School-Leaving Certificate

“… and not unsuccessfully.” — Thus the assessment by Wilhelm Ludwig Volz (1799–1855), professor of mathematics and mechanical engineering at Karlsruhe Polytechnical College about the progress of the pupil Heinrich Sprenger. Some of the other predicates, ten in total, in Sprenger’s report are equally glowing. The document was created over five days in successive entries on a pre-printed form with the institution’s name at the top. The handwritten entries by the lecturers described their teaching content and, as with Volz, provided information on a student’s progress and, in some cases, on diligence and comportment. Because the entries cover the three school years from 1828/29 to 1830/31, it is possible that this certificate was filled out upon Sprenger’s departure from the Polytechnical College. It is also conceivable that Sprenger used this summary to help him find employment before his studies had been completed. This apparently irregular document from today’s perspective may not have confused his contemporaries. In the first decades of the Polytechnical College’s existence, there were neither final exams nor the option to acquire an academic degree. That only became the norm after the turn of the twentieth century with the introduction of the graduate engineering program, Diplom-Ingenieur. Even shortly before then, leaving certificates consisted of a tabular list of courses attended each semester. kn