Universität Rostock - About us - History - Projects

Together with the archive and library of the University of Rostock, the Forschungsstelle Universitätsgeschichte has been working on the Catalogus Professorum Rostochiensium (CPR) since 2006. The Catalogus is intended to document all professors at the University of Rostock since 1419.

The catalogue entries cover the period, the subject and the institutional classification of each professorship. If possible, these are supplemented by the professor's biography, scientific profile and activities at the University of Rostock and more. Included are pictures, life histories, publication lists and other documents on the person. The entries are also linked to other Internet resources.

By the end of 2008, we were able to complete the first section, covering the period from 1993 to 2008. Work on the entries for professors during the time of the German Democratic Republic is also nearing completion.

Concomitantly, a catalogue of chancellors, vice-chancellors, government plenipotentiaries..., a catalogue of rectors etc. are being compiled.

Editors: Karsten Labahn, Matthias Glasow, Robert Stephan

To the Catalogus Professorum Rostochiensium ...

Since May 2008, the Forschungsstelle Universitätsgeschichte has been working together with the archive and the library on a database of all Rostock students from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. This is based on the matriculation rolls, which have been unbrokenly preserved and provide information on all who were matriculated and attended the university since its founding.

In the course of the first sub-project, student assistants transferred more than 50,000 instances of enrollment from 1419 to 1830 from the Hofmeister/Schäfer Edition to the specially developed database. The second sub-project, recording the enrollment between 1831 and 1932 from handwritten matriculation books, started in early 2009. After the entries have been proofed and edited, the databases will be made available for research at a matriculation portal on the Internet.

Editors: Karsten Labahn, Doreen Brandt, Robert Stephan

A series of five seminars taught by the professor Dr. Kersten Krüger and entitled "History of the University and Contemporary Witnesses" has been held in the subject of history since winter semester 2006-2007, which ended in summer semester 2009.

The methodological starting point is the realization that written sources largely document major actions and those of the state, rather than the reality of everyday life for individuals who had to get by in the political and social framework, and wanted to do so. Was the (Wilhelm Pieck) University in Rostock a socialist university or a university in a socialist country? What scientific and scholarly accomplishments did it bring forth? Who sustained the academic modernization after 1990? What was the significance of reintroducing the freedom of research and teaching?

The reports as well as the discussions were recorded and transcribed word for word. The minutes of the discussions were compiled by students who at the same time undertook to revise them editorially and conduct supplementary research. The final versions of the lectures and discussions, as well as the recordings, are published in the "Rostocker Studien zur Universitätsgeschichte" ("Studies on the History of the University of Rostock") and are can be downloaded free of charge from the Rostock document server.

Editor: Prof. Dr. Kersten Krüger

To the accounts by contemporary witness on RosDok ...

Since 2006, the Forschungsstelle Universitätsgeschichte has been working together with the university library compiling a bibliography on the history of the University of Rostock. The bibliography is intended to provide evidence of all scientific and scholarly publications about the University of Rostock as exhaustively as possible and to be ready for the 600th anniversary.

The publications are researched and published in the OPAC of the university library in Rostock, of which the bibliography on the history forms a part. The individual entries are categorized by means of a systematic presentation of the university's history developed by the university itself.

Editor: Katrin Sievert

To the catalog of the bibliography on the history of the university ...

In 2007, the University of Rostock began a new series of publications, the Rostock studies on the history of the university, which is intended to be available for works on academic history – primarily for Rostock, but also for other universities.

The responsibility for the publication of the entire series has been given to the Rector of the university, that of the individual volumes to the respective head of the Forschungsstelle Universitätsgeschichte in conjunction with the university archive.

In order to enable as many people as possible to view the volumes, they will appear in the university library's digital library. That means they will be available free of charge on the Internet to anyone in the world who is interested. A small number of specimen copies will be printed conventionally in an initial edition. What is more, anyone interested will receive printed copies upon request merely for offsetting the printing expenses.

Along with the series of accounts by contemporary witnesses on the "University of Rostock between Socialism and Academic Modernization", this series has so far produced primarily smaller publications on various specific topics in this series.

Publishing, editing: Prof. Dr. Kersten Krüger

To the Rostock studies on university history on RosDok ...