University of Innsbruck
Innrain 52
Worth knowing
The university is one of the largest employers and, with its many locations, the largest property user in Innsbruck. 30,000 students populate, enliven and characterise life between the Nordkette and Patscherkofel mountains. You only realise how much the students enliven Innsbruck when the foreigners return home between semesters. Tens of thousands not only enliven the nightlife and the ski slopes, but also give the small town an international flair and hip urbanity.
1669 is considered the official founding year of the University of Innsbruck. On 15 October, Emperor Leopold I granted the Tyroleans the privilege of "Haller Salzaufschlags", which made it possible to tax the coveted commodity more heavily and thus finance university operations. The university emerged from the Latin school, which had been founded by the Jesuits under Ferdinand I just over a hundred years earlier. Latin and Greek were the main subjects taught. Academic books were still written in Latin in the early modern period. Latin was also a prerequisite for higher positions in the civil service. The first faculty to start teaching was philosophy. Theology, law and medicine followed shortly afterwards. When Pope Innocent XI gave the university his blessing in 1677, it was already in full swing.
By 1665, Innsbruck had lost its status as a royal seat and thus its prestige and splendour. The university made up for this demotion somewhat by retaining the aristocracy, at least in the form of students. Many sons of aristocratic families were among the initial 300 students. Despite their social standing, the students were not necessarily ambitious model pupils, but rather boys who were used to a certain lifestyle and status. In January 1674, for example, "nit allein zu nächtlicher Zeit sich Ungelegenheiten, Rumores und ungereimte Handlungen“ und es wurden „Studenten der Universität angetroffen, die allerlei verbotene Waffen wie Feuerrohr, Pistolen, Terzerol, Stilett, Säbel, Messer…" had with them. Teenagers from the upper classes were used to carrying and using weapons. In the aristocracy, the concept of honour was of immense importance. As in the military, breaches of honour could also lead to duels in student circles. Fighting fraternities symbolically continue this tradition to this day. The encounters between privileged young people and burghers, servants and tradesmen did not always run smoothly either. This created the problem that although students were able to mingle with the city's inhabitants, they were subject to university law, which was separate from city law.
For a long time, women and sons of artisan families were not allowed to study at university. The first female doctor of law at the university was only celebrated in the press on 11 December 1923.
„Am kommenden Samstag wird an der Innsbrucker Universität Fräulein Mitzi Fischer zum Doktor iuris promoviert. Fräulein Fischer ist eine gebürtige Wienerin. In Wien absolvierte sie auch das Gymnasium. Nach der Reifeprüfung oblag sie dem juristischen Studium der Universität Innsbruck. Die zukünftige Doktorin hat sämtliche Prüfungen mit Auszeichnungen absolviert, müßte also nach dem früheren Brauche sub auspiciis imperatoris promovieren. Jedenfalls ist Fräulein Fischer die erste Dame, die sich an der Innsbrucker Universität den juristischen Doktortitel erwirbt.“
Originally, the university was not located on the Innrain, but in Herrengasse near the parish church of St Jakob. A lack of space forced the students and professors to move to the outskirts of the city. From 1914 onwards, the library moved to the current location of the main university. The neo-baroque building was continuously expanded over time to cope with the increasing number of faculties and students. Particularly worth seeing in the library is the old reading room, which is very popular with students as a stylish place to study.
The forecourt is controversial, with the square designed by Lois Welzenbacher. Memorialwhich commemorates the fallen members of the University during the First World War. The fraternity motto "Ehre – Freiheit – Vaterland" was extended to include the word "Which". The renaming of the forecourt to Christoph-Probst-Platz commemorates the Innsbruck medical student who died in 1943 as a member of the resistance group Weiße Rose was executed. A memorial plaque on the Memorial A second plaque commemorates the liberation theologians Ignacio Ellacuría and Segundo Montes, two graduates of the University of Innsbruck who were murdered by the regime in San Salvador in 1989.
The university has always been a political issue. The name Leopold Franzens University goes back to the two emperors Leopold and Franz, under whom it was founded. The university was downgraded or closed twice before Emperor Franz I re-established it in 1826. The changes in the economy and society in the early years of industrialisation also had an impact on the university. In keeping with the spirit of the time, the opening speech by the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, Prof Dr Joachim Suppan (1794 - 1864), dealt with a practical problem of physics, namely "eine genauere Kenntnis der so wichtigen und nützlichen Erfindung der Dampfmaschine auch für die vaterländische Industrie, wo dieselbe bisher noch keine Anwendung hat" would be achieved. The fact that Supan was also an ordained priest in addition to his degrees in philosophy and mathematics shows the influence that the church had on the education system in the 19th century. Supan's final exhortation to the students shows how closely the university was linked to the state authorities alongside the church, „dereinst dem Vaterlande durch Kenntnis und Tugend ersprießliche Dienste zu leisten“.
With the annexation to the German Reich in 1938, the university was renamed once again. After the war, the German Alpine University again the Leopold Franzens University.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, teachers and students have repeatedly made sensational achievements in research. Victor Franz Hess was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics during his time at the University of Innsbruck for his achievements in cosmic ray research. Quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger also worked at the University of Innsbruck, although not in 2022 when he was awarded the prize. The Nobel Prize for Chemistry was also awarded to Professors Fritz Pregel, Adolf Windaus and Hans Fischer, although they too were no longer working in Innsbruck.
St Peter Canisius and the Jesuits
Jesuits, Franciscans, Premonstratensians, Carmelites, Servites, Capuchins, Ursulines. Visitors to Innsbruck usually walk past many monasteries without realising it. The Jesuits were probably the most politically influential order in the history of the city. The "Soldaten Christi" were founded by the former nobleman and officer Ignatius of Loyola (1491 - 1556). Loyola was a moral reformer. Unlike Luther, he wanted to change the church, but not without the Pope as its head. The Jesuits focussed on better training for the clergy and higher moral standards based on Christian roots in everyday church life.
Through skilful structures, discipline and organisation, adopted from the military, the Order grew rapidly and managed to establish a special relationship with the Habsburgs during the Counter-Reformation. Many members of the dynasty can be recognised in their rule and actions as having been influenced by the order from which they received their education. Jesuits such as Bartholomew Viller or Wilhelm Lamormaini were politically influential as confessors and advisors to the Habsburgs in the early modern period. It is no coincidence that the Jesuits are still the adversaries of the Freemasons in countless conspiracy theories and novels and are regarded by many as the modern-day equivalent of the James Bond villain.
A keen supporter of the Jesuits in Tyrol was the Tyrolean prince and later Emperor Ferdinand I. Like Ignatius of Loyola, he had grown up in Spain. He had just as many difficulties with the customs of the Germans and the non-existent Reformation movement in Spain as he did with the language. The Tyrolean population, on the other hand, were alienated from their sovereign, who, with his foreign court, could easily be mistaken for an occupying power. A connecting element between the two worlds was the Roman Church, especially the Jesuits.
The Jesuits were very open to research, knowledge gathering and education and wanted to learn to understand the world in terms of Christian creation. This made them a hip antithesis to both the dusty existing orders and the Protestants. Faith and empiricism combined to form a kind of pre-modern science that attempted to explain nature and physics. Ferdinand II's collection at Ambras Castle bears witness to the thirst for research of the time, as do the alchemical experiments carried out by Emperor Matthias.
The Jesuits recognised that great political influence could be gained through the education system. Not only aristocrats, priests and politicians, but also civil servants were educated in schools and colleges. Protestant countries and cities had begun to German schoolsacademies and grammar schools. In Catholic countries, it was the ecclesiastical orders that founded schools and universities.
The Jesuits founded the Latin school in Innsbruck, from which the university would later emerge. The new school had a major impact on the city's development. The intelligentsia was educated here, enabling Innsbruck's rise as an administrative and economic centre. Under Joseph II, many ecclesiastical orders were disempowered and expropriated, including the Jesuits, whom he had little love for. The University of Innsbruck was downgraded to a lyceum under him in 1781. They were not reappointed to Innsbruck until 1838. In addition to professorships at the university, they were also in charge of the Theresianum, a grammar school for the aristocracy.
For all their love of science, mysticism returned to everyday church life under the Jesuits. Passion plays, Easter sepulchres, processions and feast days were intended to soften the strict principles of the faith with drama and spectacle.
The Jesuit order, fully committed to popular belief, was also highly motivated when it came to persecuting witches and people of other faiths. In the then recently discovered New World in America and Asia, the Jesuits were eager to proselytise the local pagan population. St Francis Xavier, one of Ignatius of Loyola's first companions, died on a missionary journey in China. In a side chapel of the Jesuit church in Innsbruck, this Soldaten Christi an altar was consecrated.
One of the most important Jesuit theologians was Petrus Canisius (1521 - 1597). The educated cleric quickly rose through the ranks of the newly founded Jesuit order and was installed by Emperor Ferdinand as one of the most important ecclesiastical politicians in the empire.
During his travels across Europe, Petrus Canisius also spent some time in Innsbruck and was instrumental in the establishment of the Jesuit order. He was both a confessor to the aristocracy and a churchman for the masses, reaching out to the rural population while travelling through the villages of Tyrol. He recognised that Latin was not the language to immunise peasants, farmhands and maids against Protestantism. With his catechism, Petrus Canisius wrote an important German-language collection of ideas in the Catholic struggle against the Protestant Reformation, which was translated into all languages and was long regarded as a guide for the Catholic Church.
Today, Karl-Rahner-Platz is not only home to the Jesuit Church, but also the Faculty of Theology at the University of Innsbruck. In Saggen, the Collegium Canisianum belongs to the Jesuits.