Keeping up with the Elite. Noblemen at German Universities (15.-16. century) with a Special Regard to Freiburg im Breisgau

Abstract

Noblemen were welcome at German universities, where they could, of course, assert their usual privileges. Outside of the universities the nobility got under pressure at the end of the fifteenth century, when a more and more academically educated bourgeois elite advanced into positions of the state and the princes’ services, the courts, and the church. Affected by this process were first of all the lower nobility and the chivalry. In response to this, their university attendance increased, especially at the princely provincial universities (Landesuniversitäten). One of these was the Habsburg University of Freiburg in Anterior Austria, whose profile is exemplarily investigated in this article. Most of the noblemen, however, were still satisfied with the mere attendance of the university. Only a minority (12%) of the nobility was taking graduations (usually in arts and law) and thus keeping up with the bourgeois elite. These nobles obviously had not only (official) careers in mind, but were really interested in the academic world. For some (but very few), even the profession of a university professor was an option.