Lviv (see: Revolutions of 1848), students of the university created two organizations—the Academic Legion and Academic Committee—demanding that the school be polonized. The government in Vienna answered with force, and on November 2, 1848, center of the city was shelled by the troops of General Hammerstein striking buildings in the university, especially the library. Soon afterwards, curfew was established and the university was temporarily closed.
The school was reopened in January 1850, with limited autonomy. After a few years the Austrians relented and on July 4, 1871 Vienna declared Polish and Ruthenian official languages at the university. Eight years later this was changed. The Austrian authorities declared Polish as official and Ruthenian and German as auxiliary. Examinations in two latter languages were possible as long as the professors spoke them. This bill created unrest among the Ruthenians, who were demanding equal rights. Finally, a Ruthenian student of department of philosophy, Miroslaw Siczynski murdered in 1908 the Polish governor of Galicia, Andrzej Potocki. After this event, both Poles and Ruthenians came to the conclusion that a separate, Ruthenian university should be created, but the lack of professors nipped these plans in the bud.
Meanwhile the Lviv University was thriving, becoming one of two existing Polish language colleges (the other one was the Jagiellonian University in Kraków). Its professors were famous across Europe, with such renowned names as Wladyslaw Abraham, Oswald Balzer, Szymon Askenazy, Stanislaw Zakrzewski, Zygmunt Janiszewski, Kazimierz Twardowski, Benedykt Dybowski, Marian Smoluchowski and Ludwik Rydygier.
From 1919 until September 1939, in the Polish Second Republic era, the university was known as John Casimir University (Polish: Uniwersytet Jana Kazimierza) in honor of its founder. The decision to name the school after the king was taken by the government of Poland on November 22, 1919.
Jan Kazimierz University was the third biggest academic center of the country (after the universities in Warsaw and Kraków). On February 26, 1920, the university received from the Polish government the building formerly used by the Galician parliament, which has since been the university's main edifice. Its first rector in the Second Polish Republic was the famous poet Jan Kasprowicz.
In 1924 the Philosophy Department was divided into Humanistic and Mathematical-Biological Departments, thus there were five departments:
Altogether, in the academic year 1934/35 there were 5900 students at the university, among which:
Ukrainian professors were required to take a formal oath of allegiance to Poland; most of them refused and left the university in early 1920s.
In 1939, after the Polish September Campaign and the accompanying Soviet invasion, the Soviet occupiers permitted classes to continue. Until late 1939, the school worked in the pre-war Polish system. On October 18, however, the Polish rector, Professor Roman Longchamps de Bérier was dismissed, and he replaced by a prominent Ukrainian historian, Mykhailo Marchenko, grandfather of Ukrainian journalist and dissident Valeriy Marchenko. Marchenko was determined to transform the University of Lwow into the Ukrainian National University.[1] On January 8, 1940, the university was renamed Ivan Franko Lviv State University.[1] Polish professors and administrative assistants were increasingly fired and replaced by Ukrainians or Russians, specializing in Marxism, Leninism, political economics, as well as Ukrainian and Soviet literature, history and geography.[1] This was accompanied by the closing of departments seeing as related with the religion, free-market economics, capitalism, or the West in general; this included Polish geography, literature, or history.[1] Lectures were held in Ukrainian and Polish (as auxiliary). In the period 1939-1941 the Soviets also executed over a dozen members of the Polish faculty.[1]
In July 1941 the Nazi German occupiers closed the university, followed by the massacring two dozen Polish professors (as well as members of their households and guests, increasing the total number of victims to above forty), who included members of other academic institutions, too.[1] The extent to which Ukrainian nationalists may have been involved in identifying and selecting some of the victims is still a matter of debate, as Polish historian Adam Redzik wrote, while the Ukrainian nationalist students helped prepare lists of Polish intellectuals, it is unlikely they expected or knew about their intended purposes (i.e., the executions).[1]
In the summer of 1944, the advancing Red Army, assisted by Polish Home Army forces locally implementing Operation Burza, pushed the Wehrmacht out of Lviv and the university reopened. At first, its academic staff consisted of Poles, but within the following months most of them, together with the Polish population of the city, were "evacuated" in the expelled, as Stalin had moved Poland's borders far to the west. The traditions of Jan Kazimierz University have been preserved at the University of Wrocław, which was established after the German inhabitants of that city had been expelled following Stalin's establishing Germany's eastern border farther to the west.
Media related to [//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Lviv_University Lviv University] at Wikimedia Commons
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