The foundation of the duchy and the university made Königsberg (today’s Kaliningrad) an attractive centre for scholars, preachers and artists. In later centuries, it was home to famous scholars and scientists – especially jurists as well as natural and political scientists. The most eminent of them all was Immanuel Kant, one of the most important philosophers in the whole world.
The single most important scientific discovery of the country was, however, not made in Königsberg but in Allenstein (today Olsztyn) and Frauenburg (today Frombork) by Nicolaus Copernicus. He refuted the medieval world picture according to which everything in the universe revolved around the earth.
With its observatory and important mathematical studies on the motion of celestial bodies, astronomy remained a scientific focus of Königsberg university. In addition to his philosophical work, Immanuel Kant also did some astronomical research.
Theodor von Schön or Friedrich Leopold von Schrötter, two disciples of the Königsberg Enlightenment philosophers, managed during the crisis in Prussia caused by the French occupation from 1807-1813 to assert their reformist ideas and achieve a fundamental modernisation of the whole of Prussia.
A small select list of Königsberg professors:
A small select list of Königsberg professors:
Simon Dach
Christian Jacob Kraus
Karl Lachmann
Eduard von Simson
Andreas Osiander,
Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841): philosopher, psychologist and educator
Johannes Voigt (1786-1863): archivist and historian
Felix Dahn
Adalbert Bezzenberger (1851-1922): philologist of Baltic languages
Herrmann von Helmholtz
A small select list of students:
Johann Christoph Gottsched
David Hilbert
Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel the elder
Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel the younger
Johann Georg Hamann
Johann Gottfried Herder
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Ferdinand Gregorovius
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff
Hermann Minkowski
Arnold Sommerfeld
Hermann Sudermann
Ernst Wiechert