May 2023 | Twelve months, twelve people | Portrait of Prof. Hinnerk Wißmann

Moderator and broker

For a good four years, the University and the public debated the issue of the man who gave the University its name: Kaiser Wilhelm II. On 3 May, the name “WWU” became history. Senate Chair Prof. Hinnerk Wißmann was involved in this process from the first day to the last.

Hinnerk Wißmann too regularly reads the University newspaper “wissen|leben” – with its header now containing “University of Münster” after the renaming.
© Uni MS - Nike Gais

It can be assumed that Prof. Wißmann was still conscious of having just been elected as the new Chair of the University of Münster Senate when, in the early afternoon of 17 October 2018, he put a student motion to the vote just a few minutes later. Perhaps he already suspected at the time that the Senate’s approval of this motion would not only have a significant impact on his work for the body in the coming years, but that it would also have far-reaching consequences. The students had argued that the University should develop “an historically critical approach” to the person who had lent it its name, Kaiser Wilhelm II. Four and a half years later, on 5 April 2023 to be precise, the Senate, with Hinnerk Wißmann at its head, voted by a majority to rename the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU) the “University of Münster”. With the approval of the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Education and Science, given on 3 May 2023, the name conferred in 1907 became history.

“Kaiserlos” (“Kaiser-less”), commented the region’s radio station WDR at the time. It was a break with the past that attracted great interest nationwide. As a legal scholar, Hinnerk Wißmann was thus directly involved in this consequential decision-making process for the University from the first day to the last. “It was the right path to take,” he emphasises, “because it was a debate whose outcome was uncertain and because we didn’t make it easy for ourselves. The calm reaction on all sides following our decision reflects this.”

The decision was, of course, still open when the working group initially set up under the leadership of historian Prof. Olaf Blaschke presented its final report in February 2020. But there was one half-sentence in this report that suggested even then that it would be difficult to retain Wilhelm’s name. There was no doubt, said the working group, summarising the current state of research, “that Wilhelm II was highly militaristic and quite obsessively antisemitic”. From then on, a project team organised discussions, an exhibition and much else besides under the title “The Question of WWU”. Anyone could publish comments on a project page on the Internet, and a scientific advisory board discussed all the pros and cons and all conceivable variants. “There really was a palpable feeling – both historically and with a view to the future – that we were best reflected in the simple name ‘University of Münster’, which at the same time is also our founding name,” says Hinnerk Wißmann, summarising the deliberations. “‘Universitas’ denotes the entire range of the sciences and humanities, as a place of internationality and exchange: this idea unites us all.”

It was by no means this process in the Senate alone that impressed Hinnerk Wißmann, an administrative and constitutional lawyer who has held a chair in public law at the University of Münster since 2013. As Chair of the Senate, he says that he finds it both challenging and stimulating to moderate the diversity of status groups and disciplinary cultures – with respect and with an open mind. “I want to be an honest broker in the process. I want to offer decisions and bring together what can be supported by as many people as possible. From this perspective, the renaming process was a great example of how the Senate ideally works,” says Wißmann, a native of Hanover.

And he follows this up with a remarkable sentence: “I love the Senate – because it is in this forum that our University comes into its own.” Wißmann, 52, has studied and worked at a total of nine universities and is in regular contact with the chairs of other Senates. Nowhere else has he experienced such a high level of appreciation between the Rectorate, the Board of Governors and the Senate as well as a willingness to, in his words, “trust each other”. This gives the University of Münster a “clear locational advantage,” he says.

As Chair of the Senate, Hinnerk Wißmann has to be constantly available; he sets aside around one working day a week for this body. His duties at the Faculty of Law and in the national and international academic community have not become fewer as a result. He says he may grant himself an extra semester for research in due course. “At some point,” he says, and smiles. He can wait. After all, the Senate has grown very close to his heart …

Norbert Robers

This article is from the brochure "Twelve months, twelve people", published in February 2024.

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