A Danish queen's trip to Rome won Copenhagen its university in 1479
Denmark's oldest university exists partly thanks to Queen Dorothea of Brandenburg, whose visit to Rome secured a papal bull from Sixtus IV in June 1475. Her husband Christian I founded the University of Copenhagen by royal decree, and it opened on 1 June 1479, making it Scandinavia's second oldest after Uppsala.
Christian I's decree of 4 October 1478 named Peder Albertsen vice chancellor, tasked him with hiring scholars for four faculties of theology, law, medicine and philosophy, and granted the institution unusual autonomy. It was to run without royal interference and stood outside the ordinary laws that governed Danes. That independence did not protect it from religious upheaval: as Protestantism spread, the university collapsed around 1531.
Christian III revived it in 1537 after the Lutheran Reformation, bringing Johannes Bugenhagen from Wittenberg to hold a theology chair and draft a new charter, issued in 1539. Graduation by examination arrived slowly: theology required one from 1675, law from 1736, and every faculty by 1788. The British bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807 badly damaged most university buildings, and a new main building opened in 1836 amid decades of construction that included museums, a botanic garden and a technical college. Its first women, Nielsine Nielsen and Johanne Marie Gleerup, enrolled to study medicine.
Growth after 1960 was explosive: about 6,000 students that year became roughly 26,000 by 1980 and more than 35,000 by 1999. Governance swung too. A 1970 statute democratised management, but a 2003 law removed faculty, staff and students from decision-making, a top-down system critics likened to absolute monarchy. Today an 11-member board with an external majority appoints the rector, and there is no faculty senate.
In 2006 it announced plans to leave many inner-city buildings it had occupied for over 500 years and consolidate on larger campuses. Mergers in 2007 absorbed the veterinary and agricultural university and the pharmacy school. It now enrols about 36,500 students, counts at least 37 Danish prime ministers among alumni, and runs research stations in Greenland.
Source: University of Copenhagen
