University of Lviv

The Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (named after Ivan Franko, ) is a state-sponsored university in Lviv, Ukraine. Since 1940 the university is named after Ukrainian poet Ivan Franko.

The university is the oldest institution of higher learning in continuous operation in present-day Ukraine, dating from 1661 when John II Casimir, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, granted it its first royal charter. Over the centuries, it has undergone various transformations, suspensions, and name changes that have reflected the geopolitical complexities of this part of Europe. The present institution can be dated to 1940.

History

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

The university was founded on 20 January 1661, when King and Grand Duke John II Casimir granted a charter to the city's Jesuit Collegium, founded in 1608, giving it "the honor of an academy and the title of a university". In 1589, the Jesuits had tried to found a university earlier, but did not succeed. Establishing another seat of learning in the Kingdom of Poland was seen as a threat by the authorities of Kraków's Jagiellonian University, which did not want a rival and stymied the Jesuits' plans for the following years.

According to the Treaty of Hadiach (1658), an Orthodox Ruthenian academy was to be created in Kyiv and another one in an unspecified location. The Jesuits suspected that it would be established in Lwów/Lviv on the foundations of the Orthodox Brotherhood's school, and used this as a pretext for obtaining a royal mandate that elevated their college to the status of an academy (no city could have two academies). King John II Casimir was a supporter of the Jesuits and his stance was crucial. The original royal charter was subsequently confirmed by another decree issued in Częstochowa on 5 February 1661.

In 1758, King Augustus III issued a decree, which described the Collegium as an academy, equal in fact status to the Jagiellonian University, with two faculties, those of Theology and Philosophy.

Austrian rule

thumb|Old university building, now part of the complex of Intercession Church

In 1772, the city of Lwów was annexed by Austria (see: Partitions of Poland). Its German name was Lemberg and hence that of the university. In 1773, the Suppression of the Society of Jesus by Rome (Dominus ac Redemptor) was soon followed by the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which meant that the university was excluded from the Commission of National Education reform. It was renamed Theresianum by the Austrians, i.e. a State Academy. On 21 October 1784, the Austrian Emperor Joseph II signed an act of foundation of a secular university. He began to Germanise the institution by bringing German-speaking professors from various parts of the empire. The university now had four faculties. To theology and philosophy were added those of law and medicine. Latin was the official language of the university, with Polish and German as auxiliary. Literary Slaveno-Rusyn (Ruthenian/Ukrainian) of the period had been used in the Studium Ruthenium (1787–1809), a special institute of the university for educating candidates for the Uniate (Greek-Catholic) priesthood.

In 1805, the university was closed, as Austria, then involved in the Napoleonic Wars, did not have sufficient funds to support it. Instead, it operated as a high school. The university was reopened in 1817.

It was reopened in January 1850, with only limited autonomy. After a few years the Austrians relented and on 4 July 1871 Vienna declared Polish and Ruthenian (Ukrainian) as the official languages at the university. Eight years later this was changed. The Austrian authorities declared Polish as the main teaching medium with Ruthenian and German as auxiliary. Examinations in the two latter languages were possible as long as the professors used them. This move created unrest among the Ruthenians (Ukrainians), who were demanding equal rights. In 1908, a Ruthenian student of the philosophy faculty, Miroslaw Siczynski, had assassinated the Polish governor of Galicia, Andrzej Kazimierz Potocki.

Meanwhile, the University of Lemberg thrived, being one of two Polish language universities in Galicia, the other one was the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Its professors were famous across Europe, with such renowned names as Wladyslaw Abraham, Oswald Balzer, Szymon Askenazy, Stanislaw Zakrzewski, Zygmunt Janiszewski, Kazimierz Twardowski, Benedykt Dybowski, Marian Smoluchowski and Ludwik Rydygier.

In the 1870s, Ivan Franko studied at Lemberg University. He entered world history as a well-known Ukrainian scholar, public figure, writer, and translator. In 1894, the newly founded Chair of World History and the History of Eastern Europe was headed by Professor Mykhailo Hrushevskyi (1866–1934), a scholar of Ukrainian History, founder of the Ukrainian Historical School, and author of the ten-volume History of Ukraine-Rusʹ, hundreds of works on History, History of Literature, Historiography, and Source Studies. In 1904, a special summer course in Ukrainian studies was organized in Lviv, primarily for Eastern Ukrainian students. (), in honor of its founder, King John II Casimir Vasa. The decision to name the school after the king was taken by the government of Poland on 22 November 1919.

In 1920, the university was rehoused by the Polish government in the building formerly used by the Sejm of the Land,

The university's library acquired, among others, the collection of and 1,300 old Polish books from the 16th and 17th century, previously belonging to Józef Koziebrodzki. By September 1939, it expanded to 420,000 volumes, including 1,300 manuscripts, 3,000 diplomas and incunables, and possessed 14,000 numismatic items.

In 1924, the Philosophy Faculty was divided into Humanities and Mathematics and Biology Departments, thus there were now five faculties. In the 1934/35 academic year, the breakdown of the student body was as follows:

Theology – 222 students
Law – 2,978 students
Medicine – 638 students (together with the Pharmaceutical Section, which had 263 students)
Humanities – 892 students
Mathematics and Biology – 870 students

Altogether, during the academic year 1934/35, there were 5900 students at the university, consisting by religious observance of:

3793 Roman Catholics (64.3%)
1211 Jews (20.5%)
739 Ukrainian Greek-Catholics (12.5%)
72 Orthodox (1.2%)
67 Protestants (1.1%)

Ukrainian professors were required to take a formal oath of allegiance to Poland; most of them refused and left the university in the early 1920s. The principle of "Numerus clausus" had been introduced after which Ukrainian applicants were discriminated against – Ukrainian applications were capped at 15% of the intake, whereas Poles enjoyed a 50% quota at the time.

Polish national-democrats also strove to implement a numerus clausus for Jews. During the 1920-30s, Polish national-democratic students chased local Jews and beat Jewish students, so that the university finally allow installment of ghetto benches for Jewish students.

World War II

After the German invasion of Poland and the accompanying Soviet invasion in September 1939, the Soviet administration permitted classes to continue. Initially, the school worked in the pre-war Polish system. On 18 October, however, the Polish rector, Professor Roman Longchamps de Bérier, was dismissed and replaced by , a Ukrainian historian transferred from the Institute of Ukrainian History in Kyiv, grandfather of Ukrainian journalist and dissident Valeriy Marchenko.

His role was to Ukrainize and Sovietize the university. Polish professors and administrative assistants were increasingly fired The victims included lecturers from the University of Lviv and other local academic institutions. Among the killed was the last rector of the University of Jan Kazimierz, Roman Longchamps de Berier, his three sons, and the university reopened. and most of the Polish academics from the University of Jan Kazimierz relocated to Wrocław (former Breslau), where they filled positions in the newly established Polish institutions of higher learning. The buildings of the university had survived the war undestroyed, however, 80% of its pre-war student and academic body was gone. The traditions of Jan Kazimierz University have been duplicated at the University of Wrocław, which replaced the pre-war University of Breslau after the German inhabitants of that city had been expelled following Stalin's establishing Germany's eastern border farther to the west.

Ukrainian SSR

Following the Soviet annexation of Western Ukraine in September 1939, Lviv University was nationalized and integrated into the educational system of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In October 1939 the institution was reorganized as Lviv State University, and in January 1940 it was renamed Ivan Franko Lviv State University by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR.

The new authorities pursued a policy of rapid Sovietization and formal “Ukrainization”: Marxism–Leninism and political economy were introduced into the curriculum, Ukrainian was declared the main language of instruction, and several prominent Ukrainian scholars from other regions of the republic were appointed to the teaching staff, while a number of Polish professors continued to work at the university. At the same time, the university was affected by Stalinist repression: several waves of arrests targeted faculty and students, particularly Polish academics and suspected Ukrainian nationalists, and in January 1940 a show trial was staged against 59 alleged members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, many of them students of the university.

After the end of the Second World War and the restoration of Soviet rule in Lviv in 1944, Ivan Franko Lviv State University reopened and entered a prolonged period of expansion as one of the leading universities of the Ukrainian SSR. By the 1950s and 1960s new faculties, including journalism, applied mathematics and cybernetics, were established, the student body grew rapidly and the university developed a broad network of research institutes and laboratories. During the postwar decades the university also played a central role in the Russification and ideological control of higher education in Western Ukraine: instruction in many disciplines gradually shifted from Ukrainian to Russian, courses in Marxism–Leninism and the history of the Communist Party were compulsory, and scholars who departed from the official line risked sanctions or dismissal.

Despite ideological pressure, Lviv University remained an important centre of Ukrainian humanities and natural sciences and a locus of dissent in the region. Historians, philologists and philosophers associated with the university made significant contributions to Ukrainian national historiography and literary studies, often working within the constraints of Soviet censorship. From the 1960s onwards, clandestine groups of Ukrainian students circulated samizdat literature and maintained contacts with dissident circles; several staff and graduates were later counted among the Ukrainian human rights movement and the leaders of the national-democratic revival of the late 1980s. By the time of Ukraine’s declaration of independence in 1991, Ivan Franko Lviv State University had a student body of more than 14,000 and a staff of over 1,000 academics.

Independent Ukraine

thumb|Ivan Franko University main building (2005)

The proclamation of the independence of Ukraine in 1991 brought about radical changes in every sphere of university life.

Faculty of International Relations
Faculty of Biology
Faculty of Journalism
Faculty of Chemistry
Faculty of Law
Faculty of Economics
Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics
Faculty of Electronics
Faculty of Philology
Faculty of Foreign Languages
Faculty of Philosophy
Faculty of Geography
Faculty of Physics
Faculty of Geology
Faculty of Preuniversity Training
Faculty of History
Department of Pedagogy
Department of Law

Research divisions and facilities

thumb|University Library

Scientific Research Department
Zoological museum
University Library
Journal of Physical Studies
The Institute of Archaeology
Ukrainian journal of computational linguistics
Media Ecology Institute
Modern Ukraine
Institute for Historical Research
Regional Agency for Sustainable Development
Botanical Garden
NATO Winter Academy in Lviv
Scientific technical & educational center of low temperature studies

University management

Rector Volodymyr Melnyk, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine;
First Vice-Rector Andriy Gukalyuk, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Associate Professor;
Vice-Rector for Research Roman Hladyshevsky, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Chemical Sciences, Professor;
Vice-rector for scientific and pedagogical work and social issues and development Volodymyr Kachmar, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor;
Vice-rector for scientific and pedagogical work and informatization Vitaliy Kukharsky, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Associate Professor;
Vice-rector for administrative and economic work Vasyl Kurlyak, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Associate Professor.
Stefan Inglot (1902–1994) - historian
Zygmunt Janiszewski (1888–1920) - mathematician
Antoni Kalina (1846–1905) - ethnographer and ethnologist
Stefan Kaczmarz (1895-1939) - mathematician
Ignacy Krasicki (1735–1801) - writer and poet, senator, Bishop of Warmia and Archbishop of Gniezno and Primate of Poland
Jerzy Kuryłowicz (1895–1978) - linguist
Karolina Lanckorońska (1898–2002) - historian and art historian, Polish World War II resistance fighter
Jan Łukasiewicz (1878–1956) - logician and philosopher
Ignác Martinovics (1755–1795) - physicist, Franciscan, Hungarian revolutionary
Stanisław Mazur (1905–1981) - mathematician
Jakub Karol Parnas (1884–1949) - (Russian: Яков Оскарович Парнас or Yakov Oskarovich Parnas). A Jewish-Polish–Soviet biochemist author of notable studies on carbohydrates metabolism in mammals. Glycolysis, a major metabolic mechanism, is universally named Embden-Meyerhoff-Parnas pathway after him.
Eugeniusz Romer (1871–1954) - cartographer
Eugeniusz Rybka (1898–1988) - astronomer, deputy director of the International Astronomical Union,
Stanisław Ruziewicz (1881–1941) - mathematician
Wacław Sierpiński (1882–1969) - mathematician, known for contributions to set theory, number theory, theory of functions and topology
Marian Smoluchowski (1872–1917) - scientist, pioneer of statistical physics, creator the basis of the theory of stochastic processes, mountaineer
Hugo Steinhaus (1887–1972), mathematician
Szczepan Szczeniowski (1898-1979) - physicist, author of numerous papers on cosmic rays,
Kazimierz Twardowski (1866–1938), philosopher and logician, head of the Lwów-Warsaw School of Logic
Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński (1874–1941) - gynecologist, writer, poet, art critic, translator of French literary classics and journalist
Rudolf Weigl (1883-1957) - biologist, epidemiologist
Aleksander Zawadzki (1798-1868) - naturalist
Viktor Pynzenyk (born 1954) - economist and politician

Other

Włodzimierz Dzieduszycki (1825–1899), landowner, naturalist, political activist, collector and patron of arts
Stanisław Lem (1921–2006), satirical, philosophical, and science fiction writer
Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860–1941) virtuoso pianist, composer, diplomat and politician, the third Prime Minister of Poland
János Bolyai (1802–1860) The founder of noneuclidean (absolute) geometry. The highest figure of Hungarian mathematics worked at the University of Lviv from 1831 to 1832.

Notes

References

Literature

Academia Militans. Uniwersytet Jana Kazimierza we Lwowie, red. Adam Redzik, Kraków 2015, ss. 1302.
Ludwik Finkel, Starzyński Stanisław, Historya Uniwersytetu Lwowskiego, Lwów 1894.
Franciszek Jaworski, Uniwersytet Lwowski. Wspomnienie jubileuszowe, Lwów 1912.
Adam Redzik, Wydział Prawa Uniwersytetu Lwowskiego w latach 1939–1946, Lublin 2006
Adam Redzik, Prawo prywatne na Uniwersytecie Jana Kazimierza we Lwowie, Warszawa 2009.
Józef Wołczański, Wydział Teologiczny Uniwersytetu Jana Kazimierza 1918–1939, Kraków 2000.
Universitati Leopoliensi, Trecentesimum Quinquagesimum Anniversarium Suae Fundationis Celebranti. In Memoriam. Praca zbiorowa. Polska Akademia Umiejętności, Kraków 2011,

External links

History of the University of Lviv to 1945

Scholars and Literati at the University of Lwów (1608-1800), in Repertorium Eruditorum Totous Europae/RETE.

LNU Online Judge System