Singularität versus Serialität? Überlegungen zu Münchner Universitätsreden anlässlich von Hochschuljubiläen im 19. Jahrhundert

: This article aims to compare speeches that were delivered in the 19 th century at the Ludwig Maximilian University and the Technical University of Munich on an annual and routine base with speeches for anniversaries and other exceptional occasions. In so doing, this contribution sheds light on the role the academic speech culture played in endowing university culture with meaning, a typical feature of university anniversaries and other festivities. So far, the research perspective on university speeches has hardly been explicitly linked to the inc-reased interest of university historiography in academic festivities.The article first addresses the seemingly obvious difference between the serial nature of annual university (for example, at the inauguration of the rector) and the singularity of speeches on the occasion of an anniversary. In a second step, the author analyses whether the speakers of jubilee speeches had really designed them for a singular and exception purpose and whether they succeeded in escaping the attraction that the seriality of the annual speeches and their parameters emanated.