Chernivtsi University

The Chernivtsi National University (named after Yuriy Fedkovych, fully titled Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, Ukrainian: Чернівецький національний університет імені Юрія Федьковича) is a public university in the city of Chernivtsi in Western Ukraine. One of the leading Ukrainian institutions for higher education, it was founded in 1875 as the Franz-Josephs-Universität Czernowitz when Chernivtsi (Czernowitz) was the capital of the Duchy of Bukovina, a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary. Today the university is based at the Residence of Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans building complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2011.

History

In 1775, the Austrian Habsburg monarchy had obtained the territory of Bukovina, which from 1786 was governed as the Chernivtsi district within the Galicia. Under the rule of Emperor Joseph II, the sparsely populated territory was settled by German colonists, mainly from Swabia. Together with the Austrian administration they formed a separate population group and by the late 19th century, several institutes of higher education arose with the German language of instruction, including Gymnasien in Chernivtsi and Suceava. As the graduates still had to leave Bukovina to study in the western parts of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the local administration developed plans to found their own university.

Franz-Josephs-Universität

In 1866, the Austrian Empire had lost the war against Prussia ending the German Confederation, which was followed by the establishment of the German Empire in 1871. In turn, Habsburg emperor Francis Joseph I turned his attention to his eastern crown lands. Plans for a Germanophone university were modelled on the establishment in 1872 of the University of Straßburg Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität, named after German Emperor William I, in annexed Alsace-Lorraine.

After Lviv University had declared Polish a teaching language in 1871, a Bukovina committee led by the ethnically Romanian jurist and liberal politician Constantin Tomashchuk (1840–1889), a member of the Imperial Council, called for the foundation of a German college in multilingual Czernowitz about 740 kilometres (460 mi) "beyond" Vienna. In 1874 they addressed a petition to the Austrian minister of education Karl von Stremayr, on whose proposal Emperor Francis Joseph finally resolved upon the establishment of a university, which was decided on by the two houses of the Imperial Council on 13 and 20 March 1875. Other cities applying for the creation of a college, such as Trieste, Olomouc, Brno, Ljubljana or Salzburg, were unsuccessful.

One hundred years after the affiliation of Bukovina to the Austrian monarchy, the Franz-Josephs-Universität was inaugurated on 4 October 1875 (the name day of the emperor) on the basis of the Czernowitz Higher Theological School. Constantin Tomashchuk was appointed its first rector. The ensemble of the Residence, combining elements of national, Byzantine, Gothic and Baroque architecture, is an outstanding example of 19th-century historicist architecture, design and planning, expressing the cultural identity of the Orthodox Church within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Originally, the main language of instruction was German with separate departments for Ukrainian and Romanian and literature. German was the primary language even though the region it was located in, Bukovina, was not German-speaking, and a few other Austro-Hungarian universities outside of German-speaking areas were shifting away from German-medium teaching. The Emperor saw instruction in German as a means to enable any subject to progress anywhere in the Monarchy or elsewhere in Europe, where German was then the most-spoken language. During the period of Austro-Hungarian rule, the university operated three faculties: Greek Orthodox theology (the only one in Central Europe), jurisprudence and philosophy. To pursue the study of medicine, the Bukovina graduates still had to go to Lviv or to the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

Campuses and buildings

Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University consists of 17 buildings having a total of 105 units. The total area is 110,800 square meters, including training buildings of 66 square meters.

The architectural ensemble of the main campus of the university, the Residence of Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans, is included on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The university operates Chernivtsi Botanical Garden, which features over a thousand different spices and an arboretum located on the territory of the main campus.

Institutes and faculties

• Institute of Biology, Chemistry and Bioresources
• Institute of Physics, Engineering and Computer Studies
• Faculty of Geography
• Faculty of Economics
• Faculty of Modern European Languages
• Faculty of History, Political Science and International Relations
• Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics
• Faculty of Pedagogics, Psychology and Social Activity
• Faculty of Philology
• Faculty of Philosophy and Theology
• Faculty of Law
• Faculty of Physical Training and Health
• Faculty of Architecture, Construction, Arts and Crafts

Libraries

The university library was founded in 1852 as Krayova Library — the first public library in Bukovina. By 2004, its total book stock included 2,554,000 copies and among them 1,215,000 copies of scientific literature, 171,000 of textbooks and manuals, and 648,000 of fiction. The fund of foreign books contains 376,000 works in German, Romanian, English, Latin, Polish, Ancient Greek, French, Hebraic, Yiddish and other languages.

The scientific library includes 11 departments: collection, scientific processing, native fund preservation, foreign fund preservation, rare and valuable books, book borrowing, reading halls, branch, cultural work, information technologies and information-bibliographic.

International relations

The university has partnerships with universities in Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Bosnia, United Kingdom, Estonia, Israel, Spain, China, Latvia, Moldova, Germany, South Korea, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, United States, Turkey, France, Croatia, Finland, Czech Republic. It participates in projects and in the framework of cross border cooperation programmes such as TEMPUS, EMERGE – Erasmus Mundus European Mobility with Neighboring Region in the East: Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Jean Monnet Programme, ERASMUS Programme. It is also a partner of the EUROSCI Network.

Notable professors and alumni

Sydir Vorobkevych (1836–1903), Ukrainian composer and writer.

Alois Handl (1837–1915), Austrian physicist.

Anton Wassmuth (1844–1927), Austrian physicist, member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Anton Marty (1847–1914), Swiss philosopher.

Alexander Georg Supan (1847–1920), Austrian geographer.

Leopold Bernhard Gegenbauer (1849–1903), Austrian mathematician.

Georg Elias Müller (1850–1934), German experimental psychologist.

Friedrich Becke (1855–1931), Austrian mineralogist and petrograph.

Eusebius Mandyczewski (1857–1929), Ukrainian musicologist, composer, conductor, and teacher.

Ivan Franko (1856–1916), Ukrainian poet, writer, social and literary critic, journalist, interpreter, economist, political activist.

Eugen Ehrlich (1862–1922), Austrian legal scholar, one of the primary founders of the modern field of sociology of law.

Oleksander Kolessa (1867–1945), Ukrainian ethnographer, philologist and diplomat.

Mykola Vasylko (Nikolaus Wassilko von Serecki, 1868–1924), Austro-Hungarian and Ukrainian politician and diplomat.

Josef Geitler von Armingen (1870–1923), Austrian physicist.

Josip Plemelj (1873–1967), Slovene mathematician.

Honorary doctors

Leonid Kadeniuk, the first astronaut of Ukraine.

Lina Kostenko, Ukrainian poet and writer.

Heinz Fischer, the president of Austria.

Ray Hnatyshyn, 24th governor general of Canada.

Roy Romanow, the 12th premier of Saskatchewan (1991–2001).

Interesting facts

First Ukrainian mystery thriller Ukrainian: Тіні незабутих предків, romanized: Tini nezabutykh predkiv, lit. 'Shadows of Unforgotten Ancestors', 2013, was filmed mostly on the territory of Chernivtsi University.

Эх сурвалж: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)