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In 1911 the Polytechnic changed its name to the Federal Institute of Technology. This brought to an end a debate that had been going on since 1905.
The name “Polytechnic” had become very popular and in fact for a long time afterwards people continued to refer to it affectionately as the “Poly”. But it had become something of a handicap. Any Polytechnic wishing to be seen as progressive had to adopt the German model and call itself a “Technische Hochschule”. The change of name actually did justice to the new direction in which the school was moving, something which had been discussed for years and which brought about three decisive changes:
Firstly, in the separation contracts of 1905 and 1908, the ETH became a separate entity from the University, the City and the Canton of Zurich. Premises, collections and equipment which had hitherto been used and administered jointly were now scrupulously split off, with an ensuing reallocation of responsibilities. The simplification of the legal situation enabled the School Council to embark on long-cherished building projects.
Secondly, the ETH set about a fundamental reorganization of the study programme. From 1908 on, so-called normal study plans were developed for each subject, with the idea of making a course of study as effective as possible. These guidelines were not as binding as the previous timetables and allowed for a certain flexibility. The Poly students became fully-fledged university students.
Thirdly, in the same year, 1908, the ETH became entitled to award doctorates, which paved the way for it to become a centre for academic research. Chemistry in particular benefited from this innovation, having always been very much in favour of it. As early as 1909, six chemistry students were awarded a doctorate.
As a technological university, the ETH achieved a large degree of autonomy, thanks to which it was able to build up steady and stable cooperation with the state and the economy. The key to the new relationship of the School with the outside world was the successful combination of theoretically formulated and experimentally tested knowledge.
Applied research and fundamental research became increasingly important compared to teaching. This shift meant that an indispensable factor in the scientific success of the Institute was the acquisition of state-of-the-art equipment, which in turn called for new forms of financing.
At the same time, the ideal of a unity of all the sciences was increasingly contested. It was not just the natural sciences and the humanities but also individual disciplines in natural sciences and technology that seemed to grow further and further apart as they became increasingly specialized. As it became impossible to generalise standards with regards to methods and procedures, the response was to come up with the idea of linking together various forms of knowledge. According to one ETH Rector in the period between the wars, this chain led from mathematics via crystallography and materials science to the nation’s economic and cultural interests.
This chain called for great organizational skills and imagination. After the First World War, the ETH intensified the work with industry via mixed financed institutes. For example, the Laboratory of Hydraulics and Hydrology VAW (1930) or the Department for Industrial Research AFIF (1937) linked the ETH into a corporative security net made up of external connections with federal, cantonal and industrial bodies.
At the National Exhibition in
All in all, the ETH sailed along very serenely as the scientific flagship of the Federal State
In all of this, the ETH performed the role of a national information centre, carefully registering what was going on in the world of science and in society at large. For example, in the 1950s it monitored local modernisation problems such as water pollution and at the same time successfully entered the sphere of international research projects. But in the early 1960s it gradually became clear that what had hitherto worked so successfully was no longer keeping pace with the passage of time.
The events of 1968 and the ensuing crisis in the years up to 1973 affected the ETH on several levels. Disciplinary orientation, institutional growth and academic structure were called into question. New forms of teaching, and new contents for courses of study were items on the agenda, as were new regulations and laws.
In 1968, the Federal Councillors passed a new ETH law that paid due regard to the takeover of the Lausanne Ecole Polytechnique by the federal government. However, as the wording of the law left much of the question of participation in abeyance, the students resorted to the referendum. In June1969 the bill was rejected at the polls.
The result of the election had many consequences for the ETH. It brought to the fore the backlog of reforms that Max Imboden had diagnosed as the “Helvetic Malaise” in 1964.
The very launching of the referendum campaign by the students was regarded as a blatant insult by the political-academic establishment of the day. The students’ victory showed that the position “of the ETH” in no way coincided with that of the School Council. Instead it became clear that participation was a problem. Furthermore, after the surprise rejection of the law, a whole series of provisional regulations was necessary just to ensure that the federal institutes of higher education remained operative. The federal policy on education broadened its scope and abandoned its hitherto exclusive fixation with the ETH.
This series of crises was followed by a realignment that was marked by both the desire for and frustration with discussion. Nevertheless, new ideas were quickly adopted, albeit under extremely difficult conditions from the point of view of staffing policy. The general cutbacks on staff imposed by the Federal Council in the early 1970s meant that structural problems could only be solved by redistribution rather than growth.
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