The present study sets out to trace a linguistic history of the institution 'university' from the 12th to the late 18th century, concentrating on the later stages and the transition from Latin to German as the central medium of academic communication (lectures and scholarly writing). Drawing upon the history of universities in general and sources relating to Freiburg (Breisgau) from the 14th to the 18th century in particular, it is possible to demonstrate that the university was already a 'bilingual' institution in the Middle Ages and that the transition to the vernacular in the 18th century was accompanied both by a change in its social function (from autonomous corporation to state institution) and a charge in styles of thinking (from a scholastic handing-down of established unassailable knowledge to an enlightened concern with the utility of scientific and scholarly endeavour).