LEIPZIG, UNIVERSITY or. After Berlin and Munich. the largest university of Germany, and next to Heidelberg the oldest within the limits of the present German Empire. It was estab lished by the secession of the German stu dents from Prague as one of the results of the Hussite agitation there. (See PRAGUE, UNIVER SITY OF.) The reorganization of that university in 1400 in favor of the Bohemian and at the expense of the German element led to the seces sion of the Germans, most of whom, with forty teachers, accepted the invitation of Frederick the Quarrelsome of Meissen. and his brother and settled at Leipzig, establishing there a uni versity modeled on that of Prague. Two colleges or houses, the collegian) Inapt.s and the collegians minus. were provided by the rulers, and the students were divided into four nations—Meissen, Saxony, Bavaria. and Poland. The humanistic movement here was early popular, and later the Reformation affected the university greatly, as it came under the influenee of Melanchthon about 1539. The promulgation of the statutes of 1559,
which greatly lowered the standards of the in stitution, closed the period of prosperity, and the university changed little from that time till 1330. As a result, this was a time of almost entire stagnation. Since the thorough reorgani zation in the latter year. however. Leipzig has taken the high rank it now holds among the German universities. It had in 1901 a budget of nearly 2.500,000 marks and over 3700 stu dents in theology, law, medicine, and philosophy, the greater number being in law and philosophy. Besides a large number of university institutions, clinics, museums, collections, laboratories, and the like, there are a number of private institutes and clinics available for students. The library contains 500,000 volumes and 5000 MSS. A new governing body for the university, the syndicate, was established in 1893.