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Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg is a university in the German city Halle, Saxony-Anhalt. The Leucorea foundation, which belongs to the university, is located in Wittenberg.
It was merged in 1817 from the University of Halle (founded 1694) and the University of Wittenberg (founded 1502[1], closed in 1813 by Napoleon).
It is named after the Protestant reformer Martin Luther, and is the largest and oldest university in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt with approximately 19,000 students.
The university became a centre of the Protestant Reformation under the influence of Philipp Melanchthon and building on the works of Martin Luther. Notable attendees include George Müller, Georg Joachim Rheticus, and, in fiction, William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
In the 17th and 18th century it became one major center of the German Enlightenment. Christian Wolff was an import proponent of rationalism, which was not at all an innocuous position at that time. He had major influences on many German scholars, such as Immanuel Kant. Christian Thomasius was at the same time the first philosopher in Germany to hold his lectures not in Latin, but German. He contributed to a rational program in philosophy but also tried to establish a more common-sense point of view, which was aimed against the unquestioned superiority of aristocracy and theology.
The first Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States, Frederick Muhlenberg, was a graduate. Notable faculty members include Johann Matthias Hase.
- ^ Britannica, vol 12, p.719
- The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th Edition. Chicago, 1988.
- Official website (German)
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