Anniversaries of Institutions of Higher Education: The Status and Perspectives of Current Research

Abstract

Anniversaries and days of commemoration are omnipresent. By now, hardly a year goes by in which there is no major event to be commemorated by a significant anniversary prompting larger and smaller retrospectives. For example, in the last several years, we have seen “major” anniversaries on the calendar to commemorate 75, 80, or 100 years passing since the beginning or end of the world wars, and 500 years since the publication of Luther’s theses. And this “merry-go-round of anniversaries” is not letting up.1 As we write these lines, Switzerland is celebrating 50 years of women’s suffrage on the federal level (1971), remembering how laborious this goal was to achieve, and 150 years have passed since the Lesser German Empire was founded in 1871; meanwhile, the 60 anniversary of the erection of the Berlin Wall is quickly approaching, and in May 2021, the first acts begin in preparation for the 70 anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the head of state in the United Kingdom and 15 other countries.2 In the higher education landscape, too, there is one anniversary after another: In 2021, the universities in Bremen, Kassel and Mainz are celebrating roundnumbered anniversaries of their founding, whereas Aachen celebrated one in 2020, and Rostock and Hamburg had theirs in 2019. These commemorations have generated celebrations, worship services, performances, exhibitions, special commemorative postal stamps, catalogues of professors, and, last but not least, thousands of printed pages of historical materials. The celebrations for “150 Years of RWTH Aachen” largely took place online due to the Corona pandemic.3 Yet digital media had already begun to play a role in historical commemorative culture in the early 2000s, as examples from long-lost websites (or websites mothballed on old data-storage drives) show.4 The regret about canceled