Back in 1804, the charter of Kharkiv University was approved. And on January 17 (29), 1805, the university was officially inaugurated.

As is well known, many foreigners were invited to teach at the Imperial University at that time. And passions ran high among the foreign faculty. In the first volume of *A History of Kharkiv University (Based on Unpublished Materials)* by Professor Dmitry Ivanovich Bagaley, one can find the following extremely interesting story:

Of the 29 foreign professors, 18 were German…

…The first sign of hostility between professors of German and French origin dates back, however, to 1806, when Assistant Professor Hampferle filed a complaint against Dugour, accusing him of political unreliability (reprehensible ties with France). Dugur cleared his name and managed to earn the full trust of the trustee Pototsky and even within the ministry itself. But throughout his time in Kharkiv, he waged a struggle against the German faction as the most prominent and astute representative of the French group of professors, and in the end, with the help of the well-disposed trustee Pototsky, he succeeded in dealing a devastating blow to the Germans. The leader of the German faction, the “frenzied” Shad, was accused of preaching harmful ideas and expelled from Russia (in 1816). With the expulsion of Degurov, Shad, Gut, Bellen de Bally, Rommel, Pilger, Gise, Jacob, Schnaubert, Krieger, and Koritar, and with the death of Schmersfeld, the party of foreign professors completely disintegrated and lost its former significance. It can be said that it destroyed itself through internal discord. The leaders Degurov and Shad held out the longest, but even they left in 1816…

All in all, the altercation was no joke, and the excerpt quoted above is just the tip of the iceberg.