Matriculation Roster of Karlsruhe Polytechnical College

This weighty volume contains student enrollment lists. Such registers had been central to university administration since the Middle Ages. In classical universities of pre-modern times, enrollment conferred academic citizenship and membership in a corporation separate from the city and other legal communities. Universities even had their own courts where members had to be sued by outsiders. However, none of these characteristic privileges existed at Karlsruhe Polytechnical College when it was founded in 1825. Instead, the names of pupils entering the school were meticulously recorded in rosters kept by the school’s administrative staff. This practice changed with the 1852/53 academic year when students were required to enroll themselves in their own handwriting on lists laid out on several counters at the beginning of each semester. By formally adopting such academic customs, the intention may have been to appease students interested in their Polytechnical College developing into a university. These bound enrollment lists in volumes covering several years of school operations can be seen as an expression of institutional self-esteem. Although such fat volumes combining many different lists are less research-friendly, they are clearly more respectable than a pile of loose notebooks. kn