Victor Thiry
Victor Thiry was appointed Rector in 1873, then in 1876 for a second 3-year term. On May 20, 1876, a law abolished combined juries, with faculties now conferring academic degrees and diplomas. This law once again gave everyone access to university studies, without any prior qualifications. And for the first time, assistants were appointed, initially in the Faculty of Science.
Absolument libres de nos allures, de nos méthodes, n’ayant plus à compter qu’avec nos consciences, nous pouvons, et par conséquent, nous devons chercher à rendre notre enseignement aussi fécond que possible [...] d’un autre côté, nous devons dans la collation des grades, suivre une ligne de conduite à la fois exempte de faiblesse et d’une trop grande sévérité.
Victor Thiry (1817-1889) joined the University of Liège in 1845 as associate professor in charge of the free course on the history of customary law. He went on to teach elementary civil law and, from 1849 onwards, held the chairs of commercial law and in-depth civil law until his death.
During two successive terms of office, Rector Thiry played an active role in the renewal of university life in Belgium. At the start of his rectorship, he was sensitive to criticism of the teaching provided at the state universities, which pale in comparison with their prestigious German counterparts. All faculties aspired to change: thiry worked intensively on this, helping to prepare the law of May 20, 1876, which "confers on all faculties... the right to award academic diplomas, [..opens wide the doors of the University by exempting young people from the obligation to produce a certificate of humanities, [...] modifies certain programs, creating a certain number of new courses [...] and introducing exercises and practical tests..." (P. Harsin, Liber memorialis, 1936, I, p. 43).
Thiry had to deal with an influx of new students and, as a result, had to think about space planning: the construction of new institutes in several parts of the city was one of his main projects. It was also under his rectorship that the debate began on women's access to "the art of healing" - the government questioned the universities of Ghent and Liège on the subject - and thus on their possibilities/capacities to undergo appropriate training, in or near the universities (1875).
Inspirons à cette jeunesse qui se presse autour de nos chaires, le désir de savoir, l’enthousiasme du bien et du beau. Apprenons-lui qu’au-dessus des ambitions vulgaires, au-dessus des jouissances de la fortune, il en est de plus nobles et de plus pures, celles qu’on puise dans la recherche de la vérité, dans la culture des sciences et des lettres, qui élève l’âme, qui nous charme dans le cours ordinaire de la vie et qui nous console quand l’heure des revers et du malheur a sonné !
Marie-Élisabeth Henneau,De l'arrivée des femmes à l'Université de Liège à la fin du XIXe siècle, in . Dor, C. Gavray and M. Jaminon (eds.), Où sont les femmes? La féminisation à l'Université de Liège, Presses universitaires de Liège, 2017, p.26
Mr Trasenster believes that, generally in Belgium, we are too inclined to belittle the intellectual value of women and to restrict too much in this respect, the role they have to fulfill in society. This is how the law on primary education came about, without any concern for girls' schools or teacher training colleges. It's also the case that there is not a single state establishment for the average education of girls, and that the legislator has not even bothered about it [...] As for medicine itself, women practice it, and with great success, in the United States; in Russia, there is an Academy to train women for the doctorate in medicine; finally, in Paris, the courses at the Faculty of Medicine are attended by young people, and this does not present the slightest inconvenience, according to what the Dean of this Faculty said only recently. The women even distinguish themselves by their intelligence and the success of their studies, and relations with the students are of the most perfect convenience [...] Mr Trasenster wishes to assert the rights of women to education, the dignity of her intellectual nature, and to seize this opportunity to protest against the sort of oblivion in which the public authorities have left the education of young girls.wishes to affirm the rights of women to education, the dignity of its intellectual nature, and to seize this opportunity to protest against the kind of neglect in which the public authorities have left the education of young girls.
Extract from the minutes of the Academic Council of April 14 1875, Archives de l'Université de Liège, Secrétariat central, no. 124.
The Academic Council was asked to respond to a question from the Minister of the Interior on the possibility of women being admitted to practice medicine. In the end, it voted yes, with 14 votes in favor, 10 against and 3 abstentions. In the other universities, the decision was left in limbo. Ghent prefers to wait and see what happens in other countries, the Catholic University of Leuven is not yet interested in the subject, while the Free University of Brussels refuses to allow a young woman to take natural science courses...
Illustration :Lambert Salme, À Monsieur V. Thiry, Professeur ordinaire à l'Université de Liège, lithographie, 1866, Musée Wittert ULiège,inv.2953.
