When the University was founded in 1737 and John Tompson was employed to teach English, the focus was squarely on language competence. However, Tompson used examples from English literature to teach. With the University expanding into different subject areas in the late 1700s and early 1800s, studying the history of English as a language, and studying the history of English literature moved ever more into the academic focus, until, in the mid-1800s, courses on Old and Middle English were held quite regularly. In 1968, the first Professor of Medieval English was called to Göttingen, Prof. Dr. Hans Schabram, and since then Göttingen University has been one of the few universities in the north of Germany where medieval English can be studied in its own right. Prof. Schabram's research focused on general and comparative historical linguistics, so in 1984 the focus of teaching Medieval English Studies was in teaching the historical languages first; texts and contexts were not ignored, but came a clear second.

In the video below, the current Professor of Medieval English Studies, Prof. Dr. Winfried Rudolf, looks back over the past decades and discusses the changes in the study programme as well as in the research of the division of Medieval English Studies: The subject is alive and thriving at Göttingen - unlike at other universities.