University of Ingolstadt

German: Universität Ingolstadt
Garden façade of the Alte Anatomie at the University of Ingolstadt
Type	Educational
Active	1472–1800
Founder	Louis the Rich
Location	Ingolstadt , Bavaria , Germany

The University of Ingolstadt was a private university in the city of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, Germany. Founded in 1472 by Louis the Rich, serving as the Duke of Bavaria at the time, its first Chancellor was the Bishop of Eichstätt. It consisted of four faculties: theology, law, artes liberales and medicine, all of which were contained in the Hoheschule, or "the high school'; furthermore, the university was modeled after the University of Vienna. Its chief goal was the propagation of the Christian faith. The university closed in May 1800, by order of the Prince-elector Maximilian IV (later Maximilian I, King of Bavaria).

Pre-Reformation

In its first several decades, the university grew rapidly, opening colleges not only for philosophers from the realist and nominalist schools, but also for poor students wishing to study the liberal arts. Among its most famous instructors in the late 15th century were the poet Conrad Celtes, the Hebrew scholar Johannes Reuchlin, and the Bavarian historian Johannes Thurmair (also known as "Johannes Aventinus").

The Illuminati movement was founded on 1 May 1776, in Ingolstadt (Upper Bavaria), by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt (d. 1830), who was the first lay professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt. The movement was made up of freethinkers, as an offshoot of the Enlightenment. Writers at the time, such as Seth Payson, believed the movement represented a conspiracy to infiltrate and overthrow the governments of European states. Some writers, such as Augustin Barruel and John Robison, even claimed that the Illuminati were behind the French Revolution, a claim that Jean-Joseph Mounier dismissed in his 1801 book On the Influence Attributed to Philosophers, Free-Masons, and to the Illuminati on the Revolution of France.

The group's adherents were given the name "Illuminati", although they called themselves "Perfectibilists". The group has also been called the Illuminati Order and the Bavarian Illuminati, and the movement itself has been referred to as Illuminism (after illuminism). In 1777, Karl Theodor became ruler of Bavaria. He was a proponent of Enlightened Despotism and, in 1784, his government banned all secret societies, including the Illuminati.

During the period when the Illuminati was legally allowed to operate, many influential intellectuals and progressive politicians counted themselves as members, including Ferdinand of Brunswick and the diplomat Xavier von Zwack, who was number two in the operation and was found with much of the group's documentation when his home was searched. The Illuminati's members pledged obedience to their superiors, and were divided into three main classes, each with several degrees. The order had its branches in most countries of the European continent; it reportedly had around 2,000 members over the span of ten years. The organization had its attraction for literary men, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Gottfried Herder, and even for the reigning dukes of Gotha and Weimar. Weishaupt had modeled his group to some extent on Freemasonry, and many Illuminati chapters drew membership from existing Masonic lodges. Internal rupture and panic over succession preceded its downfall, which was effected by the Secular Edict made by the Bavarian government in 1785.

The Reformation and its aftermath

The Lutheran movement took an early hold in Ingolstadt, but was quickly put to flight by one of the chief figures of the Counter-Reformation: Johann Eck, who made the university a bastion for the traditional Catholic faith in southern Germany. In Eck's wake, many Jesuits were appointed to key positions in the school, and the university, over most of the 17th century, gradually came fully under the control of the Jesuit order. Noted scholars of this period include the theologian Gregory of Valentia, the astronomer Christopher Scheiner (inventor of the helioscope), Johann Baptist Cysat, and the poet Jacob Balde. The Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II received his education at the university.

Relocation

The 18th century gave rise to the Enlightenment, a movement that in some quarters was opposed to the church-run universities of which Ingolstadt was a prime example. The Jesuits gradually left the university as it sought to change with the times, until the university finally had become so secular that the greatest influence in Ingolstadt was Adam Weishaupt, founder of the secret society of the Illuminati. On 25 November 1799, the elector Maximilian IV announced that the university's depleted finances had become too great a weight for him to bear: the university would be moved to Landshut as a result. The university finished that year's school term, and left Ingolstadt in May 1800, bringing to a quiet end the school that had, at its peak, been one of the most influential and powerful institutes of higher learning in Europe. In 1826 King Ludwig I moved the university to the capital Munich (LMU Munich). Subsequently, another institution of higher learning was established in Ingolstadt, now called the WFI - Ingolstadt School of Management (founded in 1989 as part of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt), one of Germany's foremost business schools.

In popular culture

Victor Frankenstein from Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein was a fictional student at the University of Ingolstadt. In the 1931 film adaptation, the school is called Goldstadt Medical College. Goldstadt University is also featured in the novelization of Van Helsing (but in this, it is in Romania).

Notable faculty members

• Paulus Aemilius (d. 1575), professor of Hebrew
• Petrus Apianus (1495–1552), mathematician, astronomer, and cartographer
• Philipp Apian (1531–1589), mathematician and medic
• Johannes Eck (1486–1543), theologian
• Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566), physician and botanist
• Johannes Stabius, Professor of mathematics at Ingolstadt, 1498–1503
• Benedict Stattler (1728–1797), Jesuit theologian, opponent of Immanuel Kant
• Johannes Stöffler, student, 1472–1476; mathematician and astronomer, later professor at Tübingen
• Adam Weishaupt, professor of law at Ingolstadt

See also

• WFI – Ingolstadt School of Management
• Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
• Frankenstein – A New Musical
• List of medieval universities

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

The University of Ingolstadt (1472-1800), was founded by Louis the Rich, Duke of Bavaria. The privileges of a studium generale with all four faculties had been granted by Pope Pius II, 7 April, 1458, but owing to the unsettled condition of the times, could not be put into effect. Ingolstadt, modelled on the University of Vienna, had as one of its principal aims the furtherance and spread of Christian belief. For its material equipment, an unusually large endowment was provided out of the holdings of the clergy and the religious orders. The Bishop of Eichstatt, to whom diocese Ingolstadt belongs, was appointed chancellor. The formal inauguration of the university took place on 26 June, 1472, and within the first semester 489 students matriculated. As in other universites prior to the sixteenth century, the faculty of philosophy comprised two sections, the Realists and the Nominalists, each under its own dean. In 1496 Duke George the Rich, son of Louis, established the Collegium Georgianum for poor students in the faculty of arts, and other foundations for similar purposes were subsequently made. Popes Adrian VI and Clement VII bestowed on the universit additional revenues from ecclesiastical property. At the height of the humanistic movement, Ingolstadt counted among its teachers a series of remarkable savatns and writers; Conrad Celtes, the first poet crowned by the German Emperor; his disciple Jacob Locher, surnamed Philomusos; Johann Turmair, known as Aventinus from his birthplace, Abensber, editor of the "Annales Boiorum" and of the Bavarian "Chronica", father of Bavarian history and founder (1507) of the"Sodalitas litteraria Angilostadensis". Johanees Reuchlin, restorer of the Hebrew language and literature, was also for a time at the university.

Although Duke William IV (1508-50) and his chancellor, Leonhard von Eck, did their utmost during thirty years to keep Lutheranism out of Ingolstadt, and though the adherents of the new doctrine were obliged to retract or resign, some of the professors joined the Lutheran movement. Their influence, however, wa counteracted by the tireless and successful endeavours of the foremost opponent of the Reformation, Dr. Johann Maier, better known as Eck, from the name of his birth-place, Egg, on the Gunz. He taught and laboured (1510-43) to such good purpose that Ingolstadt, during the Counter-Reformation, did more than any other university for the defence of the Catholic Faith, and was for the church in Southern Germany what Wittenberg was for Protestantism in the north. In 1549, with the approval of Paul III, peter Canisus, Salmeron, Claude Lejay, and other Jesuits were appointed to professorships in theology and philosophy. About the same time a college and a boarding school for boys were established, though they were not actually opened until 1556, when the statutes of the university were revised. In 1568 the profession of faith in accordance with the Council of Trent was required of the rector and professors. In 1688 the teaching in the faculty of philosophy passed entirely in the hands of the Jesuits.

Though the university after this change, in spite of vexations and conflicts regarding exemption from taxes and juridical autonomy, enjoyed a high degree of prosperity, its existence was frequently imperilled during the troubles of the Thirty Years War. But its fame as a home of earning was enhanced by men such as the theologian, Gregory of Valentia; the controversialist, Jacob Gretser (1558-1610); the moralist, Laymann (1603-1609); the mathematician and cartographer, Philip Apian; the astronomer, Christopher Scheiner (1610-1616), who, with the helioscope invented by him, discovered the sun spots and calculated the ime of the sun's rotation; and the poet, Jacob Balde, from Ensisheim in Alsacc, professor of rhetoric. Prominent among the jurists in the seventeenth century were Kaspar Manz and Christopher Berold. During the latter half of that century, and especially in the eighteenth, the courses of instruction were improved and adapted to the requirements of the age. After the founding of the Bavarian Academy of Science at Munich in 1759, an anti-ecclesiastical tendency sprang up at Ingolstadt and found an ardent supporter in Joseph Adam, Baron of Ickstatt, whom the elector had placed at the head of the university. Plans, moreover, were set on foot to have the university of the third centenary the Society of Jesus was suppressed, but some of the ex-Jesuits retained their professorships for a while longer. A movement was inaugurated in 1772 by Adam Weishaupt, professor of canon law, with a view to securing the triumph of the rationalistic "enlightment" in Church and State by means of the secret society of "Illuminati" (q.v.), which he founded. But this organization was suppressed in 1786 by the Elector Carl theodore, and Weishaupt was dismissed. On 25 November, 1799, the elector Maximilian IV, later King Maximilian I, decreed that the university, which was involved in financial difficulties, should be transferred to Landshut; and this was done in the following May. Among its leading professors towards the close were Winter the church historian, Schrank the naturalist, and Johann Michael Sailer, writer on moral philosophy and pedagogy, who later became Bishop of Ratisbon.

ERMAN-HORN, Bibliographie d. deutschen Universitaten, II (Leipzig, 1904); ROTMAR, Annales Ingolstad. Academiae (Ingolstadt, 1580); MEDERER, Annales, Ingolstadienses Academiae (Ingolstadt, 1782); PRANTL, Geschichte der Ludwigs-Maximilians Universitat in Ingolstadt, Landshut, Munchen (Munich, 1872); ROMSTOCK, Die Jesuitennullen Prantls (Eichstatt, 1898) (a reply to Prantl's charges against the Jesuits); VERDIERE, Historie de l'universite d'Inglostadt (Paris, 1887); RASHDALL, Universities etc., II (Oxford, 1895), pt. 1; BAUCH, Die Anfange des Humanismus in Ingolstadt (1901).