With the university named after its founder, Duke Albert, Königsberg became a centre for education and science in East Central Europe. For a long time the most eastern university in Europe aside from Krakow attracted students and lecturers from east and west and was of great importance especially for Poland and the Baltic countries.
The pious Protestant Albert wanted to "spread the true knowledge of God" and created a centre of new Protestant teaching in Prussia. The first rector was Georg Sabinus, son-in-law of Philipp Melanchthon.
Later, with Immanuel Kant and Christian Jacob Kraus, the Albertina became a centre of enlightenment and liberalism with widespread effect influencing many scholars and triggering important reforms.
In the 19th century it became famous for its mathematicians and scientists such as Carl Gustav Jacob Jacoby, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, Karl Ernst von Baer, David Hilbert and Hermann von Helmholtz.
Illustration:
Georg Sabinus (1508-1560), copperplate around 1850
Sabinus, actually Georg Schuler, was as a professor of poetry and eloquence the founding rector of Albertus University. In his time he was regarded as a well-known elegy poet, who named himself "Sabinus" after a Roman model. After leaving Königsberg in 1555 due to a dispute, he was active as a Brandenburg diplomat at the Polish royal court.