Chernivtsi University

The Chernivtsi National University (named after Yuriy Fedkovych, fully titled Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, Ukrainian: Чернівецький національний університет імені Юрія Федьковича) is a public university in the city of Chernivtsi in Western Ukraine. One of the leading Ukrainian institutions for higher education, it was founded in 1875 as the Franz-Josephs-Universität Czernowitz when Chernivtsi (Czernowitz) was the capital of the Duchy of Bukovina, a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary. Today the university is based at the Residence of Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans building complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2011.

In 1775, the Austrian Habsburg monarchy had obtained the territory of Bukovina, which from 1786 was governed as the Chernivtsi district within the Galicia. Under the rule of Emperor Joseph II, the sparsely populated territory was settled by German colonists, mainly from Swabia. Together with the Austrian administration they formed a separate population group and by the late 19th century, several institutes of higher education arose with the German language of instruction, including Gymnasien in Chernivtsi and Suceava. As the graduates still had to leave Bukovina to study in the western parts of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the local administration developed plans to found their own university.

In 1866, the Austrian Empire had lost the war against Prussia ending the German Confederation, which was followed by the establishment of the German Empire in 1871. In turn, Habsburg emperor Francis Joseph I turned his attention to his eastern crown lands. Plans for a Germanophone university were modelled on the establishment in 1872 of the University of Straßburg Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität, named after German Emperor William I, in annexed Alsace-Lorraine.

After Lviv University had declared Polish a teaching language in 1871, a Bukovina committee led by the ethnically Romanian jurist and liberal politician Constantin Tomashchuk (1840–1889), a member of the Imperial Council, called for the foundation of a German college in multilingual Czernowitz about 740 kilometres (460 mi) "beyond" Vienna. In 1874 they addressed a petition to the Austrian Minister of Education Karl von Stremayr, on whose proposal Emperor Francis Joseph finally resolved upon the establishment of a university, which was decided on by the two houses of the Imperial Council on 13 and 20 March 1875. Other cities applying for the creation of a college, such as Trieste, Olomouc, Brno, Ljubljana or Salzburg, were unsuccessful.

One hundred years after the affiliation of Bukovina to the Austrian monarchy, the Franz-Josephs-Universität was inaugurated on 4 October 1875 (the name day of the emperor) on the basis of the Czernowitz Higher Theological School. Constantin Tomashchuk was appointed its first rector. The ensemble of the Residence, combining elements of national, Byzantine, Gothic and Baroque architecture, is an outstanding example of 19th-century historicist architecture, design and planning, expressing the cultural identity of the Orthodox Church within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Originally, the main language of instruction was German with separate departments for Ukrainian and Romanian and literature.^{[citation needed]} German was the primary language even though the region it was located in, Bukovina, was not German-speaking, and other Austro-Hungarian universities outside of German-speaking areas were shifting away from German-medium teaching. The Emperor saw instruction in German as a means to enable any subject to progree anywhere in the Monarchy. During the period of Austro-Hungarian rule, the university operated three faculties: Greek Orthodox theology (the only one in Central Europe), jurisprudence and philosophy. To pursue the study of medicine, the Bukovina graduates still had to go to Lviv or to the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

Though the general language of instruction was German, professorships on Romanian and Ruthenian language were also established. At the time of Austro-Hungarian rule, the majority of the university's students were Jewish and German Austrians, while Ukrainians and Romanians comprised about 20%–25% of the student body. At times, there were more than 40 German, Ukrainian, Romanian, Polish, Jewish, and Catholic fraternities (Studentenverbindungen) in the city, reflecting its linguistic and religious diversity.

In World War I, Czernowitz on the Eastern Front was the scene of battle between Austro-Hungarian and Imperial Russian forces, in which the university was severely affected. Nevertheless, plans for a relocation to Salzburg in the west met with protests from academics such as Eugen Ehrlich and Joseph Schumpeter. In June 1918 teaching activities were resumed after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Soviet Russia.