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INCLUSION – EXCLUSION

The University has always been an exclusive place. Whereas in the 18th century it was reserved for few learned families, the research university of the 19th century was decisively a place for the aspiring educated middle classes, closing themselves off from the “bottom ranks”. Social advancement via a university career was an exception well into […]

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THE UNIVERSITY HOUSEKEEPERS

In the 18th century, the private household and the scientific workspace were not mutually exclusive. Many scholars taught at home, their books and collections were their private property. This enabled many women, who worked in professor households, to be scientifically active. The so-called “University housekeepers”, such as Dorothea von Schlözer, attained great fame. As professor’s

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INVISIBLE HELPERS

With the emergence of scientific understanding based on observation and experimentation, the 17th century also saw the need for craftsmanship at the university. Scientists now used instruments to observe, measure and analyse data that must be designed, repaired and maintained. The construction and execution of experiments also required many helpers and skilled hands. Then, as

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“THE MAKING OF PHOTOGRAPHS”

The documentation of the production and post-production process shows exactly how much staging is involved in the photographs. Background and lighting is set up, the staging between photographers and subjects discussed, poses taken and varied. By positioning the camera at eye level, it conveys closeness. The images are viewed and the setting adjusted to get

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DETENTION DOODLES OF AN INMATE

With a complete lack of freedom, students were supposed to pay for their sins behind the closed doors of the detention room. This solitary detention revealed itself to be an opportunity for freedom of speech which is evident in the numerous doodles on the walls. For instance, an anonymous student made fun of the meteorologist

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KAESTNER IN THE EYES OF HIS STUDENT

The budding mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), who had already been hailed as a child prodigy during his lifetime, was also not inept at drawing. The full-figure profile portrait of his teacher Abraham Gotthelf Kästner (1719-1800), which he made with a compass and a ruler, is ambitious, even if the perspective representation of

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OESTERLEY: GOD-FEARING COPYIST?

Being depicted as a copyist is a hard judgement upon Carl Oesterley (1805-1891), who had been Professor of Art History in Göttingen since 1844. Simultaneously, he held a position as court painter at the royal Royal-Hannoverian court. Trained in Rome and consorting in Nazarene circles, his style was shaped by Romanticism and religion. Kneeling, as

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DAHLMANN DIABOLO?

In 1837, when Ernst August I of Hannover abolished the then only four-year-old constitution of the kingdom, Friedrich Dahlmann (1785-1860) authored a protest booklet along with a group of professors who became known as the “Göttinger Sieben”(The Göttingen Seven), which subsequently led to their dismissals. Having been Professor of Political Science since 1829, the historian

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IN THE BEST LIGHT

Pencil, ruler and compass: these were classic insignia of a scholar in the 18th century. Staged as just such an example of an 18th century scholar is Abraham Gotthelf Kästner (1719-1800) in his portrait from 1769. Pencil, ruler and compass—these were also the tools with which the Göttingen professor for mathematics and physics put figures

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