"Greifswald is a little but very old university (founded in 1456),
and it is a little a pity that people in distant places seemingly
know only from the Nazi and von Braun affairs in our region."
Greifswald is a very interesting place in the history of
mathematics, and should get more attention. The association with
Sophus Lie is well known. But I was surprised to learn, a few years
ago, how important Greifswald was in the early reception of Brouwer's
topology and set theory.
Lie's co-author Friedrich Engel helped promote Brouwer's
solution to Hilbert's Fifth problem in two dimensions (there is a
purely topological characterization of the group of analytic
transformations of the plane R^2). He complained about the clarity
of Brouwer's writing, but he liked the proof.
Hausdorff, also at Greifswald, promoted Brouwer's first
proofs of the Jordan Curve Theorem and related theorems (that is,
the early proofs before Brouwer started relying on his concept of
mapping degree).
And during his time at Greifswald, Blaschke wrote a
brilliant series of reviews of Brouwer's mature topological papers.
For Engel and Hausdorff you can see the standard Brouwer
sources, such as van Stigt BROUWER'S INTUITIONISM. Blaschke's
reviews are in Jahrbuch ueber die Fortschritte der Mathematik
42, (1911) 417-419.
I read Kowalewski's beautiful memoire BESTAND UND WANDEL
before I knew the importance of Greifswald, and I do not remember
whether he talks much about it. But I will go look at it again--
was he at Greifswald? Since I'm mentioning this book let me
recommend it for his memories of a long career in mathematics.
He was around Hilbert in the days of the famous invariant theorem.
And he had many memories of people's feelings for and against
women mathematicians as they became an important presence.
I had not known that Ruegen was near Greifswald. I have
a fossil oyster from Ruegen, which I will prize all the more for
knowing that.
Colin