Talk:Karl-Ferdinands-Universität

This article makes no sense

I'm confused as to what this article is about. First of all, the English name of the institution this article is describing is "Charles-Ferdinand University". Charles University became Charles-Ferdinand University in 1654. At the time, only German was taught, for a variety of reasons. In 1882, the University split into a German Charles-Ferdinand University and a Czech Charles-Ferdinand University. Is the article about the original pre-split Charles Ferdinand University? Or the newer German Charles-Ferdinand University? Second of all, do we really need this article, when we already have one on Charles University, the direct continuation of C-F University? This strikes me as a pointless fork of Charles University, that doesn't even properly distinguish between the different segments of the topic, and it should be deleted. RGloucester — 📬 19:37, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Trying to make sense of this comment: Neither the German nor the Czech university of the 19th century had an English name. The German Wikipedia has an article on the German university, this one corresponds to it. Background given is for those who read only this article about the university at which Kafka studied. —Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:31, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Not an official name, no, but they were always referred to by the anglicized Charles-Ferdinand, just as today's university is called Charles University. Anyway, my question was, is this article about the German university that was split of in the late 19th century, or the original Charles-Ferdinand University formed in 1654? They are not the same. This article, at the moment, is all over the place, and is conflating the earlier combied C-F university with the later German Charles-Ferdinand University. Regardless, all the information here is duplicates information we already have at Charles University. There is no real reason for it to exist. Translations don't always work. This one merely duplicated an article we already had RGloucester — 📬 23:18, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

A year ago I was doing disambiguation work and came across these two universities. What I found was that there were about 40 links to the University of Prague on a disambiguation page. Researching each one I found that most all of them should link to the German university. Seeing that there were the articles on the two universities - German and Czech - I thought it was an interesting situation that clearly demonstrated or paralled the history of the Austo-Hungarian empire in the last 150 years. The nationalistic asperations of the Czech people led to the separation of the universities into two pieces. The German piece continued to attract world famous people; only Czech speakers would want to go to the Czech university. After Czechoslovakia was created in 1918 the Czech piece got most of the government money. Until the Germans took over in 1939! Then the Czech university was closed down. Of course, after the Germans lost the war the situation was reversed - the German university was shut down and the Czech university took over. What a soap opera. In summary: although the current Charles University in Prague claims to be the heir of the 1348 university; that university died in 1945. And of course, it almost goes without saying, that RGloucester will volunteer to redo all the invalid links that deleting this article will create. GroveGuy (talk) 06:32, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

My history: I found a red link on Kafka for this name. Someone else filled it. I then discovered that it was the German part of the traditional Prague University, but to lazy to merge. We could merge now, without rhetoric, and make this a redirect to the specific section. Or we could leave it separate, covering the specific time, - why not? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:39, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Ah ha. I see a mistake in the Kafka article. I have fixed it. But the category is still wrong. GroveGuy (talk) 12:08, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I understand what you've done, though what you just said wasn't right. The Czechs did not want to split off from the Germans. It was the other way around. The Czechs were afraid that if they split off, they'd lose the traditions of the old university. The Germans, however, didn't like the increasing prominence of Czech in the university, and wanted to preserve a pure German university, so they voted to split off. The original Charles-Ferdinand University became bilingual after the 1848 revolutions, to satisfy demands from both Czechs and Germans who thought that the pure-German situation wasn't reasonable in the "modern" era. However, many Germans weren't satisfied with this, and neither were Czechs because Czech was still subordinate to German. That lead to the ultimate split, combined with demographic change: Prague had a German minority until the mid 19th century. But with rising amounts of Czech speakers (many who were former ethnic Czech German speakers, who took up Czech again), it only made sense to place more emphasis on Czech.

Anyway, regardless, I would delete this article and then make a new redirect to the section in the Charles University article, which would solve all these problems. That is the simplest solution. By the way the German and Czech C-F universities were both heirs to the Charles University tradition, that's exactly why they split, so both could have the same traditions, and retain their link to history, without having to have ethno-linguistic conflict. At the time the original Charles University was founded, Czech was taught alongside German, equally, until the Hapsburgs took over. It is wrong to say that the original university died in 1945. Also by the way, the faculty of the German university fled to Munich and established an institute for Bohemian studies, so they didn't totally disband. RGloucester — 📬 15:08, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Go ahead, but before you make this a redirect, please rewrite the section in the other so that a reader can enter there without having to scroll up to understand. If that is not easily possible, consider to keep this, concentrating on the period from split to dissolving. - At the time the original university was founded, teaching was in Latin. - Nobody said that not both (German and Czech) were heirs to this tradition. —Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:08, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

The teaching was in Latin, yes, but there were separate "colleges" for different ethnicities, including Germans, Czechs, Silesians (speaking their original language) and so on…I will, and I will merge some stuff from here to make that clear. Thank you for your input. RGloucester — 📬 18:34, 13 August 2013 (UTC)