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The University of Breslau (German: Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität Breslau) was a German university in Breslau, present-day Wrocław.

Leopoldina

Proposed design of Leopoldina (never fully completed), Kupferstich nach drawing by Friedrich Bernhard Werner, after 1760

Not to be confused with Akademie Leopoldina.

The oldest mention of a university in Breslau comes from the foundation deed signed on July 20, 1505, by King Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary for aGenerale litterarum Gymnasium in Breslau to invlude four faculties of theology, law, medicine, and philosophy. The town council should appoint professors while the bishop should be chancellor of the to be founded university. The town council requested more say in the university matters which lead to the Catholic church withdrawing. Finally, Cracow University raised opposition and Pope Julius II rejected the founding.

Instead, Breslau's Gymnasien, the Elisabethanum and Maria-Magdalenenschule played the leading role of Silesian education. Famous almni of them were Angelus Silesius, Martin Opitz, Christian Hoffmann von Hoffmannswaldau, Caspar Neumann. In 1638 the Jesuits also founded a Gymnasium.

The first successful founding deed known as the Aurea bulla fundationis Universitatis Wratislaviensis was signed two centuries later, on October 1, 1702, by German Emperor Leopold I of the House of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia.

The predecessor facilities, which existed since 1638, were converted into Jesuit school, and finally, upon instigation of the Jesuits and with the support of the Silesian Oberamtsrat (Second Secretary) Johannes Adrian von Plencken, donated as a university in 1702 by Emperor Leopold I as a School of Philosophy and Catholic Theology with the designated name Leopoldina.

On 15 November 1702, the university opened. Johannes Adrian von Plencken also became chancellor of the University. As a Catholic institute in Protestant Breslau, the new university was an important instrument of the Counter-Reformation in Silesia. After Silesia passed to Prussia, the university lost its ideological character but remained a religious institution for the education of Catholic clergy in Prussia.

Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University in Breslau

The University of Breslau, 19th century

After the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon and the subsequent Prussian reforms under Stein and Hardenberg, the academy was merged on August 3, 1811, with the Protestant Viadrina University, previously located in Frankfurt (Oder), and re-established in Breslau as the Königliche Universität zu Breslau – Universitas litterarum Vratislaviensis

(in 1911 named the Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau, to honour the founder Frederick William III of Prussia). At first, the conjoint academy had five faculties: philosophy, medicine, law, Protestant theology, and Catholic theology.

Connected with the university were three theological seminars, a philological seminar, a seminar for German Philology, another seminar for Romanic and English philology, an historical seminar, a mathematical-physical one, a legal state seminar, and a scientific seminar. From 1842, the University also had a chair of Slavic Studies. The University had twelve different scientific institutes, six clinical centers, and three collections. An agricultural institute with ten teachers and forty-four students, comprising a chemical veterinary institute, a veterinary institute, and a technological institute, was added to the university in 1881. In 1884, the university had 1,481 students in attendance, with a faculty numbering 131.

Aula Leopoldina

The library in 1885 consisted of approximately 400,000 works, including about 2,400 incunabula, approximately 250 Aldines, and 2840 manuscripts. These volumes came from the libraries of the former universities of Frankfurt and Breslau and from disestablished monasteries, and also included the oriental collections of the Bibliotheca Habichtiana and the academic Leseinstitut.

In addition, the university owned an observatory; a five-hectare botanical garden; a botanical museum and a zoological garden founded in 1862 by a joint stock company; a natural history museum; zoological, chemical, and physical collections; the chemical laboratory; the physiological plant; a mineralogical institute; an anatomical institute; clinical laboratories; a gallery (mostly from churches, monasteries, etc.) full of old German works; the museum of Silesian antiquities; and the state archives of Silesia.

In the late 19th century, numerous internationally renowned and historically notable scholars lectured at the University of Breslau, Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet, Ferdinand Cohn, and Gustav Kirchhoff among them.

All students, including German, Polish and Jewish, established their own student fraternities. Teutonia, a German Burschenschaft founded in 1817, was actually one of the oldest student fraternities in Germany, founded only two years after the Urburschenschaft. Polish student organizations included Concordia, Polonia, and a branch of the Sokol association. The Jewish students unions were the Viadrina (founded 1886) and the Student Union (1899).

in 1913 Prussian authorities established a numerus clausus law that limited the number of Jews from non-German Eastern Europe (so called Ostjuden) that could study in Germany to at most 900.  The University of Breslau was allowed to take 100.

As Germany turned to Nazism, the university became influenced by Nazi ideology. German scholars from the university worked on a scholarly thesis of historical justification for a "plan of mass deportation in Eastern territories"; among the people involved was Walter Kuhn, a specialist of Ostforschung. Other projects during World War II involved creating evidence to justify German annexation of Polish territories, and presenting Kraków and Lublin as German cities.

dissolution

After establishment of the Oder-Neisse line, the totality of the population of Breslau was transferred to the remainder of Germany and new Polish citizens took their place.

Teutonia,

Notable alumni and faculty

Nobel Prize winners from the Universität zu Breslau:

• Albert Ludwig Sigesmund Neisser
• Friedrich Bergius
• Max Born
• Eduard Buchner
• Hans Georg Dehmelt
• Paul Ehrlich
• Fritz Haber
• Philipp Lenard
• Theodor Mommsen
• Erwin Schrödinger
• Otto Stern

• Joseph Reinkens: Die Universität zu Breslau vor der Vereinigung der Frankfurter Viadrina mit der Leopoldina. Breslau 1861.
• Georg Kaufmann (Hrsg.): Festschrift zur Feier des hundertjährigen Bestehens der Universität Breslau. 2 Bände. Breslau 1911.
• Josef Joachim Menzel (Hrsg.): Jahrbuch der Schlesischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Stuttgart (in jährlicher Erscheinungsweise).
• Friedrich Andreae sw. A. Griesebach: Die Universität zu Breslau. Berlin, 1928. In: Jahrbuch der Schlesischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau. 1955.
• Erich Kleineidam: Die katholisch-theologische Fakultät der Universität Breslau 1811–1945. Köln 1961, ISBN 3-87909-028-9.
• Carsten Rabe: Alma Mater Leopoldina. Kolleg und Universität der Jesuiten in Breslau 1638 – 1811, Köln; Weimar; Wien 1999. (Neue Forschungen zur schlesischen Geschichte; 7)
• Ludwig Petry: Geistesleben des Ostens im Spiegel der Breslauer Universitätsgeschichte. In: W. Hubatsch: Deutsche Universitäten und Hochschulen im Osten. Köln-Opladen 1964, S. 87–112.
• T. Kulak, M. Pater u. W. Wrzesiński: Historia Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego 1702–2002. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2002 (Geschichte der Universität Breslau 1702–2002; Uniwersytet Wrocławski-Verlag).
• Adam Chmielewski: Jubileusz trzechsetlecia Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego 1702–2002. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego (300-jähriges Bestehen der Universität Breslau 1702–2002).