This article analyses the emergence of the anniversary celebration tradition of the University of Tartu in the nineteenth century. It argues that these jubilees were not the result of local innovation but of institutional and cultural borrowing from the German academic world. Focusing on the universityâs first jubilees in 1827 and 1852, the study demonstrates that their rituals, such as religious services, academic ceremonies, festive banquets and student torchlight processions, closely followed a well-established jubilee model that had been developed in German universities since the early modern period. However, a comparison with anniversary practices at universities in the Russian Empire, particularly Moscow University, demonstrates that this model was not universal. Rather, jubilees functioned as a marker of cultural affiliation, enabling the University of Tartu to affirm its identity as a âGerman universityâ within the Russian Empire.
Vanamölder et al. (Thu,) studied this question.