German Technical University of Prague

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The German Technical University in Prague (DTH) was an institution of higher education founded in 1806, the roots of which reached back to 1717. Apart from ten years of bilingual training, the language of instruction was German.

history

The charter of incorporation from 1707
Polytechnic / DTH

Bohemian Estate Engineering School (1717–1806)

The roots of the DTH in Prague go back to the application submitted by Christian Joseph Willenberg to the Bohemian court chancellery in Prague in 1705 to set up a course for young men of all levels on fortress construction (“fortification”). Although the Kaiser in Vienna approved the proposal in 1707 and gave Willenberg the title of Court War Councilor, it took another ten years before teaching could begin. It is possible that wars or efforts by the University of Prague to set up a similar course prevented the project from being realized. It was not until November 9, 1717 that Willenberg was appointed professor at the “Bohemian State Engineering School”.

After Willenberg's retirement in 1726, Johann Ferdinand Schor followed , who was first a church painter and architect. Like his predecessor, "all lovers of mathematics, geography and hydrography, as well as those of the engineering arts and all others [...] taught in his apartment which elementary and practical geometry is essential, as well as the associated calculations in statics, hydrographics, Areometrics, mechanics, optics required for civil and military engineering, as well as artillery ”.

The third professor at the educational institution was Franz Anton Leonhard Herget , who, unlike his two predecessors in office, had studied engineering. He, too, initially taught in his private rooms, which were sufficient given the small number of students. However, they increased over time, which forced him to move to a new domicile, which he found in the former St. Wenceslas seminary. He made the training scientifically and emphasized the civil part. In 1784 he was appointed professor of mathematics at Prague University, where he also gave lectures from then on.

State Polytechnic Institute (1806–1869)

After Herget's death in 1800 efforts were made to incorporate his institute into the university, but this was rejected. Instead, in 1803 the “Bohemian Estates Polytechnic Institute in Prague” was set up, which began operations in 1806. In the words of the new director of the institute, Franz Josef von Gerstner , it should "endeavor [...] to impart technical knowledge to young people that should be for the best benefit and wellbeing of the fatherland."

The establishment marked a turning point in the development of engineering education in Bohemia, because education was now placed on a solid institutional basis. “This is how Prague got its polytechnic training center, a technical school of the highest order. For several decades it was the model for similar technical institutes in what was then Germany. ”Nonetheless, a connection can legitimately be made between the old engineering school and the new polytechnic, as staff and inventory (machines, library) were taken over and the premises continued to be used. The DTH saw the beginning of its history in the founding of 1806, which was expressed in the jubilee of 1906.

German National Polytechnic Institute of the Kingdom of Bohemia (1869–1879)

When the Czech-language education system was expanded in the course of the 19th century and the demand for higher education in the Czech language increased, from 1869 in the Prague Polytechnic teaching was given equally in German and Czech ("utraquistic"). In German, the institution was now called the "German National Polytechnic Institute of the Kingdom of Bohemia" and in Czech "Královsky Ceský Polytechnický Ústav" (Royal Bohemian Polytechnic Institute). A German and a Czech professor each taught the subjects mathematics, descriptive geometry, geodesy, physics, natural history, building construction, hydraulic and road construction, mechanical engineering and chemistry. The language conflicts, which were actually ethnic conflicts in the age of growing national consciousness, could not be permanently pacified in this way, but led to another organizational change after ten years: the founding of the "Ck Česká Vysoká Školá Technická", which is like the previous ones Facilities for engineering training were subordinate to and financed by the Bohemian Parliament , and in 1918 the "České Vysoké Učení Technické" (ČVUT) became.

KK German Technical University (1879–1918)

The end of “utraquist” teaching and the establishment of a Czech-language technical university did not mean complete separation: both institutions were economically managed jointly until 1903, and the library was used jointly by German- and Czech-speaking students until after the First World War. The language dispute nevertheless overshadowed teaching, for example when in 1897/98, as a result of the Baden language ordinance, teaching had to be temporarily suspended due to fear of being attacked and due to student strikes. It turned out "that the problems of the national development of the Germans and Czechs in the course of the 19th century - probably in a narrower framework, but with all the greater strength and intellectual sharpness - were reflected in the development of the Prague universities."

It was due to this worsening of the language and nationality conflict in the Kingdom of Bohemia that there were repeated considerations about moving the DTH from Prague to the closed German settlement area, but this never happened.

In 1901 the DTH - like all technical universities in Austria, to which the Kingdom of Bohemia belonged - received the right to doctorate.

German Technical University (1918–1945)

After the collapse of the Danube monarchy in 1918, the economic situation worsened, but also the political pressure of the now Czech authorities on the DTH and the German minority increased. In 1930 the "Association of Friends of the German Technical University in Prague" was founded to alleviate the economic hardship. Political repression was repeatedly fended off, but, as a contemporary complained, it tied up forces that could not be invested in training and research. A debate about the relocation of the Prague universities to the German settlement areas of Bohemia re-emerged with the break-up of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and the establishment of the “ Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ”, but had no practical consequences. After the closure of the Czech universities, the premises of the Czech Technical University (TTH) were also used, although under the conditions of the war only reduced operations were possible. On May 5, 1945, teaching ended completely; On October 18, 1945, the DTH was closed by decree with retroactive effect to November 17, 1939, the day the Czech universities were closed by the National Socialist authorities.

Historiographic controversy

The DTH celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1906 and its 125th anniversary in 1931, which is why one can see the origins of the DTH in the construction of the Polytechnic in 1806. However, this foundation also had its forerunner, namely the engineering school, which was established in 1717 by the Bohemian estates. In this respect, it is legitimate, as Boehm does, to speak of “two and a quarter centuries of academic German engineering training” in Prague.

The Czech side has repeatedly denied and veiled this fact since the second half of the 19th century, when national consciousness increased in Europe and the binding force of societies - for example in Austria-Hungary - to the monarchy decreased. The eloquent expression for this attempt was the absence of the TTH delegation at the DTH centenary and the holding of its own centenary, although the TTH celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1894 in the presence of a DTH delegation. At the DTH ceremony in 1931, a TTH delegation was again present, and nothing has been passed on of its own anniversary celebration that year.

With the dissolution of the DTH in 1945 and the backdate of this act of sovereignty to 1939, the attempt to reduce the importance of the DTH and even to deny that there had ever been German engineering training in Prague became, as it were, state doctrine. In the following decades several publications (including Festschriften) appeared in which attempts were made to construct a tradition from the TTH to the state engineering school and even to the medieval Prague building works. The part that Germans had in this story is concealed, among other things, by the misrepresentation of Willenberg as a Czech, although he did not even speak Czech, or the false equation of “Bohemian” and “Czech”.

The pivotal point of this interpretation of history is, on the one hand, Willenberg's application for the establishment of the “fortification course” from 1705, which, according to a copy - the original has not survived - was written in Czech. On the other hand, the rescript of Emperor Joseph I, with which he granted the Bohemian Estates permission on January 18, 1707, was also written in Czech, which was unusual - the rest of the correspondence is in German - and still leaves room for speculation today. The question of how these circumstances of the foundation of the engineering school are to be interpreted has not yet been answered. But that shouldn't serve to systematically reinterpret the common history of Germans and Czechs in Bohemia and Czechoslovakia .

Teacher

Professors from the engineering school

Teacher at the Polytechnic and the German Technical University

literature

  • Gustav Grüner : The tradition of Czechoslovak engineering training. In: Bohemia . Volume 24, 1983, pp. 125-136 (digitized version ) .
  • Joseph Johann Boehm: The German Technical University in Prague and its preliminary stages. Two and a quarter centuries of academic German engineering training (1718–1945) (= Sudeten German Academy of Sciences and Arts, Natural Science Class: Treatise. Born 1991). Munich 1991.
  • The KK German Technical University in Prague, 1806–1906. Festschrift for the centenary on behalf of the faculty, edited by Prof. Dr. techn. Franz Stark with the participation of Professors KK Hofrat D. Wilhelm Gintl and D. Anton Grünwald. Prague 1906 (digitized) .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quotation from Boehm, p. 37.
  2. ↑ Quotation from Boehm, p. 60.
  3. ↑ Quotation from Boehm, p. 60.
  4. ↑ F. Prinz: History of Bohemia, quoted in. n. Boehm, p. 200.
  5. ↑ Boehm, p. 216 and 241.
  6. ↑ Quotation from Boehm, p. 259.