Samuel von Pufendorf
The first champion for interdisciplinary research at Lund University?
The Pufendorf IAS takes its name from professor Samuel von Pufendorf, the University’s first strategic recruitment, after the University was inaugurated in 1668. His work and “profile” spanned wide knowledge fields and Samuel von Pufendorf’s name is therefore well suited as the name of an interdisciplinary institute.
Lund University's first "strategic recruitment"
Samuel Pufendorf, born in 1632, has already attended several German universities. As a Professor of Natural and International Law in Heidelberg, he had become sufficiently well-known internationally to be headhunted to Sweden by Chancellor De la Gardie. Pufendorf’s salary – 900 “daler” compared to the other professors’ 600 – shows how important it was to attract him to the new University. Neither the salary nor Pufendorf's ideas were appreciated by his colleagues at this time...
A turbulent time
Through Pufendorf, Lund not only got a well-known name, but also a controversial free-thinker. In a time characterised by religious orthodoxy and old dogmas, he represented a rationalistic way of thinking that had been initiated by Descartes and championed by contemporaries of Pufendorf such as Locke and Spinoza. Like them, Samuel Pufendorf represented thinking that was not based on religion, but on reason.
Consequently, when Pufendorf collected his ideas in the book De jure naturae et gentium (On the Law of Nature and Nations, 1672) the first academic conflict at the young University was a fact. The Vice-Chancellor was furious and other professors published counterblasts. In one of these, Pufendorf was accused of being an ”epicurean, Pelagian, Socinian, Hobbesian, Cartesian, Spinozian, Calvinist, polygamist, antinomist and atheist”.
International renown
Thanks to the unwavering support of Chancellor De la Gardie (placed in Stockholm), Pufendorf had the mandate to press on. Time and the outside world were also on his side. And ultimately, it was his slanderers who had to recant: It was Samuel Pufendorf's writings – not those of his opponents – that were the first academic works from Lund to gain international renown, even long after the writer’s death. For example, Pufendorf's “De officio hominis et civis” (On the Duty of Man and Citizen 1673) was still being used as a textbook in France in the 1800s.
In 1676, when the Scanian war against Denmark (one of many Dano-Swedish wars throughout history) temporarily closed Lund University, Pufendorf chose to move on in his career, and became Sweden’s Historiographer Royal in Stockholm. He was made a nobleman (hence the "von" in his name) in 1684 and ended his days in 1694 in the service of the Elector of Brandenburg.
This text is a translation from a Swedish text. Author of the original text: Fredrik Tersmeden, Archivist, B A, Ph.D.h.c. at Lund University.
