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Charles University in Prague
Univerzita Karlova v Praze
Latin: Universitas Carolina Pragensis
Motto:	--
Established	1347 or 1348
Type:	Public
Rector:	Professor Václav Hampl
Staff:	--
Students:	~42,500
Location	Prague, Czech Republic (EU)
Campus:	Urban
Affiliations:	Coimbra Group EUA Europaeum
Website:	http://www.cuni.cz/

Charles University in Prague (also simply Charles University; Czech: Univerzita Karlova; Latin: Universitas Carolina; German: Karls-Universität Prag) is the oldest and largest university in the modern Czech Republic.

Being founded in the late 1340s, it is among the oldest universities in Europe and the first university in the Central and Eastern Europe. Its seal shows Charles kneeling in front of St. Wenceslas, surrounded by the inscription, Sigillum Universitatis Scolarium Studii Pragensis (English: Seal of the Prague academia, Czech: Pečeť studentské obce pražského učení). [1]

According to the recent Academic Ranking of World Universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, it ranked as the leading university not only in the Czech Republic, but in Eastern Europe, together with the University of Szeged in Hungary in terms of quality of scientific research leading to a Nobel Prize.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Exodus and decline 1.2 Conflict in Thirty Years' War 1.3 Revival as Charles-Ferdinand University 1.4 Separated Czech and German Charles-Ferdinand University 1.5 Controversy in Czechoslovakia 1.6 Reichsprotektorat 1.7 End of German tradition 1.8 Communist Czechoslovakia 2 Organisation 3 Notable alumni 4 Notable professors 5 Leadership 6 See also 7 External links

Most Czech sources since at least the 19th century - encyclopedias, general histories, materials of the University itself - give 1348 as the year of the founding of the university. On April 7 of that year, Charles I, the King of Bohemia (later known as Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor) issued a Golden Bull (transcription of the Latin original) granting its privileges. A minority however sees the papal bull of Pope Clement VI on January 26 of the previous year (1347) as primary, as for the foundation of any other Church institution, with the King's later bull only exempting it from secular authority; these suggest an anticlerical shift in the 19th century as an explanation for 1348 usually considered the founding year.

Based on the model of the University of Paris, the university was opened in 1349 and sanctioned by king Charles I in 1349.

Archbishop Arnost of Pardubice took an active part in the foundation by obliging the clergy to contribute. The lectures were held in the colleges, of which the oldest was named for the king the Carolinum. The university was sectioned into parts called nations: the Bavarian and Saxon ones represented German language students, Czech and Polish those from Slavic origin.

In 1403 the university forbade its members to follow the teachings of Wycliff, but his doctrine continued to gain in popularity. Jan Hus had translated Wycliff's Trialogus into the Czech language. He was dean and rector of the university. The other nations of the university declared their support for the side of Pope Gregory XII, thus the vote was 1:3 against Hus. Hus, though, took advantage of king Wenceslaus' opposition to Gregory. By the Decree of Kutná Hora (Dekret Kutnohorský in Czech) in 1409, Hus and the Czech nation assumed three votes in all affairs of the university, while only a single vote was left for all the other nations combined, compared to one vote per each nation before.

The result of this coup was an emigration of German professors and students, founding the University of Leipzig in May 1409. Thus, the Prague university lost the largest part of its students and the faculty. From then on the university declined to a merely national institution with a very low status. For decades no degrees were given and only the faculty of arts remained.

Emperor Sigismund, son of Charles IV, took what was left into his personal property and some progress was made, and again later under emperor Rudolph II, when he took up residence in Prague.

The emperor Ferdinand I called the Jesuits to Prague and they opened an academy. Soon they took over. They were expelled 1618 - 1621 during the early stages Thirty Years' War which was started in Prague by anti-Catholic and anti-Imperial Czechs. By 1622 the Jesuits had a predominant influence over the emperor. An Imperial decree gave the Jesuits supreme control over the entire school system of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. The last four professors at the Carolinum now resigned and all of the Carolinum and nine colleges went to the Jesuits. The right of handing out degrees, of holding chancellorships and of appointing the secular professors was also granted to the Jesuits.

Cardinal Ernst, Count von Harrach actively opposed this union of power and prevented the drawing up of the Golden Bull for the confirmation of this grant. Cardinal Ernst funded the Collegium Adalbertinum and in 1638 emperor Ferdinand III limited the teaching monopoly enjoyed by the Jesuits. He took from them the rights, properties and archives of the Carolinum making the university once more independent under an imperial protector. During the last years of the Thirty Years' War the Charles Bridge in Prague was courageously defended by students of the Carolinum and Clementinum.

A single university with four faculties - Charles-Ferdinand University - was created out of the arts faculty of Charles University (the only faculty surviving after the period of Hussite Wars) and the Jesuit Clementine Academy which had already been founded in the mid-sixteenth century. Starting from this time the university designated itself Charles-Ferdinand University and/or Universitas Carolo Ferdinandea.

The dilapidated Carolinum was rebuilt in 1718 at the expense of the state. Since 1650 those who received any degrees took an oath to maintain the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, renewed annually. The rebuilding and the bureaucratic reforms of universities of Austria in 1752 and 1754 deprived the university of many of its former privileges. However, the gradual introduction of enlightened reforms and this process culminated at the end of the century when even non-catholics were granted the right to study. At the same time German replaced Latin as the language of instruction.^[1]

For the first time Protestants were allowed and soon after Jews. The university funded an additional Czech professorship.^{[citation needed]}

Main article: German Charles-Ferdinand University

In the revolution of 1848 German and Czech students fought for the addition of the Czech language at the Charles-Ferdinand University. By 1863, 22 lecture courses were held in Czech, the remainder out of 187 in German. The Czechs were not satisfied with this bilingual status. Consequently after long negotiations the Carolo-Ferdinandea was divided into a German Charles-Ferdinand University and a Czech Charles-Ferdinand University by a law of 1882. Each section was entirely independent of the other, only the aula and the library were used in common.

By 1909 the Czech students at the Czech Charles-Ferdinand University (Univerzita Karlo-Ferdinandova) numbered 4,300, having few other Universities teaching in Czech to choose from. The students at the German Charles-Ferdinand University (Karl-Ferdinands Universität) numbered 1,800. The German faculty hosts persons like Ernst Mach, Moritz Winternitz, Albert Einstein, Max Brod, Franz Kafka and Johannes Urzidil.

Even before the Austrian Empire was abolished in late 1918 to be succeded by Czechoslovakia, Czech politicians demanded that the insignia of 1348 were exclusively to be kept by the Czech university. When military occupation of the German university buildings followed, its rector August Naegle protested personally to the Czech Prime Minister Karel Kramář. In 1920 the Lex Mareš was issued, named for its initiator Prof. of physiology František Mareš, determining that the Czech university was to be the sole successor to the original university, thus denying centuries of German-language history. Dropping the Habsburg Ferdinand, it designated itself Charles University, while the German university should remove Charles, as the namesake was claimed as Czech, with the rationalization that the university had been created in 1348 by Karl I. as a king of Bohemia and not under his title as Karl IV. as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. In the year 1930 only 42,000 inhabitants of Prague were still speaking German as there native language and they lived particularly in the city center, while millions lived in the Sudetenland near the border to Germany. Thus, the Germans considered moving their faculty to Reichenberg.

In October 1932, after Naegle's death, the Czechs started again a controversy over the insignia. Any agreement to use for both universities was rejected. In November 1934, the Charles-Ferdinand University had to hand over their insigniae to the Czechs after several thousand students of Charles University protested before the German university building. The Czech rector Karel Domin appealed to the crowd to attack, while the outnumbered German students of the Charles-Ferdinand University tried to resisted. Under the threat violence, rector Grosser handed over his insigniae. These troubles of 1934 destroyed any relationship between the two universities, and nations.

Main article: Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

The tides turned in 1938, when following the Munich agreement, German troops entered the Sudetenland, as did Polish and Hungarian troops elsewhere. By early 1939, the remaining Czecho-Slovakia fell apart, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia came under German control in March.

On 17 November 1939, after demonstrations at the burial of a student shot in an earlier October 28 demonstration, the Czech part of the university was closed with all Czech higher-education institutions. About 1200 students and teachers were imprisoned in concentration camps and several student leaders executed. With beginning of the term 1939/40 the Charles-Ferdinand University was subordinated to the Reichsministry of Education in Berlin.

In the invasion of the Red Army in Prague, which was accompanied by Czech partisan insurrections, 30 professors and numerous German students of the Charles-Ferdinand University were killed. The German Inhabitants of Prague and Bohemia were expelled according to Beneš decrees. With the Decree No. 112 by the President Edvard Beneš of 18 October 1945, the Charles-Ferdinand University was declared closed with effect dated back to 17 November 1939, while Charles University had reopened again in the summer. This was the end of the first German university of the Holy Roman Empire and the coexistence of the two universities in Prague.

Although the university began to recover rapidly after 1945, it did not enjoy academic freedom for long. After the communist putsch in 1948, the new regime started to arrange purges and repress all forms of disagreement with the official ideology, and continued to do so for the next four decades, with the most painful wave of purges during the "normalization" period in the beginning of the 1970s. Only in the late 1980s did the situation start to improve; students organized various activities and several peaceful demonstrations in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989 abroad. This initiated the "Velvet revolution" in 1989, in which both students and faculty of the university played a large role. Václav Havel - a writer, dramatist and philosopher - was recruited from the independent academic community and appointed president in January 1990.

Today, Charles University comprises 17 faculties:

• Catholic Theological Faculty
• Evangelical Theological Faculty
• Hussite Theological Faculty
• Faculty of Law
• 1st Faculty of Medicine
• 2nd Faculty of Medicine
• 3rd Faculty of Medicine
• Faculty of Medicine in Plzeň
• Faculty of Medicine in Hradec Králové
• Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové
• Faculty of Arts
• Faculty of Science
• Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
• Faculty of Education
• Faculty of Social Sciences
• Faculty of Physical Education and Sport
• Faculty of Humanities

See also: :Category:Charles University alumni

• Václav Bělohradský (b. 1944) philosopher
• Edvard Beneš (1884–1948), sociologist, second president of Czechoslovakia
• Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848), mathematician and philosopher
• Max Brod (1884–1968), writer
• Karel Čapek (1890–1938), writer
• Eduard Čech (1893–1960), mathematician
• Carl Ferdinand Cori (1896–1984), biochemist, Nobel laureate
• Gerty Cori (1896–1957), biochemist, Nobel laureate
• Josef Dobrovský (1753–1829), philologist and historian
• Viktor Fischl (1912-2006), poet and diplomat
• Jaroslav Heyrovský (1890–1967), chemist, Nobel laureate
• Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997), writer
• Jan Hus (1369–1415), religious thinker and reformer
• Jan Janský (1873–1921), discoverer of blood types
• Franz Kafka (1883–1924), writer
• Karl I of Austria (1887–1922), last emperor of Austria and the last king of Bohemia
• Egon Erwin Kisch (1885–1948), writer and journalist
• Miroslav Holub (1923-1998), writer and immunologist
• Luboš Kohoutek (b. 1935), astronomer
• Milan Kundera (b. 1929), writer
• Jan Marek Marci (1595–1697), physician
• Matthias of Trakai (c. 1370-1453), Bishop of Vilnius
• Lyubomir Miletich (1863-1937), Bulgarian academician
• George Placzek (1905–1955), physicist
• Jan Evangelista Purkyně (1787–1869), physiologist
• Ota Šik (1919–2004), economist
• Ferdinand Stoliczka (1838–1874), paleontologist
• Jan Stráský (b. 1940), politician
• Nikola Tesla (1856–1943), inventor, physicist
• Peter Tomka (b. 1956), International Court of Justice Judge
• Ivana Trump (b. 1949), Socialite and Entrepreneur.
• Vladislav Vančura (1891–1942), writer
• Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), psychologist

See also: :Category:Charles University faculty

• Johannes Vodnianus Campanus - author, playwright
• Albert Einstein - theoretical physicist
• Jan Hus - religious thinker and reformer
• Ernst Mach - theoretical physicist
• Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk - philosopher, politician, 1st president of Czechoslovakia
• Jan Mukařovský - literary theorist, linguist
• Alois Musil - orientalist
• Jan Patočka - philosopher
• Vojtěch Jarník - mathematician

• Prof. RNDr. Václav Hampl, DrSc., followed Prof. Ing. Ivan Wilhelm, CSc. on the position of rector of Charles University on 1 February 2006.

• Medieval university
• Prague

• Charles University Website
  • University history - DOC file with pictures
• Charles University Historical and contemporary information on Prague's leading university
• "University of Prague". Catholic Encyclopedia. (1913). New York: Robert Appleton Company. 

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