Tartu, the History of an Estonian University

Extract

Much praise has been bestowed by many a writer on the rôle played in the past by Tartu University as a seat of learning and a center of civilizing importance for North-Eastern Europe. Tartu, which the Germans called Dorpat and the Russians baptized Yuryev, has often been allotted a special place in the story of Baltic-German rise and fall. Yet on closer investigation it appears that almost nothing has been said so far about the influence exercised by Tartu on its immediate neighborhood, on the Estonians themselves on whose soil this University town flourished. German writers dwelt on Tartu as their Dorpat, their very own center of German scholarship, and described the contribution made by Tartu research to both the German and the Russian sphere.