Socially speaking, Kiel’s professors generally descended from the upper middle class. Viewed regionally, they were mainly natives in early modern times, often coming from the City of Kiel itself. In the 19th century, and in particular as from the 1860s, a different attitude towards appointment created the first departure from the previously dominant indigenous principle - it was not only the natives who made it to professorial rank. Non-locals and home-grown academics nearly maintained the balance from this point onwards in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and in the Natural Sciences. After the externally assigned historians Georg Waitz (who was at least born in Schleswig-Holstein) and Johann Gustav Droysen, the university appointed another son of the city as professor of history in 1858: Karl Wilhelm Nitzsch. The proportion of CAU professors from Schleswig-Holstein drastically decreased in the 20th century. From the 862 university lecturers teaching at the CAU between 1919 and 1965, only 64 (7%) came from Schleswig-Holstein, and just 25 of these were born directly in Kiel.

Author: Oliver Auge