Pedagoogilis-filoloogilise seminari arhiivifondi kujunemislugu Tartu Ülikooli raamatukogus

The history of the archival fund of the Pedagogical-Philological seminar in UT Library

Abstract

The library of the University of Tartu holds many archival funds. One
of them, Fund 15, holds documents about the Pedagogical-Philological
Seminar. On the day of his arrival in Tartu in 1803, Karl Morgenstern,
professor of classical philology, proposed to the rectorate of
the Imperial University of Tartu that a seminar be opened similar
to the one at Halle University. His wish came true in 1821 when the
Pedagogical-Philological Seminar was opened. The aim of this article
is to show what kind of documents one archival fund might hide, and
what kind of new information we can learn from these documents
about the beginning of the 19th century at the university. The article
also makes an excursion through one year at the seminar, in order to
see, on the basis of the archival documents, what kinds of activities
actually took place in the seminar.
As it turns out, the archival fund has been reorganized several
times, and this has made it both more difficult and easier to use it.
The archive hides quite a diverse selection of documents, firstly the
journals of seminar professors documenting the meetings. Secondly,
the archival fund contains administrative documents about organizational
matters for the seminar, such as the motivation letters of
the seminar candidates, circular letters of the seminar professors
about different matters, students’ exam results, and so on. Thirdly,
the archival fund holds seminar papers by the students, of which 117
papers are still preserved while others are lost. Almost all the documents
in the archival fund (with one exception) are handwritten; the
Russian professor wrote his reviews in French; other professors used
German; the motivation letters and student papers are in Latin. Another
obstacle in using the archival materials is the Gothic German
style of writing which is not used anymore and takes time to learn to
read. Still, studying the fund is useful, as it tells a story of how much
an archival fund can change over time, and it shows that the archival
fund holds interesting documents about the Pedagogical-Philological Seminar. The documents show what university training looked like for people who became teachers in gymnasia, including some quite
significant people in the cultural history of Estonia.