University Wrocław

University of Wrocław

The main building of the university.

The University of Wrocław (Polish: Uniwersytet Wrocławski; German: Universität Breslau; Latin: Universitas Wratislaviensis) is one of nine universities in Wrocław, Poland. The university was founded in 1702 as Leopoldina, and refounded in 1811 as Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau. In 1945, after the area passed to Poland, it was re-established primarily from the former University of Lwow. From 1952 to 1989, it was renamed Boleslaw Bierut University.

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

Connected with the university were three theological seminars, a philological and a seminar for German Philology, likewise for Romanic and English philology, a historical, mathematical-physical, legal state and a scientific seminar. Since 1842 the University also had a chair of Slavic Studies. The University had 12 different scientific institutes, 6 clinical centers and 3 collections. Since 1881 an agricultural institute with 10 teachers and 44 students, which comprised a chemical veterinary, a veterinary and a technological institute, belonged to the university. The number of students was (1884) 1,481; the number of tutors, 131.

The library in 1885 consisted of approximately 400,000 works, including about 2,400 incunabula (until 1500), approximately 250 Aldines and 2840 manuscripts. They originated from the library collections of the former universities of Frankfurt and Breslau, repealed monasteries, and also included the oriental collections of Bibliotheca Habichtiana and academic Leseinstitut.

In addition, the university owned a observatory, a botanical garden (5 hectares) with 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 and Mineralogical institute, the 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.

At that time, numerous internationally renowned and historically notable scholars lectured at the university, including Johann Dirichlet, Ferdinand Cohn and Gustav Kirchhoff.

The Partitions of Poland resulted in the incorporation of the Grand Duchy of Posen and West Prussia into the Prussian state. In contrast to the other provinces of Prussia, these territories did not possess a university of their own. The Prussian government opted to not found universities there because of concerns to create "bastions of Poledom", but instead have the Lower Silesian Breslau university also serve the Grand Duchy of Posen (Polish majority) and the East Prussian University of Königsberg also serve West Prussia (30% Poles).Polish students constituted around 16% of the student body in 1817 and 10% in 1871. The percentage of Jewish students was around 16% in 1817. This situation reflected the multiethnic and international character of the University. Both minorities, as well as the German students, established their own student organisations, called Burschenschaften. 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,^[2] and in 1913 Prussian authorities established a numerous 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 itself was allowed to take 100.^[4]

As Germany turned to Nazism, the university became influenced by Nazi ideology. Polish students were beaten by NSDAP members just for speaking Polish In 1939 all Polish students were thrown out of the university and a official university declaration stated "We are deeply convinced that Polish foot will never cross the threshold of this German university". In 1939 German scholars from the university worked on a scholarly thesis of historical justification for "plan of mass deportation in Eastern territories". Among the people involved were 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.

Closing and reestablishment as a 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 population fled or was expelled. The Polish University of Lwow, complete with library and Ossolineum Institute, which was about to be handed over to the Soviet Ukrainian SSR, was moved to Wroclaw with thousands of staff, employees and their belongings.^[8] 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, seized all property from surviving German professors, 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 was refounded 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 Boleslaw Bierut University, after Bolesław Bierut, the former president and prime minister of Poland.

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