The Governor’s Palace

When the university was founded, the project's mastermind Vasily Karazin made considerable efforts to invite Germans to a new educational institution. The first trustee of Kharkov University, Count Severin Pototsky, also launched an active activity at the invitation of foreign professors to a new educational institution. Having good connections, he sent out invitations with a proposal to teach prominent German scholars and figures at the university, the first among whom was the great German classic Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Leading German professors, experts in antiquity Christian Heine and Friedrich Wolf from Göttingen also received an invitation. These outstanding scientists could not come due to the elderly, but they willingly attracted young teachers to work in the new university of the Russian Empire. Thus, during the years 1804-1811. German professors and teachers from Würzburg, Wittemberg, Leipzig, Göttingen, Frankfurt an der Oder and other cities gathered in Kharkov.

In the early years of the Kharkov University, people from German lands worked here, thanks to which new scientific fields appeared in the city and sometimes in the empire: astronomer Johann Guth, chemist Johann Giza, physician Friedrich Pilger, agronomist and soil scientist Karl Neldhen, historian and Orientalist Christoph Dietrich Rommel, jurist and economist Ludwig Jacob, philosopher Johann Baptist Schad.

German teachers were also the first journalists and founders of periodicals in the east of Ukraine. In 1812, Professor Karl (Joseph) Langer, together with his colleague Karl Nöldkhen, began to publish the newspaper Kharkov Weekly. A few years later, Friedrich Pilger, a professor in livestock science, began publishing a magazine on veterinary medicine, Ukrainian Housekeeper. Thus, Kharkiv can be considered the first city in Eastern Europe where industry journalism began to develop.

The listed names are only a small part of scientists from German lands who were at the origin of Kharkov University. Many famous and unknown German teachers worked in the school in the future.