THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG IN SAXONY OPENS IN 1409

Today, The Grandma has finished reading Freedom, a very interesting book written by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel in which she reflects on her personal and political life and the great European challenges she had to face from her position of power.

The Grandma has been literally captivated by this book, which she believes is recommended reading to understand the European Union and the global challenges that face us.

Merkel reflects on freedom and it is not surprising that she does so because her point of view as a woman who lived in the GDR and who experienced the fall of the Wall is different from what we could have from the other side of it.

One of the most significant aspects of the Eastern countries is the great educational background that their inhabitants have. Merkel is a politician with an impressive cultural and educational background, very far from today's political mediocrity.

One of the centres where she studied was the prestigious University of Leipzig, which opened on a day like today in 1407 and which, in addition to having Angela Merkel as a student, also had other very significant ones such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert Schumann or Richard Wagner.

More information: Brussels Institute for Geopolitics

Leipzig University, in German Universität Leipzig, in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university by consecutive years of existence in Germany.

The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Elector of Saxony and his brother William II, Margrave of Meissen, and originally comprised the four scholastic faculties. Since its inception, the university has engaged in teaching and research for over 600 years without interruption.

Famous alumni include Angela Merkel, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leopold von Ranke, Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, Tycho Brahe, Georgius Agricola. The university is associated with ten Nobel laureates, most recently with Svante Pääbo who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2022.

The university was modelled on the University of Prague, from which the German-speaking faculty members withdrew to Leipzig after the Jan Hus crisis and the Decree of Kutná Hora. The Alma mater Lipsiensis opened in 1409, after it had been officially chartered by Pope Alexander V in his Bull of Acknowledgment on (9 September of that year). Its first rector was Johannes Otto von Münsterberg. From its foundation, the Paulinerkirche served as the university church. After the Reformation, the church and the monastery buildings were donated to the university in 1544. In order to secure independent and sustainable funding, the university was endowed with the lordship over nine villages east of Leipzig (university villages). It kept this status for nearly 400 years until land reforms were carried out in the 19th century.

Like many European universities, the University of Leipzig was structured into colleges (collegia) responsible for organising accommodation and collegiate lecturing. Among the colleges of Leipzig were the Small College, the Large College, the Red College (Rotes Kolleg, also known as the New College), the college of our Lady (Frauenkolleg) and the Pauliner-College (Pauliner Kolleg). There were also private residential halls (bursen). The colleges had jurisdiction over their members. The college structure was abandoned later and today only the names survive.

During the first centuries, the university grew slowly and was a rather regional institution. This changed, however, during the 19th century when the university became a world-class institution of higher education and research.

At the end of the 19th century, important scholars such as Bernhard Windscheid (one of the fathers of the German Civil Code) and Wilhelm Ostwald (viewed as a founder of modern physical chemistry) taught at Leipzig.

Leipzig University was one of the first German universities to allow women to register as guest students. At its general assembly in 1873, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein thanked the University of Leipzig and Prague for allowing women to attend as guest students. This was the year that the first woman in Germany obtained her JD, Johanna von Evreinov.

During the decline and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and first decade of 20th century together with some other German universities Leipzig University turned into one of the centers of higher education for state administrations and elites of newly independent Balkan states (Romania, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia) educating over 5,500 students from the region in 1859–1909 period.

Until the beginning of the Second World War, Leipzig University attracted a number of renowned scholars and later Nobel Prize laureates, including Paul Ehrlich, Felix Bloch, Werner Heisenberg and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. Many of the university's alumni became important scientists.

Under Nazi rule many degrees of Jews were cancelled. Some were later reinstated as Karl-Marx University degrees by the GDR. Noteworthy Nazis, such as Max Clara (chair of anatomy) taught at the university and were appointed to positions with great authority.

The university was kept open throughout World War II, even after the destruction of its buildings.

By the end of the war 60 per cent of the university's buildings and 70 per cent of its books had been destroyed.

The university reopened after the war on 5 February 1946, but it was affected by the uniformity imposed on social institutions in the Soviet occupation zone. 

In 1948 the freely elected student council was disbanded and replaced by Free German Youth members. The chairman of the Student Council, Wolfgang Natonek, and other members were arrested and imprisoned, but the university was also a nucleus of resistance.

In 1991, following the reunification of Germany, the university's name was restored to the original Leipzig University (Alma mater lipsiensis). The reconstruction of the University Library, which was heavily damaged during the war and in the GDR barely secured, was completed in 2002.

The University Library of Leipzig was established in 1543. It is one of the oldest German university libraries and it serves as a source of literature and information for the Leipzig University as well as the general public in the region. Its extensive historical and special collections are nationally and internationally recognized. The library consists of the main building Bibliotheca Albertina and forty branches situated near their respective academic institutions. The current stock comprises 5 million volumes and about 7,700 periodicals. Collections range from important medieval and modern manuscripts to incunabula, papyri, autographs, ostraka and coins.

The Apel Codex, a manuscript of 16th century music, is housed in the Leipzig University library, as well as the Papyrus Ebers.

The Leipzig University Library also owns parts of the Codex Sinaiticus, a Bible manuscript from the 4th century, brought from Sinai in 1843 by Constantin von Tischendorf. Papyrus Ebers is the longest and oldest surviving medical manuscript from ancient Egypt, dated to around 1600 BC. The Codex contains large parts of the Old Testament and a complete New Testament in ancient Greek, and is one of the most important known manuscripts of the Greek Old Testament and the New Testament. It is the oldest fully preserved copy of the New Testament.

The Oriental Manuscripts of the Leipzig University Library are around 3,200 oriental manuscripts.

In addition to the university library, one of the two centers of the German National Library is based at Leipzig, the collections of which are open to use for academic research.

The original four facilities were the Faculty of Arts, Theology, Medicine, and Law. As of November 2021, the university comprises 14 faculties with institutes and centers associated with each one.

Today, the university has 14 faculties. With over 29,000 students, it is Saxony's second-largest university. There are now more than 150 institutes and the university offers 190 study programs leading to Bachelor's degrees, Master's degrees, Staatsexamen, Diplom (equivalent to master's degree) and Ph.D.s.

More information: Universität Leipzig

 As a 7-year-old child, I saw the Wall being erected. 
No one -although it was a stark violation of international law- 
believed at the time that one ought to intervene militarily 
in order to protect citizens of the GDR and whole Eastern bloc, 
of the consequences of that -namely, 
to live in lack of freedom for many, many years.

Angela Merkel

SEAGULL, METAPHOR OF FREEDOM IN ART & LITERATURE

Contemplating seagulls & diving, Llafranc-Tamariu

Yesterday, The Grandma and her friends decided to sail, to contemplate sea birds and to dive in the Mediterranean Sea. It was a different day without technology, connexions, blog, phones... only they and the sea.

Birds are animals that are associated with freedom. Perhaps because of their ability to fly, humans consider them in that way. Birds are also a constant in literature and music.

The Grandma remembers beautiful songs like Rossinyol, a Catalan theme that talks about freedom in exile; Txoria Txori, a Basque song written by Mikel Laboa that talks about freedom and repression; La Coloma -in Catalan- or La Paloma -its version in Spanish that talk about exile and longing; La Cançó de na Ruixa Mantells, a Majorcan story of a woman who loses her head waiting the return of her lover who once sailed and never returned or The seabird, a song composed by the Irish Eleanor McEvoy, that talks about repression, resilience and freedom.

The Grandma and her friends are visiting lands of havaneres and because of this, she thought in La Gavina, one of the most popular havaneres that talks about a seagull as a metaphor of freedom, the story of a birds that emigrates with the idea of returning to the beach where it was born, another metaphor of exile and return.

Tonyi Tamaki, who is a great expert in flora and fauna, explained lots of interesting things about seagulls to her friends. They contemplated them and discovered the wonderful life under the sea. Tonyi also explained the most important characteristics of seagulls, their species and their habitats.

Before Tonyi's explanations, The Grandma had studied a new lesson of her Ms. Excel course.

Chapter 15. Import and export data in Excel (IV) (Spanish Version)

Gulls or seagulls are seabirds of the family Laridae in the suborder Lari. They are most closely related to the terns (family Sternidae) and only distantly related to auks, skimmers, and more distantly to the waders. Until the 21st century, most gulls were placed in the genus Larus, but this arrangement is now considered polyphyletic, leading to the resurrection of several genera. An older name for gulls is mews, cognate with German Möwe, Danish måge, Dutch meeuw, and French mouette; this term can still be found in certain regional dialects.

Gulls are typically medium to large birds, usually grey or white, often with black markings on the head or wings. They typically have harsh wailing or squawking calls; stout, longish bills; and webbed feet. Most gulls are ground-nesting carnivores which take live food or scavenge opportunistically, particularly the Larus species. Live food often includes crabs and small fish.

A seagull, Mediterranean Coast

Gulls have unhinging jaws which allow them to consume large prey. Gulls are typically coastal or inland species, rarely venturing far out to sea, except for the kittiwakes. The large species take up to four years to attain full adult plumage, but two years is typical for small gulls. Large white-headed gulls are typically long-lived birds, with a maximum age of 49 years recorded for the herring gull.

Gulls nest in large, densely packed, noisy colonies. They lay two or three speckled eggs in nests composed of vegetation. The young are precocial, born with dark mottled down and mobile upon hatching.

Gulls are resourceful, inquisitive, and intelligent, the larger species in particular, demonstrating complex methods of communication and a highly developed social structure. For example, many gull colonies display mobbing behavior, attacking and harassing predators and other intruders.

Certain species have exhibited tool-use behavior, such as the herring gull, using pieces of bread as bait with which to catch goldfish, for example. Many species of gulls have learned to coexist successfully with humans and have thrived in human habitats. Others rely on kleptoparasitism to get their food.

Gulls have been observed preying on live whales, landing on the whale as it surfaces to peck out pieces of flesh.

More information: RSPB

Gulls range in size from the little gull, at 120 g and 29 cm, to the great black-backed gull, at 1.75 kg and 76 cm. They are generally uniform in shape, with heavy bodies, long wings, and moderately long necks. The tails of all but three species are rounded; the exceptions being Sabine's gull and swallow-tailed gulls, which have forked tails, and Ross's gull, which has a wedge-shaped tail.

Gulls have moderately long legs, especially when compared to the similar terns, with fully webbed feet. The bill is generally heavy and slightly hooked, with the larger species having stouter bills than the smaller species. The bill colour is often yellow with a red spot for the larger white-headed species and red, dark red or black in the smaller species.

The gulls are generalist feeders. Indeed, they are the least specialised of all the seabirds, and their morphology allows for equal adeptness in swimming, flying, and walking. They are more adept walking on land than most other seabirds, and the smaller gulls tend to be more manoeuvrable while walking. The walking gait of gulls includes a slight side to side motion, something that can be exaggerated in breeding displays. In the air, they are able to hover and they are also able to take off quickly with little space.

Two seagulls, Mediterranean Sea

The general pattern of plumage in adult gulls is a white body with a darker mantle; the extent to which the mantle is darker varies from pale grey to black. A few species vary in this, the ivory gull is entirely white, and some like the lava gull and Heermann's gull have partly or entirely grey bodies.

The wingtips of most species are black, which improves their resistance to wear and tear, usually with a diagnostic pattern of white markings. The head of a gull may be covered by a dark hood or be entirely white. The plumage of the head varies by breeding season; in nonbreeding dark-hooded gulls, the hood is lost, sometimes leaving a single spot behind the eye, and in white-headed gulls, nonbreeding heads may have streaking.

Charadriiform birds drink salt water, as well as fresh water, as they possess exocrine glands located in supraorbital grooves of the skull by which salt can be excreted through the nostrils to assist the kidneys in maintaining electrolyte balance.

More information: The Wildlife Trusts

Gulls are highly adaptable feeders that opportunistically take a wide range of prey. The food taken by gulls includes fish and marine and freshwater invertebrates, both alive and already dead, terrestrial arthropods and invertebrates such as insects and earthworms, rodents, eggs, carrion, offal, reptiles, amphibians, plant items such as seeds and fruit, human refuse, chips, and even other birds. No gull species is a single-prey specialist, and no gull species forages using only a single method.

The type of food depends on circumstances, and terrestrial prey such as seeds, fruit, and earthworms are more common during the breeding season while marine prey is more common in the nonbreeding season when birds spend more time on large bodies of water.

Gulls are monogamous and colonial breeders that display mate fidelity that usually lasts for the life of the pair. Divorce of mated pairs does occur, but it apparently has a social cost that persists for a number of years after the break-up.

Gulls also display high levels of site fidelity, returning to the same colony after breeding there once and even usually breeding in the same location within that colony. Colonies can vary from just a few pairs to over a hundred thousand pairs, and may be exclusive to that gull species or shared with other seabird species. A few species nest singly, and single pairs of band-tailed gulls may breed in colonies of other birds. 

A colony of seagulls, Mediterranean Sea

Within colonies, gull pairs are territorial, defending an area of varying size around the nesting site from others of their species. This area can be as large as a 5-m radius around the nest in the herring gull to just a tiny area of cliff ledge in the kittiwakes.

The family Laridae was introduced, as Laridia, by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. The taxonomy of gulls is confused by their widespread distribution zones of hybridization leading to geneflow. Some have traditionally been considered ring species, but recent evidence suggests that this assumption is questionable.

Until recently, most gulls were placed in the genus Larus, but this arrangement is now known to be polyphyletic, leading to the resurrection of the genera Ichthyaetus, Chroicocephalus, Leucophaeus, Saundersilarus, and Hydrocoloeus. 

Some English names refer to species complexes within the group:

-Large white-headed gull is used to describe the 18 or so herring gull-like species from California gull to lesser black-backed gull in the taxonomic list below.

-White-winged gull is used to describe the four pale-winged, high Arctic-breeding taxa within the former group; these are Iceland gull, glaucous gull, Thayer's gull, and Kumlien's gull.

Hybridisation between species of gull occurs quite frequently, although to varying degrees depending on the species involved. The taxonomy of the large white-headed gulls is particularly complicated.

More information: Mediterranean Waterbirds

The Mediterranean gull or Ichthyaetus melanocephalus is a small gull. The scientific name is from Ancient Greek. The genus Ichthyaetus is from ikhthus, fish, and aetos, eagle, and the specific melanocephalus is from melas, black, and kephalos, headed.

This gull breeds almost entirely in the Western Palearctic, mainly in the south east, especially around the Black Sea, and in central Turkey. There are colonies elsewhere in southern Europe, and this species has undergone a dramatic range expansion in recent decades. As is the case with many gulls, it has traditionally been placed in the genus Larus.

The Mediterranean gull is slightly larger and bulkier than the black-headed gull with a heavier bill and longer, darker legs. The breeding plumage adult is a distinctive white gull, with a very pale grey mantle and wings with white primary feathers without black tips. The black hood extends down the nape and shows distinct white eye crescents. The blunt tipped, parallel sided, dark red bill has a black subterminal band. The non breeding adult is similar but the hood is reduced to an extensive dusky bandit mask through the eye. This bird takes two years to reach maturity. First year birds have a black terminal tail band and more black areas in the upperwings, but have pale underwings.

More information: Mediterranean Nature

I think that going to the beach as a child,

being in the water and smelling that 

salt air and hearing the seagulls,

it had a real calming effect.

Brian Skerry