Soon after its foundation, the University had firmly established its position in Europe's intellectual landscape. In the initial period, renowned theologians and jurists figured prominently among the Elector's counsellors, while the list of alumni included chancellors, bishops and royal emissaries. Later, in the 15th century, Heidelberg developed into a stronghold of humanism. The University became a veritable well-spring of new ideas and intellectual currents. Martin Luther's disputation in April 1518 made a lasting impact and his adherents among the masters and scholars soon became leading Reformationists in Southwest Germany. Notably after the Palatinate's turn to the Reformed faith, reforms in the spirit of humanism had immense influence on the intellectual climate of the day. The Heidelberg Catechism drawn up by professors from Heidelberg is famed throughout the world as the seminal document of the Reformed Church. The University represented a haven of undogmatic thinking, attracting professors and students from all over Europe. Reorientation and modernisation But the renown bound up with the glorious flowering of humanism came to an end with the Thirty Years' War and was not to be restored until the early 19th century. In the meantime, the University had lapsed into a profound crisis, due not least to the Napoleonic wars. It owed its revival in 1803 to the advent of Prince Karl-Friedrich, then Elector and later Grand Duke of Baden. In its full title (Ruprecht-Karl University of Heidelberg), the university commemorates both its founder Ruprecht I and its later champion and political reformer. Heidelberg quickly developed into a productive scholarly republic. This revival ran parallel to the discovery of the city by poets, artists and intellectuals like Friedrich Hölderlin, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Joseph von Eichendorff and Robert Schumann. The circle of outstanding university scholars such as Friedrich Creuzer and Joseph Görres was joined in the early 19th century by the writers Clemens von Brentano and Achim von Arnim. Heidelberg jurist Anton Justus Friedrich Thibaut was the prime mover behind the creation of a new German Civil Code, while historical and philological research also played its part in enhancing the fast-growing fame of the University. It was here that Johann Heinrich Voß produced his epoch-making translation of Homer and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel published his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline. Georg Gottfried Gervinus was a co-founder of the liberal-minded Deutsche Zeitung journal, while Heinrich Treitschke wrote his History of Germany in the crucial years prior to the establishment of the German Empire.
