Eponym of the University

In a larger circle of journalists and writers in Berlin, he hardly stood out, this rather small man with the quiet voice and stooped posture. But when he wrote, his inside became visible.

Carl von Ossietzky (1889-1938), a convinced democrat and pacifist, had become editor-in-chief of the left-wing intellectual weekly Die Weltbühne in 1927 and was particularly feared by the opponents of the Weimar Republic. There was hardly a political topic of the sick republic that he did not take up. This included his assessments of the Nazi movement, whose dangers he recognised early on and analysed astutely. No wonder that he was arrested shortly after Hitler's rise to power and interned as a "Moor soldier" in the Esterwegen concentration camp.

When the world's attention was drawn to the Nazi opponent and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1936 after major educational campaigns in America and Europe, he was allowed to leave the concentration camp. However, he was unable to receive the award, which is still the world's highest honour. After his concentration camp imprisonment, the Nazis let him live with his wife in a small Berlin sanatorium. There he died in 1938 - constantly guarded by the Gestapo - as a consequence of his imprisonment.

When the University of Oldenburg was founded in 1973, students suggested naming the university after Carl von Ossietzky. And they found great approval within the university. The naming was intended to be an expression of the social commitment that the university had taken up. As a reform university, it wanted to get out of the ivory tower and make academic research part of democratic society. Participating in decision-making, project studies and the responsibility of science for social development were the hotly debated topics. This led to the development of one of the university's major focal points, environmental research.

Outside the university, however, the naming was not so quickly met with undivided approval. It took almost 20 years until the Lower Saxony state parliament cleared the way for the name Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg.