Ingolstadt (1472 - 1800)
Duke Ludwig the Wealthy of Bavaria-Landshut founded Bavaria's first university with a papal concession in 1472. Back then, no one could imagine that over the next five hundred years it would move twice and become one of the largest universities in Germany, providing some of the country’s strongest research. The university in Ingolstadt began with four faculties. The Faculty of Arts (today’s Faculty of Philosophy) was mandatory and thus represented an undergraduate program of sorts. Its completion qualified a student for the other three faculties: medicine, jurisprudence, or theology.
Well-known figures such as Peter and Philipp Apian, Konrad Celtis, and Johannes Aventin made their mark on the university during the German humanist era. As foes of Martin Luther, they played a major role in the Reformation. Chief among them was Johannes Eck, who taught theology and earned a name as Luther’s arch-opponent in disputation. Teaching did not go unaffected: In 1549, professorial chairs were filled by Jesuits for the first time in Germany. Until the Societas Jesu was suppressed in 1773, the order profoundly influenced the development and direction of the university, making it one of the most important in Catholic Germany.
Over the course of the eighteenth century, the spirit of the Enlightenment spread ever more rapidly at the university. In the philosophical and medical faculties, the empirical sciences made great strides as new laboratories and institutes were founded. Theology placed a stronger emphasis on pastoral theology in connection with a call to intensify personal spiritual counseling, and law was redesigned with “modern” course plans. In 1799, the new Institute for Cameral Studies formed the seed of what would later become the Faculty of State Economy.
