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university in Leipzig, Saxony, Germany (1409-)
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Leipzig University (German: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and Germany's second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence). The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Elector of Saxony and his brother William II, Margrave of Meissen, and originally comprised the four scholastic faculties. Since its inception, the university has engaged in teaching and research for over 600 years without interruption.
The university's alumni include 55 prime ministers and presidents, notably Angela Merkel who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. The university is also associated with 19 Nobel laureates, most recently with Leipzig faculty professor Svante Pääbo who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2022. Other alumni include Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Werner Heisenberg, Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, Theodor Mommsen, Wilhelm Ostwald, Cai Yuanpei, Edward Teller, Gustav Stresemann and Tycho Brahe, Georgius Agricola.
The university was modelled on the University of Prague, from which the German-speaking faculty members withdrew to Leipzig after the Jan Hus crisis and the Decree of Kutná Hora. The Alma mater Lipsiensis opened in 1409, after it had been officially chartered by Pope Alexander V in his Bull of Acknowledgment on 9 September of that year. Its first rector was Johannes Otto von Münsterberg. From its foundation, the Paulinerkirche served as the university church. After the Reformation, the church and the monastery buildings were donated to the university in 1544. In order to secure independent and sustainable funding, the university was endowed with the lordship over nine villages east of Leipzig (university villages). It kept this status for nearly 400 years until land reforms were carried out in the 19th century.
Like many European universities, Leipzig University was structured into colleges (collegia) responsible for organising accommodation and collegiate lecturing. Among the colleges of Leipzig were the Small College, the Large College, the Red College (Rotes Kolleg, also known as the New College), the college of our Lady (Frauenkolleg) and the Pauliner-College (Pauliner Kolleg). There were also private residential halls (bursen, see English 'bursaries'). The colleges had jurisdiction over their members. The college structure was abandoned later and today only the names survive.
During the first centuries, the university grew slowly and was a rather regional institution. This changed, however, during the 19th century when the university became a world-class institution of higher education and research. At the end of the 19th century, important scholars such as Bernhard Windscheid (one of the fathers of the German Civil Code) and Wilhelm Ostwald (viewed as a founder of modern physical chemistry) taught at Leipzig.
Leipzig University was one of the first German universities to allow women to register as "guest students". At its general assembly in 1873, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein thanked Leipzig University and the University of Prague for allowing women to attend as guest students. This was the year that the first woman in Germany obtained her JD, Johanna von Evreinov.
During the decline and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and first decade of 20th century together with some other German universities Leipzig University turned into one of the centers of higher education for state administrations and elites of newly independent Balkan states (Romania, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia) educating over 5,500 students from the region in 1859–1909 period.
Until the beginning of the Second World War, Leipzig University attracted a number of renowned scholars and later Nobel Prize laureates, including Paul Ehrlich, Felix Bloch, Werner Heisenberg and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. Many of the university's alumni became important scientists.
Under Nazi rule many degrees of Jews were cancelled. Some were later reinstated as Karl-Marx University degrees by the GDR. Noteworthy Nazis, such as Max Clara (chair of anatomy) taught at the university and were appointed to positions with great authority.
The university was kept open throughout World War II, even after the destruction of its buildings. During the war the acting rector, Erich Maschke, described the continuation of the university in a memo on 11 May 1945, announcing the vote for a new rector:
Since 4 December 1943 a fixed determination not to abandon the Leipzig University in the most difficult hour of its more than five-hundred-year history has bonded the professors with each other and with the students. The special task of repairing the damage caused by air attacks has now broadened out to the more general duty to save the continuity of our university and preserve its substance, at the very least its indestructible kernel, through the crisis that has now reached its fullest stage. After the destruction of most of the buildings and the majority of its libraries, this kernel is represented by the professoriate alone. This is what must be preserved as the great repository of value in the university.
By the end of the war 60 per cent of the university's buildings and 70 per cent of its books had been destroyed.
The university reopened after the war on 5 February 1946, but it was affected by the uniformity imposed on social institutions in the Soviet occupation zone. In 1948 the freely elected student council was disbanded and replaced by Free German Youth members. The chairman of the Student Council, Wolfgang Natonek, and other members were arrested and imprisoned, but the university was also a nucleus of resistance. Thus began the Belter group, with flyers for free elections. The head of the group, Herbert Belter, was executed in 1951 in Moscow. The German Democratic Republic was created in 1949, and in 1953 for Karl Marx Year the university was renamed by its government the Karl Marx University, Leipzig after Karl Marx. In 1968, the partly damaged Augusteum, including Johanneum and Albertinum and the intact Paulinerkirche, were demolished to make way for a redevelopment of the university, carried out between 1973 and 1978. The dominant building of the university was the University Tower (now City-Hochhaus Leipzig), built between 1968 and 1972 in the form of an open book.
In 1991, following the reunification of Germany, the university's name was restored to the original Leipzig University (Alma mater lipsiensis). The government also funded a new Faculty of Sport Science with the reunification, absorbing the facilities and programs of East Germany's premier sports university Deutsche Hochschule für Körperkultur (DHfK).
With the delivery of the University Tower to a private user, the university was forced to spread some faculties over several locations in the city. It controversially redesigned its historical centre at the Augustusplatz. In 2002, Behet Bonzio received the second prize in the architectural competition; a first prize was not awarded by the jury. A lobby with partial support of the provincial government called for the rebuilding of St. Paul's Church and Augusteum. This caused the resistance of the university leadership, the majority of the students and population of Leipzig. On 24 March 2004 a jury chose a design by Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat, which was well received by almost all parties. He recalls the outer form of the St. Paul's Church (today called Paulinum) and Augusteum, and abstracted the original building complex. Renovations began in the summer of 2005.
In 2008 the university was able to prevail in the nationwide "Initiative of Excellence" of Germany and it was granted the graduate school "BuildMoNa: Leipzig School of Natural Sciences – Building with Molecules and Nano-objects". In addition, the university was able to receive grants from the Saxon excellence initiative for the "Life" project – a project that tries to explore common diseases more effectively. Also in 2008 the "Bach Archive" was associated with the university. In 2009, the Leipzig University celebrated its 600th anniversary with over 300 scientific and cultural lectures and exhibitions, reflecting the role of the university's research and teaching from its beginning.
The university's urban campus comprises several locations. All in all, the university is spread across 38 locations in Leipzig. The main buildings in the city center (district Mitte) are still located on the same land plots as the earliest university buildings in 1409. The university's buildings in the center of Leipzig underwent substantial reconstruction from 2005, the new university's main building being drafted by Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat. The estimated total cost for the renovation project is 140 million euros. The new buildings were scheduled to be completed in 2009/2010, in time for the university's 600th anniversary celebrations.
Besides the faculties and other teaching institutions, several other bodies serve the university: the University Library, a university archive and administration, numerous museums (e.g. the Museum for Music Instruments and the Museum of Ancient Egypt) and the university hospital. The university's Leipzig Botanical Garden, the second-oldest botanical garden in Europe. was established in 1542. The university's Musical Instrument Museum includes one of the world's three surviving pianos built by Bartolomeo Cristofori, the piano's inventor. Five other Cristofori instruments are included in the museum's collections.
Key Central institutions of the university are
The University Library of Leipzig was established in 1543. It is one of the oldest German university libraries and it serves as a source of literature and information for the Leipzig University as well as the general public in the region. Its extensive historical and special collections are nationally and internationally recognized. The library consists of the main building "Bibliotheca Albertina" and forty branches situated near their respective academic institutions. The current stock comprises 5 million volumes and about 7,700 periodicals. Collections range from important medieval and modern manuscripts to incunabula, papyri, autographs, ostraka and coins.
The Apel Codex, a manuscript of 16th century music, is housed in the Leipzig University library, as well as the Papyrus Ebers.
The Leipzig University Library also owns parts of the Codex Sinaiticus, a Bible manuscript from the 4th century, brought from Sinai in 1843 by Constantin von Tischendorf. Papyrus Ebers is the longest and oldest surviving medical manuscript from ancient Egypt, dated to around 1600 BC. The Codex contains large parts of the Old Testament and a complete New Testament in ancient Greek, and is one of the most important known manuscripts of the Greek Old Testament and the New Testament. It is the oldest fully preserved copy of the New Testament.
The Oriental Manuscripts of the Leipzig University Library are around 3,200 oriental manuscripts.
Some of the University Library locations in Leipzig are:
In addition to the university library, one of the two centers of the German National Library is based at Leipzig, the collections of which are open to use for academic research.
The original four facilities were the Faculty of Arts, Theology, Medicine, and Law. As of November 2021, the university comprises the following 14 faculties with institutes and centers associated with each one.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Leipzig University”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.