"Bonna Perl am grünen Rheine" (Bonn, pearl of the green Rhine) – the title of the book is taken from a student song that is more than 100 years old and describes the halcyon, wine-imbued life of the student. The question whether this idyll really existed was raised and discussed in a lecture series examining the living conditions of male and (from 1896) female students from the Biedermeier period to the present-day bachelor and master programmes. The book provides a chronological overview over a period of almost 200 years, focussing on special features of the University of Bonn such as its role as "university of princes" in the 19thcentury, or the major part it played in the protests of 1968, but it also examines features that are exemplary of German universities as a whole.