Pedagoogilis-filoloogilise seminari arhiivifondi kujunemislugu Tartu Ülikooli raamatukogus

The library of the University of Tartu holds many archival funds. One of them, Fund 15, holds documents about the Pedagogical-Philological Seminar. On the day of his arrival in Tartu in 1803, Karl Morgenstern, professor of classical philology, proposed to the rectorate of the Imperial University of Tartu that a seminar be opened similar to the one at Halle University. His wish came true in 1821 when the Pedagogical-Philological Seminar was opened. The aim of this article is to show what kind of documents one archival fund might hide, and what kind of new information we can learn from these documents about the beginning of the 19th century at the university. The article also makes an excursion through one year at the seminar, in order to see, on the basis of the archival documents, what kinds of activities actually took place in the seminar. As it turns out, the archival fund has been reorganized several times, and this has made it both more difficult and easier to use it. The archive hides quite a diverse selection of documents, firstly the journals of seminar professors documenting the meetings. Secondly, the archival fund contains administrative documents about organizational matters for the seminar, such as the motivation letters of the seminar candidates, circular letters of the seminar professors about different matters, students’ exam results, and so on. Thirdly, the archival fund holds seminar papers by the students, of which 117 papers are still preserved while others are lost. Almost all the documents in the archival fund (with one exception) are handwritten; the Russian professor wrote his reviews in French; other professors used German; the motivation letters and student papers are in Latin. Another obstacle in using the archival materials is the Gothic German style of writing which is not used anymore and takes time to learn to read. Still, studying the fund is useful, as it tells a story of how much an archival fund can change over time, and it shows that the archival fund holds interesting documents about the Pedagogical-Philological Seminar. The documents show what university training looked like for people who became teachers in gymnasia, including some quite significant people in the cultural history of Estonia.