Not until the beginning of the 20th century were university studies fully accessible to women in German-speaking countries, with the exception of Switzerland. The possibility for women to have access to university education, and moreover to obtain a university degree is now part of general higher education for all.
Founding stages of universities / Medieval universities
From the 12th century onwards, universities were first founded based on customary law, then after 1350 universities were also established as the territorial lord's endowment. During these initial stages, the social conditions of the Middle Ages led to the establishment of universities as a purely masculine domaine.Bea Lundt: Zur Entstehung der Universität als Männerwelt. In: Elke Kleinau, Claudia Opitz (Hrsg.): Geschichte der Mädchen- und Frauenbildung. Bd. 1: Vom Mittelalter bis zur Aufklärung. Campus, Frankfurt 1996. pp. 103–118, 484–488, 550–551.
Many universities emerged from cathedral schools for future priests. Therefore, university lecturers belonged to the clergy and had to live in celibacy (only since 1452 have medical doctors been officially allowed to marry). Additionally, students had to go through a basic clerical education in the Seven Liberal Arts in order to continue their studies; graduating from the Faculty of the Arts included a lower ordination. This way women were implicitly excluded from university studies because, due to the oath of secrecy attributed to Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, they were not allowed to be ordained.Britta-Juliane Kruse: Frauenstudium, medizinisches. 2005, p. 435.Bea Lundt: Zur Entstehung der Universität als Männerwelt. pp. 109–110.
The Schola Medica Salernitana, which was founded in 1057 and remained a purely medical college, allowed women to study. Names of female medical doctors of this college have been verified. Trota of Salerno for example, presumably at the beginning of the early 12th century, worked as a practical doctor at the school in Salerno. She wrote several treatises on medical practice in general and on gynecology in particular. One of the works published at the Schola Medica Salernitana in the 12th century includes texts from the school's seven masters (magistri), among which Trota's teachings may be found. In the 13th century, a Jewish woman called Rebekka was awarded a doctorate in Salerno as one of the first female doctors ever. Hence, individual schools allowed women to study and teach medicine.Richard Landau: Geschichte der jüdischen Ärzte. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Medicin. Berlin 1895, p. 30 (sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de); Ingrid Oberndorfer: Jüdische Ärztinnen im Mittelalter. In: David. Jüdische Kulturzeitschrift. Heft No. 56, Vienna 2003.
The establishment of universities led to the expansion of the importance and function of the sciences as opposed to the trade apprenticeships. Moreover, academics and scientists developed an identity that linked masculinity with mind and spirit. These polarised images of the genders (men = intellectual beings; women = physical beings) were adopted from medieval theology. Thus, science and femininity were seen as a contradiction.Bea Lundt: Zur Entstehung der Universität als Männerwelt. pp. 110–111. Female skills and knowledge were more and more demonised (witches, poisoners). Women, and especially inquisitive women, were seen as distractions from the sciences for the (intellectual) man and often even as a threat to scholars (compare the story of Abelard and Héloïse as well as Merlin and Viviane).Bea Lundt: Zur Entstehung der Universität als Männerwelt. pp. 116–118. Although, university lecturers and students chose a female scholar as their patron saint, namely Saint Cathrine of Alexandria, according to the legend, Cathrine did not use her knowledge for power or leverage. By rejecting all secular powers, she limited her own options to act.Bea Lundt: Zur Entstehung der Universität als Männerwelt. pp. 114–115.
Soon the universities developed men's societies (so-called Männerbünde) with a corresponding subculture (compare for example the songs of the Carmina Burana). The uncontrolled actions of some students often led to conflicts with the city's inhabitants. Sometimes this could lead to the departure of entire groups of academics who then founded new universities elsewhere. Among the universities' intellectuals many rejected the ideas of clerical celibacy as well as marriage. They saw themselves in a competitive situation with the hereditary nobility, which found its expression in showing off their sexual triumphs and sexual assaults against women. In order to protect the citizens' daughters, the cities set up brothels.Bea Lundt: Zur Entstehung der Universität als Männerwelt. pp. 111–113.
Universities in the 16th to 18th century Until the 18th century noble and bourgeois sons were educated at universities which were still organised in four faculties: the faculty of Arts, Theology, Medicine and Law, for the education of clergymen, doctors and administrative officials, as well as judges and lawyers.Beatrix Niemeyer: Ausschluss oder Ausgrenzung? Frauen im Umkreis der Universitäten im 18. Jahrhundert. In: Elke Kleinau, Claudia Opitz (Hrsg.): Geschichte der Mädchen- und Frauenbildung. Bd. 1: Vom Mittelalter bis zur Aufklärung. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1996. pp. 275–294, 512–514, 559; here p. 276. Universities continued to be spaces of male socialization, although celibacy for professors had been abolished and students were no longer living in accommodation reserved for men. This was the result of education for occupations only available to men. Additionally, since the 16th century students had regarded each other as commilitones (brothers-in-arms) and the culture of duels increased.Beatrix Niemeyer: Ausschluss oder Ausgrenzung? p. 277.Trude Maurer: Einführung: Von der Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen: Das deutsche Frauenstudium im internationalen Kontext. In: Trude Maurer (Hrsg.): Der Weg an die Universität. Höhere Frauenstudien vom Mittelalter bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Wallstein, Göttingen 2010. pp. 7–22; here p. 10.
Since there were no generally accepted and binding admission requirements, women were not explicitly banned from studying. Due to the fact that there was no profession a woman could practise after graduating from university, they were left with no real motivation to pursue a course of study. Therefore, women seldom studied at German universities. The few known examples and the circumstances surrounding their studies emphasized the importance of not distracting the male students with their looks. In the seventeenth century Anna Maria van Schurman, for example, participated in lectures at the University of Utrecht, but only from behind a screen on a balcony to protect the male students from seeing her. In the eighteenth century, Luise Adelgunde Victorie Gottsched could only listen to her husband's lectures at the University of Leipzig when hiding behind a half-closed door. In this way, university education was possible for women in individual cases, but the idea of a female professor teaching at German universities was inconceivable.Beatrix Niemeyer: Ausschluss oder Ausgrenzung? pp. 280–283.
In the eighteenth century, individual women, in particular the wives and daughters of professors at universities which were open to reform could meet informally with students and professors for an intellectual exchange. For example, many daughters and wives of professors from Göttingen were highly educated compared to other women.Beatrix Niemeyer: Ausschluss oder Ausgrenzung? pp. 283–284. Encouraged by her father, who educated his daughter as an experiment, Dorothea Schlözer received a doctorate from the University of Göttingen in 1787. Later, her father concentrated on marrying her to a socially acceptable man.Beatrix Niemeyer: Ausschluss oder Ausgrenzung? pp. 286–288. Unlike Schlözer, Dorothea Christiane Erxleben used the authorization given to her by the Prussian king Frederick the Great to complete a degree in medicine. She received her degree on 6 May 1754Gisela Kaiser: Über die Zulassung von Frauen zum Studium der Medizin am Beispiel der Universität Würzburg. In: Würzburger medizinhistorische Mitteilungen. Band 14, 1996, pp. 173–184; here: p. 173. from the University of Halle, and subsequently practiced as a doctor.Beatrix Niemeyer: Ausschluss oder Ausgrenzung? pp. 288–290. These exceptional cases emphasize how in the 18th century completing a course of study and continuing to use the acquired knowledge in their lives only became harder for women. The acquired knowledge was viewed as "unwomanly" and potentially a threat to their reputation. Academic studies endangered women's chances of marriage, but offered no independent professions.Beatrix Niemeyer: Ausschluss oder Ausgrenzung? pp. 293–294.
19th century to the end of World War I The male character of the German university reached its peak in the 19th century. Firstly, at German universities the typical German fraternity-type student associations called Studentenverbindung (such as Corps and Burschenschaften) had developed. These groups often also practiced academic fencing. Simultaneously, a binary gender concept with a gender-specific division of labour had established.
An admissions system that developed in the 19th century was a further peculiarity. In order to study at a university, you needed to have passed the Abitur. Educational patents provided legal rights to particular jobs or study programmes, sometimes even a reduction of compulsory military service. Since there were no girls' schools offering the Abitur (the German leaving certificate) there was an additional obstacle to admission to a German university for women.
In some countries, women were allowed to study in the 19th century. For example, in the US women had been studying at a few colleges since 1833 and in England since 1869. However, there, women only had access to special colleges for women. In France, universities had never really been closed to women. Here, women had been able to obtain academic degrees since the 1860s. Nevertheless, women were not admitted to the Grandes écoles. These elite educational institutions remained restricted to women well into the 20th century. In these countries, full access with equal rights to an academic education was granted about the same time as in the German Reich, where women had been granted equal access right away.
The leading role of Switzerland
In the beginning, women in German-speaking countries were only able to pursue academic studies in Switzerland. The first female auditors were admitted at the University of Zurich in 1840, which had been founded only a few years before. After an application for matriculation of a Russian woman had been unsuccessful in 1864, the application for a doctorate in medicine of Russian Nadezhda Suslova (1843-1918) was approved in 1867, and moreover, she was matriculated as a regular student retroactively.Hartmut Gimmler: Der Pflanzenphysiologe Julius von Sachs (1832–1897) und das Frauenstudium. In: Würzburger medizinhistorische Mitteilungen. 24, 2005, pp. 415–417, 420.Franziska Rogger, Monika Bankowski: Ganz Europa blickt auf uns! Das schweizerische Frauenstudium und seine russischen Pionierinnen. Hier + Jetzt, Baden 2010. p. 27.