The University of Copenhagen: From the Middle Ages to a modern public university

When excited new students flock to the matriculation ceremony to greet the rector at the start of their studies every August, the historic handshake marks both the beginning of their individual academic adventure and their incorporation into a 545-year-old tradition.

Since 1479, the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) has been a powerhouse of learning, discovery and intellectual encounters. The times and the trends have changed. But political changes have often begun at the university and then spread to the rest of society. From the stormy days of the Reformation, to the bright lights of the Enlightenment, and on to today’s technological breakthroughs – the university has played a key role in all of it.

One of the most famous alumni of UCPH, Søren Kierkegaard, who enrolled in Theology in 1830, taught us that while life must be lived forwards it can only be understood backwards.

We have therefore asked Morten Fink-Jensen, university historian and associate professor at the Saxo Institute, to take us for a stroll through the university’s historic buildings near the Frue Plads square.

The University of Copenhagen was established when the Pope in Rome approved Christian I’s request to set up Denmark’s first university in June 1475. Denmark was Catholic, so there was no way around the Pope, and he did not give the stamp of his assent until Queen Dorothea travelled to Rome to speed things up.

The spread of universities had begun in the Middle Ages in southern Europe, but gradually moved up northwards, and by 1479 the University of Copenhagen was ready to welcome its first students.

»To begin with, it was a very small institution located in a former building on the corner of the present-day Nørregade and Studiestræde streets. There were maybe five or six professors and 50 students,« says Morten Fink-Jensen.

The university was originally comprised of four faculties: Theology, Law, Medicine and Philosophy. Theology was key, and the University of Copenhagen was in many ways a branch of the Catholic Church.

After the Reformation and the split between the Catholic Chrurch and the new protestant churches, significant political and social changes followed throughout Europe, and in 1536 the University of Copenhagen, like the rest of Danish society, changed. This leads us to the first stop on our travel through time: The konsistoriehuset building.

Professorial rule in the medieval town

After the Reformation, the university was re-inaugurated in 1537. Now as a Lutheran institution responsible for educating parish priests. The University passed into the custody of the Danish state and the king – and was given a new seal by Christian III. This (with a modern touch) is still the official seal today. The language of instruction remained Latin, the language spoken in academic circles throughout Europe.

After the Reformation, the buildings of the Bishop of Roskilde (between what is today Nørregade and Frue Plads) were transferred to the University of Copenhagen, and the university’s highest governing body, the senate or konsistorium, was given its seat here.

Studies have shown that the timber in the roof structure was felled around 1480, making the konsistorium building one of Copenhagen’s oldest surviving buildings – if not the oldest. Although Copenhagen’s history goes back much further, the different fires in the city, and in particular the British bombardment of 1807, meant that almost all of the medieval town’s buildings have been lost – with the exception of the konsistorium building.

The University’s konsistorium or senate consisted of all professors from the four faculties, who elected a rector to head the university. Just for six months at a time to begin with.

»It was, of course, a mark of honour. But at the same time the role as rector entailed a lot of duties. And that meant that you couldn’t focus on your research and teaching. So in some ways, it was also seen as a job that just had to be done,« says Fink-Jensen.

With the Danish 2003 university legislation the senate was abolished, and nowadays all Danish universities are managed by professional boards.

Peasants and gang wars

The konsistorium can be seen as a form of absolute government at the university, which at that time was in many ways a society within society. The university had been donated large land holdings and farms by the king, and so it was therefore in its daily operations financially independent from the state. This meant that farmers came in several times every week from large parts of the island of Zealand and delivered grain, eggs, honey and even animals to the University of Copenhagen.

At the same time, the University enjoyed special privileges relative to the rest of society. Neither the institution nor the professors had to pay taxes. Students could be admitted to the Regensen dormitory, while underprivileged students could get food twice a day with something called the Kommunitetet scholarship, a forerunner of today’s generous Danish SU student grant.

This contradicts the common perception that the university was reserved for the elite in society. Many peasant sons were students. The admission requirement was only that you had to have attended a Latin school and mastered the language of the scholars.

The university had its own jurisdiction with its own rules. University managers were able to prosecute and punish students who broke the rules.

»What we now know as ‘caretakers’ were then a kind of police officer who made sure that academic laws were complied with,« explains Morten Fink-Jensen.

The special privileges granted to university people meant that other groups were at times angry with the students. This was especially evident during the night hours, when students went overboard at the city’s many pubs.

»There are stories of a kind of gang war between students and other groups. The royal castle servants and the sailors from the Holmen naval yard patrolled the streets in groups, and things turned violent when they met in a dark alley on Saturday evenings,« says Fink-Jensen.

This, physical, manifestation of the university’s own jurisdiction is the next stop on the route: The University of Copenhagen’s own dungeon.

Two weeks on bread and water

Right up until 1770, the University of Copenhagen had its own laws, and the option of throwing students into a ‘carceret’, the Latin term for a dungeon.

Here, students were locked up for up to two weeks, living on bread and water. Peasants who lived on the university’s land holdings also fell under the jurisdiction of the University of Copenhagen, and could also be put underground.

You would be sent to the dungeon for disorderly conduct in a state of drunkenness, or disobedience to the professors. The same thing could happen if you complained about the food at the Kommunitetet.

»In the court minutes, you can also read about an incident where a group of older students had stood outside and been noisy during a kind of entrance exam for new students. And when the professor couldn’t keep them quiet, the caretakers were called in, and the group was thrown into the dungeon,« says Morten Fink-Jensen.

On the old bricks in the dungeon, you can see several names and dates scratched in.
If students repeatedly broke the rules, they risked being expelled. This was the university’s most severe punishment, as it deprived you of both the opportunity to sit exams and the privileges of being a student.

»But punishment in the form of dungeon time didn’t mean you had ruined your future. It was as if you then got a clean bill of health. Some of the students who had been in the dungeon turned out later to become priests. Maybe not in Copenhagen, but certainly in the west of Jutland or up in Norway,« says Morten Fink-Jensen.

The first lady of Frue Plads

With the Copenhagen fire of 1728 and the British bombardment of the city in 1807, the University of Copenhagen, like much of the inner city, had ended up a pile of ruins and rubble.

There was therefore a need for a new main building that could beautifully represent the institution. City architect Peder Malling was commissioned, and he initially presented drawings for an even larger building than the one that dominates the Frue Plads square nowadays.

However, due to the Danish state bankruptcy of 1813 (a consequence of defeats in the Napoleonic Wars), the plan was scrapped in favour of the main building that is still the ceremonial setting for the institution.

Above the main entrance and the inscription with the University of Copenhagen’s motto – Coelestem adspicit lucem (It looks upon the heavenly light) – an eagle is enthroned.

»The eagle is a symbol of the spirit and the mind. A theologian authored the motto, so perhaps the eagle is looking over at the church tower of the Church of Our Lady, and the light is a form of divine insight. But it can also be interpreted as scientific insight, or a combination of the two,« says Morten Fink-Jensen.

Outside, the main building is flanked by six busts of eminent professors. All men. The women’s entry into the university was marked by a monument erected in 2017. The sculpture pays tribute to seismologist Inge Lehmann, who in 1936 was the first in the world to argue that the Earth has a solid, not fluid, core, as previously believed.

Women were admitted to study at UCPH in 1877 when Nielsine Mathilde Nielsen and Marie Gleerup were admitted to the medical degree programme. It would be another 69 years however before the university got female professors. In 1946, historian Astrid Friis was appointed Denmark’s first female professor.

Today, the main building is used for offices and for representational purposes, but all teaching used to take place in the lecture halls in the side wings. During the 19th century, the University of Copenhagen began to expand to other parts of the city, but teaching took place in the main building’s old auditoriums right into the present millennium.

»Up on the first floor is the Brandes Auditorium. It was here that Georg Brandes held a series of famous lectures on The Modern Breakthrough in 1871,« says Morten Fink-Jensen.

Welcome to privilege – and beatings

The Ceremonial Hall is located at the heart of the main building. The matriculation ceremony for new students took place here up to and including 2012, after which the event moved outside to the Frue Plads square so that more students could participate.

After speeches and handshakes new students are now invited in into the imposing giant hall with murals, painted ceilings and tapestries.

The handshake is an old tradition that dates back to the foundation of the university in 1479. When you were admitted to the University of Copenhagen, you received a so-called academic citizenship letter, which indicated that you were now admitted and therefore also had to comply with the university’s rules. A kind of oath that all new students had to take at matriculation, which was sealed with a handshake.

The transition to academia was also marked by older students, and this could be tough.
New students had to give up their old ways before they could be incorporated into the fraternity.

»One way this took place was that new students were dressed up as wild animals with horns and a hump on their backs. The older students then beat the new students to remove the horns and humps, so they could rescind their bestial nature,« explains Morten Fink-Jensen.

The Danish word for a new university student ‘rus’ is derived from the Latin word depositorus, which means to deposit or to submit.

In the Ceremonial Hall there is also the rostrum, which prominent guests speak from at the university’s annual commemoration, and where representatives from the Danish royal family, the government and the university are invited.

In 1968, when the student uprisings spread to the University of Copenhagen and other European capitals, psychology student Finn Ejnar Madsen took over the rostrum.

»Finn Ejnar Madsen and some other students had got some fake access cards printed and turned up at the annual commemoration. When he stormed towards the rostrum during a pause in the proceedings, the rector at the time Mogens Fog quickly asked what he was up to. He replied that he wanted to speak, and Mogens Fog gave him exactly three minutes,« says Morten Fink-Jensen.

From the rostrum, Finn Ejnar Madsen formulated what has since been seen as a historical, fatal, blow to the professorial regime. The revolution had come to the University of Copenhagen.

Students and administrative staff were given representatives in the senate, and study boards were set up comprising students and lecturers from the various faculties.

Museums, book collections, and fires

In the historic university core of Frue Plads is also the Museum Building, Denmark’s first museum building from 1870 which housed the Zoological Museum and the university’s growing collection of stuffed mammals, birds, reptiles, insects and fish spread out over the different floors.

In the large entrance hall there were skeletons of exotic animals like elephants and giraffes.

This was before electric lights, so a glass roof guaranteed that daylight could illuminate the collections.

»It was also a place where the general public could come and be enlightened. And there was also teaching and research going on in this building,« says Morten Fink-Jensen.

The Zoological Museum was the university’s first but then other museums were added, such as the Geological Museum and the Botanical Gardens. In the 1960s, the growing collections could no longer fit in the building, so the collections moved to buildings on North Campus – which will soon be replaced by the new Natural History Museum of Denmark, which is scheduled to be ready adjacent to the Botanical Gardens around 2026/27.

Today, the Museum Building houses part of the university administration, including the rector’s office.

Also the university’s book collections have been moved around since 1482, when the university’s vice-chancellor, Peder Albertsen, donated a collection of books and manuscripts. The collection grew with the help of wealthy donations until the 1728 fire consumed the collection of 35,000 books and manuscripts.

»The collection included many medieval manuscripts. That they burned is a bit of a tragedy,« says Morten Fink-Jensen.

In 1861, a new university library was ready on the corner of Frue Plads and Fiolstræde was completed. Johan Daniel Herholdt had won the first architectural competition in Danish history.

»The building had space for 300,000 titles, and it was thought that this was enough for well into the future,« says Morten Fink-Jensen.

Even before 1900, however, the number of titles had exceeded half a million, so space became so limited that throughout the 1900s, books have been moved from the Fiolstræde location to the different faculties and to the Royal Library, now the Black Diamond building.

Today, the university library in Fiolstræde is open to the public, and UCPH-logo-ed merchandise is the latest craze at the museum shop on the ground floor.
Trinity of church, science and university

The last stop on our travel through time is the Trinitatis Church, which was taken into use as a university church in 1656.

Here, the theology students from the Regensen dormitory across the street could practice their preaching. In order that they would not hold forth to an empty church, new parish boundaries were drawn up to include a minute Trinitatis parish. The attic housed the university’s book collection before the library in Fiolstræde was completed.

The church is best known for its distinctive church tower: The Round Tower. It has been used as an astronomical observatory since 1642, from which scientists made records of the starry heavens and the orbits of the planets using telescopes.

The city lights and smoke made the astronomers’ work difficult however, so even though the tower miraculously survived both the fire of Copenhagen and the British bombardment, the activities were moved to a newly built observatory in the Østervold quarter in 1861.

The name, Trinitatis, denotes the Christian trinity (God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit), but in this case also denotes another trinity:

»This is where the church, science and the university come together. In many ways, these three things describe the university’s activities throughout the first several hundred years,« says Morten Fink-Jensen.

And this is where our journey through the history of the University of Copenhagen ends. For 545 years, the university has housed some of the most prominent people in the kingdom and witnessed several of the most landmark events in Danish history.

A story that all students and staff at the university will be part of and will continue to contribute to.