University of Tartu Main Building
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Transcript
The University of Tartu dates its foundation to 1632, when Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden established Academia Dorpatensis.
That first university belonged to Sweden's effort to strengthen administration and Protestant education in its Baltic provinces.
War repeatedly interrupted it. The university moved and closed as the regional balance of power changed, and Swedish rule eventually ended during the Great Northern War.
The institution was re-established in 1802 under Russian Emperor Alexander I.
Here the story becomes linguistically fascinating. The university functioned largely in German and became a major centre of Baltic German scholarship within the Russian Empire.
German-speaking professors could serve an imperial institution under a Russian monarch while working in international European scientific networks.
This arrangement makes nonsense of the assumption that state language, local language and university language must match.
By the late nineteenth century, Russian imperial authorities pursued Russification and increased the role of Russian.
Then after Estonian independence, the university reopened in 1919 as an Estonian-language national institution.
The building stayed. The language of authority changed around it.
That shift was enormous. Estonian moved from a language long associated primarily with the rural majority into the highest levels of scholarship and professional training.
Universities do more than teach existing knowledge. They decide which languages are capable of producing new knowledge.
Our next stop is St John's Church, whose medieval brick and terracotta figures remind us that Tartu's urban history predates the university by centuries.