University of Strasbourg - History

History

The university emerged from a Lutheran humanist German Gymnasium, founded in 1538 by Johannes Sturm in the Free Imperial City of Strassburg. It was transformed to a university in 1621 and elevated to the ranks of a royal university in 1631. Among its earliest university students was Johann Scheffler who studied medicine and later converted to Catholicism and became the mystic and poet Angelus Silesius (1624-1677)

The Lutheran German university still persisted even after the annexation of the City by King Louis XIV in 1681 (one famous student was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1770/71), but mainly turned into a French university during the French Revolution.

The university was refounded as the German Kaiser-Wilhelm-Universität in 1872, after the Franco-Prussian war and the return of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany provoked a westwards exodus of Francophone teachers. During the German Empire the university was greatly expanded and numerous new buildings were erected because the university was intended to be a showcase of German against French culture in Alsace. In 1918, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France, so a reverse exodus of Germanophone teachers took place.

During the Second World War, when France was occupied, personnel and equipment of the University of Strasbourg were transferred to Clermont-Ferrand. In its place, the short-lived German Reichsuniversität Straßburg was created.

In 1970, the university was subdivided into three separate institutions:

• Louis Pasteur University (Strasbourg I)
• Marc Bloch University (Strasbourg II)
• Robert Schuman University (Strasbourg III)

These were, however, reunited in 2009, a process that should finish in 2012, and were able to be among the first twenty French universities to gain greater autonomy.