University of Ingolstadt - The End and Refoundation

The End and Refoundation

The 18th century gave rise to the Enlightenment, a movement that in some quarters was opposed to the church-run universities of which Ingolstadt was a prime example. The Jesuits gradually left the university as it sought to change with the times, until the university finally had become so secular that the greatest influence in Ingolstadt was Adam Weishaupt, founder of the secret society of the Illuminati. On November 25, 1799, the elector Maximilian IV announced that the university's depleted finances had become too great a weight for him to bear: the university would be moved to Landshut as a result. The university finished that year's school term, and left Ingolstadt in May 1800, bringing to a quiet end the school that had, at its peak, been one of the most influential and powerful institutes of higher learning in Europe. In 1826 King Ludwig I moved the university to the capital Munich (→ Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich). The modern successor of Bavaria's oldest university is the WFI - Ingolstadt School of Management (founded in 1989 as part of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt), one of Germany's foremost business schools.