English Translation

I am very pleased to welcome you to the Rectors' Conference convened in Prague. I am particularly pleased to greet you, Mr Reichsminister, you, Reichsdozentenführer, and you, Imperial Student Leader. In choosing the place for this year's rector's conferences, I see a legitimate recognition of the importance of the city of Prague for German history, especially for German intellectual history, to which the first German university was founded in 1348. For almost 600 years, German science has been taught at Prague University, and deceptive scholars who worked here have created a good name for Charles University in the world. The German university in Prague has always, beyond its scientific activities, the political task of being the spiritual center of Germanism in this area and the mediator of German culture. For this reason, the German University of Prague and with it the later founded German universities in Prague and Brno were in the most difficult struggle for their German = tum and for their existence until recently. All the Germans, this space, but especially the university teachers and the German students, stood together in the fight against all attempts to destroy the German high schools in this space and achieved that the universities could be preserved German until the day on which the leader re-separated the countries of Bohemia and Moravia into the Reich= and the universities were transferred from the Reich. The time of struggle can now again be followed by a time of serious scientific work, whereby past injustice must be remedied and the universities brought up again, which they receive in this area as mediators of German science. In the state that the work of the German high schools continues during the present war, we can see the proof of the inner strengthening of the Deutscher Reich er=. İhre deliberations also apply problems arising from the present time of war, but also extend to questions which the following time for the German higher schools = T0 bring with them.