The University of Strasbourg and World Wars

Abstract

The history of the University of Strasbourg during the first half of the twentieth century was high drama. Upon the Alsace reverting to France in 1919, cut off from its recent glorious past as one of the crown jewels of German imperial universities, the Université de Strasbourg did not resume life as a French provincial university among others. It would reacquire an intellectual stature second to none, except for the Parisian Sorbonne and Collège de France. Forced to forgo its ties to Germanic centers of learning, it forged new links with Anglo-Saxon universities. Its main originality though came from pushing its faculty staff into creating new disciplines and sub-disciplines. Such pioneering was in keeping with the culture of the Rhineland as a whole: to trade in ideas as a natural accompaniment of commerce in goods, in masterpieces of arts and crafts and in printed documents. After an impressive rebuilding during the interwar period, the Université de Strasbourg retreated from 1940 to 1944 to Clermont-Ferrand, in central France, where it came under attack by the Nazis, intent upon totally destroying it. To give coherence to the narrative, it focuses on chemistry at the University of Strasbourg, from 1919 to the aftermath of World War II.