The Baltic University in Exile was established in the displaced persons camp

Displaced persons camp

A displaced persons camp or DP camp is a temporary facility for displaced persons coerced into forced migration. The term is mainly used for camps established after World War II in West Germany and in Austria, as well as in the United Kingdom, primarily for refugees from Eastern Europe and for the...

s in Germany to educate refugees from Estonia

Estonia

Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

, Latvia

Latvia

Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

 and Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

 in the aftermath of the Second World War

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

The University was established at Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

 in the British Zone of Occupation in March 1946, with aid from UNRRA, the Lutheran World Federation

Lutheran World Federation

The Lutheran World Federation is a global communion of national and regional Lutheran churches headquartered in the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland. The federation was founded in the Swedish city of Lund in the aftermath of the Second World War in 1947 to coordinate the activities of the...

, and other groups. In early 1947, it was moved to a former Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....

 school in Pinneberg

Pinneberg

Pinneberg is a town in Schleswig-Holstein, capital of the district Pinneberg in Germany. The town has 42,301 inhabitants. Pinneberg is located 18 km northwest of Hamburg....

 and renamed the Displaced Person's Study Centre. The Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik

Ernst Öpik

Ernst Julius Öpik was a noted Estonian astronomer and astrophysicist who spent the second half of his career at the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland.-Education:...

 became its first Rector

Rector

The word rector has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator...

, and later the Lithuanian archaeologist, Jonas Puzinas, became head of the institution. Because many of the staff and students had found homes in other countries, the University was closed in September 1949.

A total of 76 students graduated from the Baltic University in its short existence: 53 of them were Latvian, 16 Lithuanian, and 7 Estonian. Many others went on to complete their studies in other universities.

"The Baltic DP university with about 170 professors on the teaching staff and 1,200 students in eight faculties and 13 subdivisions has been running for three semester."