Rektor Ewers : monograafia

Gustav Ewers is certainly a striking example of how the son of a Westphalian peasant rose to a truly distinguished academic career in the Russian Empire during the 19th century. Coming to Väimela as a private tutor at the age of twenty-four, he was already, by the age of thirty, a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg (and seventeen years later also an honorary member). At thirty-one, he became a professor at the University of Tartu, which granted him the right to wear a sword at his hip and the imposing hat that formed part of the professor’s official uniform.

He was elected rector of the University of Tartu at the age of thirty-nine—in 1818. Fate had it that Ewers remained in the rector’s office until his death in 1830. It was precisely during his unusually long tenure as rector that the first golden age of the Imperial University of Tartu, founded in 1802, took place.