The University of Warsaw

The most prestigious University in Poland is the University of Warsaw (though Krakovians will fight you to the death to defend their beloved UJ’s honour). Founded in 1816, the University may be young by European standards, but its existence arose out of necessity; with Poland partitioned by three empires, Warsaw was separated from the academic centre of Poland, Krakow, and needed its own academic institution to match that of the Jagiellonian University of Krakow. During the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw, the School of Law and the Medical School were first established. After Warsaw came under the Russian Empire's yoke again, Czar Alexander I permitted the Polish authorities to create a university in 1816, consisting of five faculties: Law and Administration, Medicine, Philosophy, Theology and Art and Humanities. The University quickly became the premier academic institution in Russian Poland, though it was closed and reopened several times by the Russian authorities, as the faculty and students tended to take part in uprisings. The University remained largely in foreign hands and limited in its activities until Poland gained its independence after the First World War, and the University was completely restructured into a modern Polish academic institution.

By the 1930s, Warsaw University was the largest university in Poland, and its level of education had reached a western European level. During the Second World War, the Nazi authorities closed all Polish institutions of higher education. Despite this ban, underground education continued on an incredible scale, and by 1944 there were more than 300 lecturers and 3,500 students attending the "Secret Warsaw University." Unfortunately, the Warsaw Uprising resulted not only in the physical destruction of the University, but in the loss of most of the faculty and students. After the end of the War, the University was reorganized once again, this time with the "help" of Soviet authorities. In December 1945 lectures were resumed in the ruins of the campus and the buildings were gradually rebuilt.