In the project seminar "On the Pre- and Early History of the TH Karlsruhe", Parts I (WS 19/20) and II (WS 20/21), students identified the first students of the polytechnic school in Karlsruhe in independent work and through their own archive studies and carried out a social and cultural-historical classification of the polytechnicians against the background of a differentiating university landscape using Karlsruhe as an example. In cooperation with the Forum Landesgeschichte im Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe, the results were presented to a broader public in lectures at an online event on May 21, 2021. The history of the origins of Karlsruhe Polytechnic, an educational institution built on the Parisian model, and its technical student body were highlighted here.

Link to the event organized by the General State Archive Karlsruhe

Opened in 1825, the Polytechnic was one of the first institutions of its kind in the German-speaking world - after Prague (founded in 1806) and Vienna (founded in 1815). Each of these institutions was characterized by a strong regional focus, but at the same time they were all based on the model of the École polytechnique founded in Paris in 1794. The Karlsruhe school played a model role, especially after its extensive reorganization by Karl Friedrich Nebenius in 1832, and had a significant influence on the development of the later technical universities in Germany. Dr. Anton F. Guhl presented more details on this in his lecture "On the founding of the Polytechnic School in Karlsruhe in 1825". This was preceded by the lecture "Research questions on student cultures (ca. 1800-1850)" by Prof. Dr. Marian Füssel, who offered a more general view of German student history.

In the two lectures "Origin, mobility, discipline. Social-historical perspectives on the Karlsruhe polytechnicians" by Nicolas Novak and Martin Ullmann and "Instruction, knowledge, discipline. Cultural-historical perspectives on the Karlsruhe Polytechnic" by Nils Osenberg and Alissa Schneider, the four students focused on the early years of the Polytechnic School and in particular on the student cultures there: In an overview of students at the institution and their formation as a group between school discipline on the one hand and academic character on the other, they presented their findings from the previous research work.