From the Athenaeum Illustre to “capital chauvinism”; what role did the UvA play in 750 years of Amsterdam?
October marks Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary, and this will be celebrated in a major way. Over the past years, the UvA has been an important factor in the city; from the founding of predecessor Athenaeum Illustre, to the place where protesters gather to speak out on social issues. How did the city and the university relate to each other over the past 750 years?
The history of Amsterdam, historians are generally in agreement, begins in 1275, even though by then the area had been populated by citizens and merchants living in wooden houses on the banks of the Amstel river for about a century. So why 1275? That is the year the city received the so-called Toll Privilege from Count Floris the Fifth. This is the oldest document mentioning Amsterdam and its inhabitants, and it allowed the city's inhabitants to transport their wares through the county of Holland without paying tolls.
At that time, the city did not yet have a university. It would be quite some time - 357 years to be exact - before Gerardus Vossius opened the Athenaeum Illustre, which would later evolve into the UvA, with his oration De Historiae Utilitate in 1632. Vossius made the move from Leiden University to Amsterdam, instantly becoming the highest-paid professor in the country. The arrival of Caspar Barlaeus, by then already a prominent writer and poet, also played an important role in the early years of the atheneum.
School Law
This brief history may already be familiar to many. Still, even before the Athenaeum Illustre was founded, there must have been a role for writers, scholars and teachers in Amsterdam. To gain more insight into this, we turn to the recently released book “Attention! 750 years of education in Amsterdam” by Het Genootschap Amstelodamum. The first evidence of education in the city dates back to 1342. The city law issued in that year stated that Amsterdam had school privileges and could therefore appoint teachers. Education was thus on the city council's agenda from an early stage.
Initially, it involved only children, who were taught at parish churches. The emphasis was on learning to read, mastery of Latin, arithmetic and philosophy. These skills were necessary for attending university. Because even though this was not possible in Amsterdam at the time, boys from the city did start studying at that time. In Heidelberg, for instance, where a university was founded in 1386, or in Cologne, where this happened three years later. A study trip to popular, Italian university cities such as Bologna and Padua was also in demand among the Amsterdam youth of the time.
Cologne and Leuven
However, the universities of Cologne and Leuven were the most popular at the time. Between 1389 and 1569, over 11 hundred students from Amsterdam enrolled at one of these two universities. Even before Amsterdam became the most populous city in the province of Holland, it was where most students came from. Haarlem and Leiden, for example, both were larger cities than Amsterdam at that time, sent an average of less than seven students a year to the University of Leuven from 1500 to 1530, while from Amsterdam more than ten students went to Leuven every year.
A development was also noticeable among Amsterdam teachers. By the early 16th century, in fact, almost all of them were university-educated, and in addition to their work as teachers, they increasingly began to act as authors. The step to full-fledged scholars was thus becoming smaller and smaller. Amsterdam's educational offering had developed steadily over three centuries, and the city was ready to establish its own institution of higher learning.
Centre of culture and science
And so it happened. In 1632, that is, when the Athenaeum Illustre was founded. Although it did not immediately take the form of a university. “An important difference was that no examinations could be taken at the atheneum, so no degrees were awarded,” says author and former university historian P.J. Knegtmans. “Amsterdam made an early attempt to elevate the atheneum to a university, but the University of Leiden blocked it.” In that period, only one university per region had the right to grant degrees. “So Amsterdam was too late, and at that time still too small. Only later did the city blossom into the centre of culture and science.”
Nevertheless, in the decades following its foundation, the atheneum was an important and prestigious place in Amsterdam, Knegtmans explains. “It did therefore bother the city in the early years that the Atheneum Illsutre was not elevated to university status. The mayors of Amsterdam at the time were also often scholars, which contributed to the importance attributed to the atheneum.” But from around 1700, a different political wind started blowing. Less money was available and the Atheneum Illustre was somewhat neglected. This lasted until around 1813, when Amsterdam decided to revive the atheneum. This eventually resulted in the atheneum being officially elevated to a university in 1877. From then on, the Atheneum Illustre would be known as the University of Amsterdam.
Capital chauvinism
“Before then, the athenaeum had always been a kind of preliminary preparation for real universities. That no longer pleased the city,” says Knegtmans. “Amsterdam had the allure of a capital city and wanted to compete with other big, international cities. This included having the best university in the country. Capital chauvinism.” So the city aimed high, and for a long time paid for the university out of its own funds. “This made it possible for professors to be appointed for subjects that did not yet exist at all at other universities,” Knegtmans explains. “For instance, at other universities in the Netherlands, economics could only be studied after World War II, at the UvA it was already possible in the 1920s.” Amsterdam's ambition thus enabled the UvA to be innovative and cutting-edge.
This also influenced the university's identity, which, like the city, was predominantly leftist and progressive. “Until 1960, for instance, professors were appointed by the city council. This allowed married women, socialists or communists to be appointed as professors at the UvA even before the war. At state universities, where the Dutch parliament had to approve the appointment of professors, this was impossible,” said Knegtmans.
The fact that the UvA today is a place where a fierce battle of ideas regularly takes place therefore fits a pattern, according to Knegtmans. “'It has happened a few times before that the university became heavily politicised. During the German occupation, and at the end of the 1960s. Amsterdam students, teachers and professors have always had great social awareness, and are often more politically active than, say, their Leiden or Groningen counterparts. That interaction on politics and diversity is part of the Uva and of Amsterdam.”
