Universitas Olomucensis 1573-1946-1996 [antikvár]

TO KEEP SYMBOLS ALIVE THROUGH ORIGINAL MEANINGS HAVE TO BE TENDED TO Histories of institutions have their material and symbolic values. With the accelerating development of our civilization it seemed that symbols, especially those closely linked with the rapidly changing and, therefore, easily forgotten past reality, may become something superfluous, if not entirely useless. Above all under postmodern conditions, where symbols are being replaced by advertisement images and superficial messages, the relevance of links to die original substance is frequently lost or even consciously given up. And yet the true power of symbols remains in their rootedness in the original experience, while symbols themselves can keep that experience alive and remembered; they can also contribute to the continuation of its legacy. As an institution, the university stems from medieval times and has been undergoing continuous changes as regards its standing in the realm of culture as well as as regards its role and effectiveness in society, and its shape and institutional structure. It does not prove to be an easy task to capture its existence in an image. A few historians tell us that Cardinal Newman's idea of Oxford University of the mid-nineteenth century was already outdated by reality itself at the time of its conception. It was similar with the idea of a research university as presented by the German Abraham Flexner around 1930. And even the modern multiuniversity, as defined by the pragmatic American thinker and educator Clark Kerr, transforms the idea in the very process of fulfillment. Although the development of the university is open to influences and requirements of particular times there seems to be one objective that is constant - the institution has ever been aiming at the cultivation of the intellectual potential of its scholars. Knowledge has always been associated with power and it will not be different in the days to come, only the forms of exerting the power may change. Academic rituals connected with enrollment and commencement ceremonies include oaths taken on the insignia, which themselves used to be symbols of power granted to universities by ecclesiastical or secular authorities, as much as they want to be today symbolic expressions of institutional autonomy. Insignia accompany the students through their lives with the academic institutions and continue to reinforce the vital points in the more mundane reality of their studies. It is above all at ceremonies during which honorary degrees are being conferred that the historical forms and manners which accompanied the acts of elevating special individuals to a privileged status are being evoked; and though ceremonies may be reminders more of history than of contemporary life they do not fail to provoke genuine and real excitement. The exhibition of the insignia and graphic theses associated with the existence of our alma mater is presented to the academic and wider public on the occasion of Palacky University's Jubilee and should be a memento of our binding history and an encouragement for a promising future. It should enhance the bearing of the symbols as witnesses to a living past, and it should recognize and confirm the emotional power the encounter with such symbols and their employment in our lives can still arouse today. Let us pay tribute at this exhibition to the ideals our ancestors handed over to us to esteem and refine. Let us take pleasure in the beauty of the exhibits and let us think of ways in which we ourselves can contribute to the cultivation of the good and of truth, as, after all, the academic pledges oblige us to do. Crescat, vivat, floreat Universitas Palackiana Olomucensis! Olomouc, 2 May 1996 Josef Jarab, Rector