Universities can look back at a long tradition of jubilees and celebrations. After the establishment of Catholic jubilee years, Reformation jubilees, and Luther anniversaries, universities were the first institutions to create a modern jubilee culture.

The University of Basel can look back at a rich tradition of celebrations: its first, secular celebrations in 1660 and 1760; the grand jubilee of 1860, part of the nineteenth-century trend for extraordinary jubilees; the annual Dies academicus; the 1939 inauguration of the new Kollegienhaus; ceremonies honoring famous scientists such as Leonhard Euler; and the 500th anniversary celebration in 1960. All of them shared the same purposes: to carefully maintain the university’s profile, the sciences it represents, and its relationship to the city of Basel.

There are solid reasons for why historians are interested in historical anniversaries: such events are a crucial part of memory cultures. Current studies on the importance of anniversaries, for example, investigate the ways in which universities used employed such celebrations to represent themselves, their perspectives on history, and their aims – both to themselves and beyond their own academic community. These questions will also be the focus of the following discussion of anniversary celebrations at the University of Basel over the past centuries.