Lviv University

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

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. Officially Vienna described it as an "act of mercy", but the actual reasons were different. The Austrian government was aware of the pro-Polish stance of the Russian Emperor Alexander I and the Austrians wanted to challenge it. However, the quality of the university's education was not considered high. Latin was replaced by German and most professors were regarded as ''mediocre''. The few good ones regarded their stay in Lemberg as a springboard to other centres.

In 1848, when the pan-European revolution reached Lemberg (see: Revolutions of 1848), students of the university created two organizations: "The Academic Legion" and "the Academic Committee" both of which demanded that the university be Polonized. The government in Vienna answered with force, and on 2 November 1848, the centre of the city was shelled by the troops led by General Hammerstein striking the buildings of the university, especially its library. A curfew was called and the university was temporarily closed. Major demand for Ukrainians was the education of teachers and promotion of Ukrainian culture through Ukrainian courses at the university and to this end, a committee for the Defense of Ukrainian Education was created.

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.

Second Polish Republic

During the Interbellum period, the region was part of the Second Polish Republic and the university was known as "Jan Kazimierz University" (Polish: Uniwersytet Jana Kazimierza), 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, which has since been the university's main location. Its first rector during the Second Polish Republic was the famous poet, Jan Kasprowicz.

Lwów was the second most important academic center in inter-war Poland. The Jan Kazimierz University was the third biggest university in the country after the University of Warsaw and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

It was one of the most influential scholarly institutions of the Second Polish Republic, notable for its schools of mathematics (Stefan Banach, Hugo Steinhaus), logics (Kazimierz Twardowski), history and law (Oswald Balzer), anthropology (Jan Czekanowski), and geography (Eugeniusz Romer).

The university's library acquired, among others, the collection of Witold Kazimierz Czartoryski 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)

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 Mykhailo Marchenko, 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. At the beginning of January 1940, the official name of the university was changed to Ivan Franko Lviv State University. Ukrainian was introduced as the language of instruction. Polish professors and administrative assistants were increasingly fired and replaced by cadres specializing in Marxism, Leninism, political economics, as well as Ukrainian and Soviet literature, history, and geography. This was accompanied by the closure of departments seen as related to religion, free-market economics, capitalism, or the West in general. All academics specializing in Polish geography, literature, and history were dismissed. Marchenko was released from his post in Spring 1940 and arrested in June 1941. From 1939 to 1941, the Soviets killed 17 and imprisoned 37 academics from the University of Jan Kazimierz.

After Lviv was occupied by the Nazi Germany in June 1941, the Germans closed the University of Ivan Franko and killed over 20 Polish professors (as well as members of their households and guests, increasing the total number of victims to above forty). 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 former Polish prime minister and a polytechnic professor, Kazimierz Bartel. The underground University of Jan Kazimierz was established in Autumn 1941.

In the summer of 1944, the advancing Red Army, assisted by the Polish Home Army forces (locally implementing Operation Tempest), pushed the Wehrmacht out of Lviv. and the university reopened. Due to post-war border changes, the Polish population of the city was expelled 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

The proclamation of the independence of Ukraine in 1991 brought about radical changes in every sphere of university life. Professor, Doctor Ivan Vakarchuk, a renowned scholar in the field of theoretical physics, was rector of the university from 1990 to 2013. Meeting the requirements arising in recent years new faculties and departments have been set up: the Faculty of International Relations and the Faculty of Philosophy (1992), the Faculty of Pre-Entrance University Preparation (1997), the Chair of Translation Studies and Comparative Linguistics (1998). Since 1997 the following new units have come into existence within the teaching and research framework of the university: the Law College, The Humanities Centre, The Institute of Literature Studies, and The Italian Language and Culture Resource Centre. The teaching staff of the university has increased amounting to 981, with scholarly degrees awarded to over two-thirds of the entire teaching staff. There are over one hundred laboratories and working units as well as the Computing Centre functioning here. The Zoological, Geological, Mineralogical Museums together with those of Numismatics, Sphragistics, and Archeology are stimulating the interests of students.

Faculties

Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Informatics

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

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.

International cooperation

During 2016–2017, the university signed 15 cooperation agreements and two double degree agreements, two agreements were extended. In total, 147 agreements have been signed with higher education institutions from 38 countries.

The university is involved in signing the Magna Charta Universitatum. In 2000, the university became a co-founder of the European College of Polish and Ukrainian Universities (Lublin, Poland). Agreements with Alecu Russo State University of Bălți (Bălți, Moldova) and the Krakow Pedagogical Academy (Poland) have been extended.

Students of the faculty of Geography, History and the faculty of International Relations undergo internships in Poland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Employees of the faculty of Mechanics, Mathematics, Philology, Chemistry, Faculty of International Relations and Applied Mathematics and Informatics worked in higher education institutions in Poland, Colombia, France, Switzerland, and Austria on a contract basis. Many graduates continue their studies in higher education institutions in the United States, Poland, Germany, Austria, Britain, and France. In 2016, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv held 5 international summer schools.

In 2016, active international cooperation was established with foreign partners. The university has conducted bilateral research with the University of Vienna (Austria), Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania), the US Civilian Research and Development Foundation, and the Hiroshima Institute of Technology (Japan), funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.

In recent years, researchers at the university have been conducting experiments funded by international organizations, including the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (Germany), Harvard Medical School (USA), Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (USA), and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, International Center for Diffraction Data (USA), Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (USA), Trust Educational Foundation for Tree Research (USA), Material. Phases. Data. System company (Switzerland).

An agreement has been signed with CrossRef, which allows the DOI to be assigned to university publications. The university, with the financial support of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, has a national contact point of the EU Framework Program "Horizon 2020" in the thematic areas "Future and latest technologies" and "Inclusive, innovative and smart society".

Notable alumni

Roman Aftanazy (1914–2004), historian of culture, librarian, heritage rescuer

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963), philosopher, mathematician and logician, a pioneer of categorial grammar

Bohdan Ihor Antonych (1909–1937), prominent Ukrainian writer

Marta Barandii (b. 1984), Ukrainian member activist and lawyer

Piotr Ignacy Bieńkowski (1865–1925), classical scholar and archaeologist, professor of the Jagiellonian University

Julia Brystiger (1902–1975), political militant, member of the security apparatus of the Polish People's Republic

Józef Białynia Chołodecki (1852–1934), historian of Lviv.

Marianna Dushar (born 1974), anthropologist and food writer.

Ivan Franko (1856–1916), poet and linguist, reformer of the Ukrainian language

Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961), medical doctor and biologist who developed in the 1930s the concept of thought collectives

Stanisław Głąbiński (1862–1941) politician, professor and rector (1908–1909) of the university, lawyer and writer

Georgiy R. Gongadze (1969–2000), Georgian and Ukrainian journalist

Ludwik Hass (1918-2008), Polish historian and Trotskyist dissident

Mark Kac (1914–1984), mathematician, pioneer of modern probability theory

Notable professors

Henryk Arctowski (1871–1958) - oceanographer, Antarctica explorer

Szymon Askenazy (1866–1935) - historian, diplomat and politician, founder of the Lwów-Warsaw School of History

Herman Auerbach (1901–1942) - mathematician

Stefan Banach (1892–1945) - mathematician, one of the moving spirits of the Lwów School of Mathematics, father of functional analysis

Oswald Balzer (1858–1933) - historian of law and statehood

St. Józef Bilczewski (1860–1923) - archbishop of the city of Lwów of the Latins

Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński (1874–1941) - gynecologist, writer, poet, art critic, translator of French literary classics and journalist

Franciszek Bujak (1921–1941) - historian

Leon Chwistek (1884–1944) - Avant-garde painter, theoretician of modern art, literary critic, logician, philosopher and mathematician

Antoni Cieszyński (1882–1941) - physician, dentist and surgeon

Matija Čop (1797–1835) - Slovene philologist and literary theorist

Jan Czekanowski (1882–1965) - anthropologist, statistician and linguist

Władysław Dobrzaniecki (1897–1941) - physician and surgeon

Stanisław Głąbiński (1862–1941) - politician, rector (1908–1909), lawyer and writer

Other

János Bolyai (1802–1860), mathematician, the founder of noneuclidean (absolute) geometry. The highest figure of Hungarian mathematics worked at the University of Lviv from 1831 to 1832.

Włodzimierz Dzieduszycki (1825–1899), landowner, naturalist, political activist, collector and patron of arts

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006), satirical, philosophical, and science fiction writer

Józef Marcinkiewicz (1910–1940), mathematician. He worked at the University of Lviv from 1935 to 1936.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860–1941) virtuoso pianist, composer, diplomat and politician, the third Prime Minister of Poland