University of Münster wants to remove its name because of "militaristic, nationalist and anti-Semitic" Kaiser Wilhelm II
Münster - The Senate of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU) voted in favor of renaming the university. As the WWU press office confirmed on Thursday to Junge Freiheit, the committee unanimously voted in favor of the step in a trial vote. The final vote is expected on April 5th.
As the Ring of Christian Democratic Students (RCDS), which is close to the CDU, explained in a circular, this is only a pure formality. "Our university will be renamed with absolute certainty and the WWU will be history very soon," lamented the student association.
RCDS pleads for "Edith Stein University"
The Senate resolution must now be "painfully" accepted and the naming process actively helped. The ring brought the Catholic philosopher Edith Stein into play as the new namesake. “Edith Stein was a versatile person. Scientist, nun, women's rights activist, Jewish descent, victim of National Socialism,” the Christian Democratic students explained their proposal.
As a Münster native, anti-fascist and universal scholar, Stein could have an identity-forming effect on the university. As a further reason for their idea, the students claimed: "There is no German university that is named after a woman."
Historian: Wilhelm II was "militaristic, nationalistic and anti-Semitic"
According to the Westfälische Nachrichten, however, the German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt is also being discussed. The reason for the test vote was a report, according to which the relationship between Kaiser Wilhelm II - the previous namesake - and the university was looser than previously assumed.
The last German emperor, for example, never visited the university himself. In 2021, the university launched the project "Zur Sache WWU" to take a critical look at Wilhelm II.
As early as 2020, the Münster historian Olaf Blaschke stated “that Wilhelm II was extremely militaristic and nationalistic, anti-Slavic and almost obsessively anti-Semitic”. A similar renaming initiative at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen failed last summer.
Source: Junge Freiheit
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