University of Wrocław

University of Wrocław
Uniwersytet Wrocławski
Latin: Universitas Wratislaviensis
Established 1945
Type Public university
President prof. dr hab. Marek Bojarski
Students 43 000 (2010) [1]
Location Wrocław, Poland
Website www.uniwersytetwroclawski.com

The University of Wrocław (Polish: Uniwersytet Wrocławski; German: Universität Breslau; Latin: Universitas Wratislaviensis) is one of nine universities in Wrocław, Poland. Former, German university was founded in 1702 as Leopoldina, and re-founded in 1811 as Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau. History of a contemporary Polish university started in 1945, after the area passed to Poland, the university was established primarily by academics from the former University of Lwów. From 1952 to 1989, it was officially named in honour of Bolesław Bierut, The First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party and so known as Uniwersytet Wrocławski im. Bolesława Bieruta.

Contents

History

Leopoldina

At the request of the town council King Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary signed the foundation deed on July 20, 1505. Due to numerous wars and fierce opposition from near Cracow Academy, however, the new academic institution wasn't built.

The predecessor facilities, which existed since 1638, were converted into Jesuit school, and finally, upon instigation of the Jesuits and with the support of the Silesian Oberamtsrat (Second Secretary) Johannes Adrian von Plencken, donated as a university in 1702 by Emperor Leopold I as a School of Philosophy and Catholic Theology with the designated name Leopoldina. On 15 November 1702, the university opened. Johannes Adrian von Plencken also became chancellor of the University. As a Catholic institute in Protestant Breslau the new university was a important instrument of the Counter-Reformation in Silesia. After Silesia passed to Prussia the university lost its ideological character but remained a religious institution for the education of Catholic clergy in Prussia.

Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität

After the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon and the subsequent reorganisation of the Prussian state, the academy was merged on August 3, 1811, with the Protestant Viadrina University, previously located in Frankfurt (Oder) and re-established in Breslau as the Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau. At first, the conjoint academy had five faculties: philosophy, medicine, law, Protestant theology, and Catholic theology.

Connected with the university were three theological seminars, a philological seminar, a seminar for German Philology, another seminar for Romanic and English philology, an historical seminar, a mathematical-physical one, a legal state seminar, and a scientific seminar. From 1842, the University also had a chair of Slavic Studies. The University had twelve different scientific institutes, six clinical centers, and three collections. An agricultural institute with ten teachers and forty-four students, comprising a chemical veterinary institute, a veterinary institute, and a technological institute, was added to the university in 1881. In 1884, the university had 1,481 students in attendance, with a faculty numbering 131.

The library in 1885 consisted of approximately 400,000 works, including about 2,400 incunabula, approximately 250 Aldines, and 2840 manuscripts. These volumes came from the libraries of the former universities of Frankfurt and Breslau and from disestablished monasteries, and also included the oriental collections of the Bibliotheca Habichtiana and the academic Leseinstitut.

In addition, the university owned a observatory; a five-hectare botanical garden; a botanical museum and a zoological garden founded in 1862 by a joint stock company; a natural history museum; zoological, chemical, and physical collections; the chemical laboratory; the physiological plant; a mineralogical institute; an anatomical institute; clinical laboratories; a gallery (mostly from churches, monasteries, etc.) full of old German works; the museum of Silesian antiquities; and the state archives of Silesia.

In the late nineteenth century, numerous internationally renowned and historically notable scholars lectured at the University of Breslau, Johann Dirichlet, Ferdinand Cohn, and Gustav Kirchhoff among them. According to Polish professor of history Henryk Barycz in the academic year of 1813/1814 Polish youth constituted the majority of students at the University.[2] Following decisions made at the Congress of Vienna, the Kingdom of Prussia was ceded the former territories of the Duchy of Warsaw and established the autonomous Grand Duchy of Posen. In contrast to the other provinces of Prussia, these territories did not possess universities of their own.[3] In 1817 Poles made around 16% of the student body and 10% in 1871. The percentage of Jewish students was around 16% in 1817.[4] This situation reflected the multiethnic and international character of the University.[5] Both minorities, as well as the German students, established their own student organisations, called Burschenschaften.

In 1827 Hieronim Zakrzewski petitioned Prussian authorities to fund University in Poznan during the first meeting of local parliament in Poznań in 1827.[6]

The Prussian government chose to not found universities there because of concerns about creating "bastions of Poledom", but instead to have the Lower Silesian Breslau university also serve the Grand Duchy of Posen (60% Polish majority) and the East Prussian University of Königsberg also serve West Prussia (30% Poles).[3]

Polish student organisations included Concordia, Polonia, and a branch of the Sokol association. Many of the students came from other areas of partitioned Poland. The Jewish students unions were the Viadrina (founded 1886) and the Student Union (1899). Teutonia, a German Burschenschaft founded in 1817, was actually one of the oldest student fraternities in Germany, founded only two years after the Urburschenschaft. The Polish fraternities were all eventually disbanded by the German professor Felix Dahn,[4] and in 1913 Prussian authorities established a numerus clausus law that limited the number of Jews from non-German Eastern Europe (so called Ostjuden) that could study in Germany to at most 900. The University of Breslau was allowed to take 100.[7]

As Germany turned to Nazism, the university became influenced by Nazi ideology. Polish students were beaten by NSDAP members just for speaking Polish.[8] In 1939, all Polish students were expelled and a official university declaration stated, "We are deeply convinced that [another] Polish foot will never cross the threshold of this German university".[9] In that same year, German scholars from the university worked on a scholarly thesis of historical justification for a "plan of mass deportation in Eastern territories"; among the people involved was Walter Kuhn, a specialist of Ostforschung. Other projects during World War II involved creating evidence to justify German annexation of Polish territories, and presenting Kraków and Lublin as German cities.[10]

Founding of today's Polish university

After the Siege of Breslau, the Soviet Red Army took the city in May 1945 and subsequently handed it over to the People's Republic of Poland. The German population fled or was expelled. The Polish Jan Kazimierz University of Lwów, complete with library and Ossolineum Institute, which was about to be handed over to the Soviet Ukrainian SSR, was moved to Wrocław with thousands of staff, employees and their belongings.[11] Many of the buildings were partially destroyed during the defence of the city. Parts of the collection of the university library was burned by soldiers of the Red Army on 10 May 1945, four days after the German garrison surrendered the city.

The first Polish team of academics arrived in Wrocław in late May 1945 and took custody of the university buildings, and started to rearrange the university buildings, which were 70% destroyed. Very quickly some buildings were repaired, and a cadre of professors was built up, many coming from prewar Polish universities in Wilno and Lwów.

The university as we known today was originally founded under its current name as a Polish state university by a decree issued on August 24, 1945. Its first lecture was given on November 15, 1945 by Ludwik Hirszfeld. From 1952 to 1989 the University of Wrocław was known as Uniwersytet Wrocławski im. Bolesława Bieruta, after Bolesław Bierut, the former president and prime minister of Poland.

In 2002 the university celebrated the 300th anniversary of its founding.

Notable alumni and faculty

Nobel Prize winners when the University was known as the Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau:

Notable students and professors:

Honorary Doctorates

Notes

  1. ^ Official site of the University - University in numbers
  2. ^ Studia nad przeszłością i dniem dzisiejszym Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego Wojciech Wrzesiński Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1989 page 9
  3. ^ a b Molik, Witold (2007). Dirk Alvermann, Nils Jörn, Jens E. Olesen. ed (in German). Die Universität Greifswald in der Bildungslandschaft des Ostseeraums. Berlin-Hamburg-Münster: LIT Verlag. pp. 374. ISBN 3825801896. 
  4. ^ a b Norman Davies Microcosm page 334, 336
  5. ^ Norman Davies Microcosm page 110-115, 207-210
  6. ^ Uniwersytety Rzeszy w Poznaniu, Pradze i Strassburgu jako model hitlerowskiej szkoły wyższej na terytoriach okupowanych Teresa Wróblewska Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu, 1984, page 78
  7. ^ Norman Davies "Microcosm" page 337
  8. ^ Norman Davies "Microcosm" page 393
  9. ^ Norman Davies "Microcosm" page 394
  10. ^ Norman Davies Microcosm page 389, 390
  11. ^ Davies, Norman (2005). God's playground: a history of Poland in two volumes. Volume 2 (2 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199253404. 

See also

External links

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