The oldest university north of the Alps and east of Paris was founded by the King of Bohemia and King of the Romans, later the Emperor Charles IV, in his royal seat of Prague on the 7th of April 1348. It was no accident that the first university in Central Europe should have been established in the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia. At that time the Bohemian State was the strongest power on which Charles could rely as political core of his territories, and from which he could control the politics of the Holy Roman Empire. His grandfather, Venceslas II, of the earlier ruling Premyslid dynasty, had already tried to found a university in Prague in 1194. His grand plan was only to be realised, however, by his grandson. The founding of the university furthered Charles IV's dynastic imperial designs since it was in line with the medieval concept of the three pillars of Christendom: the papacy (sacerdotium) - the empire (imperium) - the university (universitas). Charles wished his power to be based on all three pillars, strove to build the third pillar from the time of his coronation as King of the Romans in Bonn in 1346, and immediately afterwards com-municated his plan to Pope Clement VI. The pope then issued a Bull, on the 26th of January 1347, declaring that a studium generale (university) would be established in Prague with all four faculties (Theology, Free Arts, Law and Medicine) and the right to confer academic titles. The Founding Charter of the 7th of April 1348 referred to the territorial principle by mentioning the inhabitants, of the Bohemian kingdom, for whom the privileges of a studium generale were principally destined.
According to the Charter the university was set up: "...in order that our loyal inhabitants of the realm, incessantly hungering after the fruits of learning; may not be constrained to beg for alms in foreign countries, but may find spread out a welcoming table in our realm, and also that those who are distinguished by natural sagacity and talent may through knowledge and science become skilled in learning and may no longer be obliged, but hold it superfluous in their pursuit of learning; to travel about in far-off lands, to seek out foreign nations, or to beg in foreign countries for the satisfaction of their aspirations to knowledge; and that they may reckon it their glory to be able to summon others from abroad"
The university was set up on the model of the universities of Paris and Bologna and very soon won a high reputation. Its academic community consisted not just of domestic masters and students, but of a large number of masters and scholars from abroad, especially from the other areas of Central Europe, for whom it was the nearest accessible and, for its time, academically developed
Charles's son and successor Wenceslas IV extended his jurisdiction over the university and by the Decree of Kutna Hora of 1409 strengthened the position of the Bohemian members of the academic community at Prague's university. This led to the departure of a large proportion of the foreign scholars and to increasing emphasis on the territorial character of Prague's university.
Shortly thereafter the university was thoroughly transformed by the Hussite movement, which fore-shadowed the European Reformation. The univer-sity took up the views of its rector Master Jan Hus, and in the social and political revolution that followed it was reduced to a single faculty (Free Arts) and became a prototype, in funding and organisation as well as academic terms, for later reformationary territorial academies.
In the later history of Prague's university we should not overlook the reign of Rudolph II, who made Prague his residence and in whose learned court some of the university masters found a place. Here they came into stimulating contact with such famous scientific figures as Johannes Kepler or Tycho Brahe.
The university was associated with the politics of the Bohemian Estates who stood in opposition to the Habsburg emperor. It supported the Estate's short-lived rebellion, which triggered all-European Thirty Years war (1618-1648). After the defeat of the Estates and the end of the war the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia Ferdinand III decided, in 1654, to merge the university with Prague Jesuit Academy (established by one of Ferdinand's predecessors in 1556). The combined institution was called the Carolo-Ferdinandea University, and bore the name right up to the establishment of an independent Czechoslovakia in 1918. The Carolo-Ferdinandea University revived all the four faculties that it had possessed in the 14th century, and gradually became a state institution. The Enlightened absolutist regime of the Emperor Josef II in the 1780 removed the last traces of its original status as a free corporation with academy privileges.
The university acquired the character of a modern university in the reform years of 1848-9, and gradually developed the conditions for the mass education of a new intellectual class suited to the needs of an emergent industrial civic society. The increasing ethnic polarisation of this society led, in 1882, to the division of the university into two independent universities, Czech and German. This arrangement persisted under the independent Czechoslovak State and until 1945, when the German University was abolished after the Second World War. Both universities had reached a high academic level by the turn of the present century, attracting teachers and scientific figures of inter-national stature, such as Albert Einstein at the German University. The professors at the Czech University played an important role in the movement for national emancipation and then the politics of the Czechoslovak State. One professor of Charles University, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, became the first President of the Czechoslovak Republic, and the second President, Edvard Benes, also taught at the uni-versity. Its academic community could also boast Professor Jaroslav Heyrovsky, who in 1959 was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in the field of polarography. Many other internationally distinguished figures of world science and culture studied at the university.
The long process of the development of academic freedoms and international co-operation at the university was first interrupted, in our century by Hitler's Third Reich, which after occupying the republic closed all Czech universities on the 17th of November 1939 and persecuted teachers and students. After the end of the Second World War, Charles University was able to renew its activities, but within a short period these were threatened once again, this time by the totalitarian communist regime. The communists did not close the university, but they expelled many students and teachers, and for a long time constricted academic life and set strict ideological limits to freedom of thought and education. The students, loyal to their traditional struggle for freedom, openly defied totalitarianism on the 17th of November 1989 and by their demonstrations provided the stimulus for the over-throw of the communist regime. Since that time the life of the university has begun to develop in freedom again, and has rapidly become a modern university with wide international contacts.
The renewal of the international prestige of Charles University since 1990 is attested by the in-terest in co-operation expressed by universities and educational, scientific and cultural organisations throughout the world. Charles University has made more than 130 new agreements on cooperation with leading universities and other teaching and research institutions in Europe, the USA and Canada, and with the largest universities in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. All these agreements involve cone programmes and collaboration at faculty level. Charles Uni-versity also uses the opportunity offered by international pro-grammes, especially those of the European Union and inter-national research programme, and is part of such inter--university networks as the COIMBRA Group of older European universities, or the Conference of Rectors of European Universities. One current priority is the successful use of the Socrates/Erasmus programme for student and teacher mobility, which is related, naturally, to prospects for the eventual entry of the Czech Republic into the European Union.
Charles University makes great efforts to support the development of academic research, which creates the basis for the existence of the university and is an essential component of that unity of science, scholarship and education without which an institution ceases to be a university. In many fields, especially medicine, the natural sciences, mathematics and physics, but also in some areas of the humanities, it enjoys a high-level international reputation. In terms of numbers of teachers, employees and students, and in terms of research activities, Charles University is the largest and most important university in the Czech Republic. It has a staff of 7,000, including 3,500 research and teaching personnel. University courses at bachelor, master's and doctoral level are offered in hundreds of fields at the university's sixteen faculties. In 1996 more than 33,000 students were studying at the university including more than 1,600 students from abroad. Thirteen of the university's faculties are located in Prague: 3 medical and 3 theological, law, arts, social sciences, pedagogical, natural sciences, mathematics and physics, physical education and sport. The pharmaceutical faculty and another medical faculty are located in Hradec Kralove and the last of the medical faculties is in Plzen. Charles University also boasts a whole range of other research, educational, developmental, economic and information centres, institutes and special facilities. It uses more than 150 separate building complexes, of which the most famous is the original historical seat of the university - the 14th Century Carolinum. University development plans envisage the building of new university campuses for mathematico--physical, biomedical, and natural scientific and huma-nities fields. Charles University has 12 university halls of residence for students, offering a total of 8,500 beds, and in its 10 Prague refectories alone it serves more than 10,000 main meals daily.