And no one was better prepared to bring this plan to fruition than Erich Meuthen himself, whom I warmly thank for his manuscript at this point. His concise outline begins with the history of the old university to , which experienced its first period of prosperity in the 15 th century under the stewardship of theologians.
The essential need for reflection and review after nevertheless led to a turnaround headed by the Arts Faculty, in the course of which stronger re-affiliation with the old university and the university ideals of the 19th century was sought. Today, the inherently differing ideals and traditions of the University interact alongside each other, so that the author of this historical overview, himself a member of the Humanities Faculty, ultimately comes to the somewhat resigned conclusion that such a simultaneous thriving of manifold ideas has turned the University into a mere service operation without a distinctive profile — albeit on a level of excellence.
Just as this city blends the old and the new, rigour and laxity, seriousness and not quite so earnest matters, to create a dazzling yet highly inspiring profile of great and unique liberality, the University does likewise — it is awake, alive, flexible, but also tradition-conscious, stern and sober; it feels bound by its history, yet open to all that is new; it is firmly entrenched in the region and at the same time cultivates numerous national and international contacts; it comprises within itself a big world as well as a small one.
Professor Dr. In that setting, the University of Cologne was not only the first in the Empire to have been fathered by the citizenry, it was also able to hold its own with the two-centuries-older western and southern European universities. Thus it offered an extensive range of studies and, already in its early years, recorded far over enrolments, a quite impressive figure for those times; later on, its student numbers levelled out at around 1,, albeit with considerable fluctuations.
With that, we already have a rough idea of the long-range as well as overall European development of which Cologne University was to become a part.
