Charles University in Prague is one of the old European universities. Its founder is held to be Charles IV, King of Bohemia and King of the Romans, who established it by a charter of 7 April 1348. It was the first institution of higher learning of the studium generale type north of the Alps and east of Paris.[1]
The Middle Ages and the Hussite era
The university followed the models of Bologna and Paris and soon gained international renown. It had four faculties: theology, law, medicine and the faculty of liberal arts. Members of the academic community, both Czech and foreign, taught and studied there, above all from Central Europe.[1] Wenceslaus IV extended his influence over the university, and the Decree of Kutná Hora of 1409 strengthened the position of the domestic members. Some of the masters and scholars left Prague in protest.[1]
The university was then transformed by the Hussite reform movement. The rector Jan Hus gained great influence there. In the social and political revolution that followed, the university shrank to a single faculty, that of liberal arts.[1] Under the rule of Rudolf II, Prague became a cultural metropolis. The scholars Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe worked at the court, and university learning developed as well.[1]
Charles-Ferdinand University
At the beginning of the 17th century, the provincial estates involved in the anti-Habsburg opposition gained strong influence over the university. After their defeat, Ferdinand III united in 1654 the Karolinum with the Jesuit university in the Clementinum, whose beginnings date to 1556. The result was Charles-Ferdinand University, whose name remained in use until 1918. It restored all four original faculties and gradually changed from a loose corporation into a state educational institution, a process completed by the reforms of Joseph II in the 1780s.[1]
The university took on the form of a modern institution of higher education in the reforms of 1848/49. In 1882 it was divided into a Czech and a German university.[1]
Personalities and the 20th century
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries both universities reached a high scholarly level. Professor Albert Einstein taught at the German one, and Tomáš Masaryk, who became the first president of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, at the Czech one.[1] The Czech university was called Charles University in the independent state. Professor Jaroslav Heyrovský received the Nobel Prize in 1959 for his discoveries in the field of polarography.[1]
On 17 November 1939 the Czech universities were closed, in response to the student demonstrations of 28 October 1939 and to the funeral of the medical student Jan Opletal. Students and teachers of the university were then persecuted.[1]