Leopoldina The oldest mention of a university in Wrocław comes from the foundation deed signed on 20 July 1505 for the
Generale litterarum Gymnasium in Wrocław by King
Vladislaus II of Hungary () of the Polish
Jagiellonian dynasty. However, the new academic institution requested by the town council was not built, because the King's deed was rejected by
Pope Julius II for political reasons. At the end of the 19th century around 10% of the students were Polish and 16% were
Jewish. This situation reflected the multi ethnic and international character of the university. Both minorities, as well as the German students, established their own student organisations, called
Burschenschaften. Polish student organisations included Concordia, Polonia, and a branch of the
Sokol association. Many of the students came from other areas of partitioned Poland. The Jewish students unions were the Viadrina (founded 1886) and the Student Union (1899).
Teutonia, a German Burschenschaft founded in 1817, was actually one of the oldest student fraternities in Germany, founded only two years after the
Urburschenschaft. The Polish fraternities were all eventually disbanded by the German professor
Felix Dahn, As
Germany turned to Nazism, the university became influenced by
Nazi ideology. Polish students were beaten by NSDAP members just for speaking Polish. In 1939, all Polish students were expelled and an official university declaration stated, "We are deeply convinced that [another] Polish foot will never cross the threshold of this German university". In that same year, 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. In January 2015, the university restored 262 PhD degrees stripped during the Nazi period from Jews and other scholars seen as hostile to the Nazis.
University of Wrocław After the
Siege of Breslau, the
Red Army took the city in May 1945. Breslau, now known as Wrocław, became part of the
Republic of Poland. The first Polish team of academics arrived in Wrocław in late May 1945 and took custody of the university buildings, which were 70% destroyed.
burned by soldiers on 10 May 1945, four days after the German garrison surrendered the city. {{Infobox university rankings Very quickly, some buildings were repaired, and a cadre of professors was built up, many coming from prewar Polish
Jan Kazimierz University of Lwów and
Stefan Batory University of Wilno. Following
postwar border shifts, thousands of former employees of the Lwów Library, the Jan Kazimierz University and
Ossoliński National Institute moved to the city. In mid-1948, over 60% of professors at the Wrocław University and Polytechnic were from
Kresy, with academics from prewar Lwów playing a particularly important role in the newly established Polish institutions of higher learning.
Stanisław Kulczyński from the University of Lwów was nominated the first president of the two Polish universities in Wrocław, while
Edward Sucharda from the Lwów Polytechnic became the vice-president. The University of Wrocław was refounded as a Polish state university by the decree of the
State National Council issued on 24 August 1945. The first lecture was given on 15 November 1945, by
Ludwik Hirszfeld. Between 1952 and 1989 the university was named Bolesław Bierut University of Wrocław (Polish:
Uniwersytet Wrocławski im. Bolesława Bieruta) after
Bolesław Bierut, the communist President of the
Republic of Poland (1947–52). In 2015, nearly 80 years after the fact, the university restored academic degrees stripped from German Jews by the Nazis owing to German anti-Semitism. "Wroclaw University estimates that in total some 262 people suffered a similar fate." ==Faculties==