In 1560, one hundred years after the University of Basel was founded, no official anniversary celebration took place. However, ten stained-glass windows were donated between 1560 and 1564 for the new library on Rheinsprung Street, giving the university and its faculties an opportunity to showcsase themselves.

An anonymous calendar entry from 1660, the year of the first official university anniversary celebration, noted: “which was not celebrated 100 years earlier.” This suggests that while there was no formal celebration of the university’s centenary in 1560, the donation of stained-glass windows for the new library, called the Brabeuterium, sometimes gave the impression that the University of Basel had organized an anniversary event for its hundredth year. However, there is no evidence or reliable indication that the University of Basel held such a celebration in 1560, which would have made it the first university to do so.

True anniversary celebrations, with their specific and largely ritualized practices, began at German universities only several years later. The earliest known university anniversary was in Tübingen in 1578, followed by Heidelberg in 1587, Wittenberg in 1602, and Leipzig in 1609. Basel celebrated its university’s 200th anniversary for the first time in 1660.

The tradition of donating stained-glass windows for self-representation
It was quite customary, by contrast, to donate stained-glass windows for the inauguration of buildings, which served as a form of self-representation. Between 1560 and 1564, the university, its four faculties, three professors, the deputies, and the librarians were each represented by a window in the newly inaugurated Brabeuterium.