Page - 75 - in Nikola Tesla and the Graz Tech

75 The early Joanneum (1811 to 1887) With the Joanneum, Archduke Johann primarily wanted to create an educa- tional institution that would illustrate its teaching through the use of authen- tic objects. An overview of the following years shows that the institute, driven by the will of the founder, consistently followed this path despite some diffi- culties. Already in the year 1812, free and public lectures on scientific fields of knowledge were held. Mineralogy was taught by the famous scholar Fried- erich Mohs, employed at the Archduke’s private expense, botany and chem- istry by Lorenz Chrysanth von Vest, experimental physics and astronomy by Johann Philipp Neumann, professor at the Lyceum, and technology by Franz Jeschowsky, professor of mathematics at the Lyceum. It should not go un- mentioned in this context that the appointment of the scholars did not take place by means of the prescribed public tendering procedure, but rather they were selected from the most capable available men, with ‘expert hand’. From 1818, a lecture on zoology was added, and as a result of the foundation of the Imperial and Royal Agricultural Society in 1819, the (professorial) chair of agri- culture was transferred from the Lyceum to the Joanneum in 1825. The year 1827 was a milestone in the development of the Joanneum as an educational institution. In this year the study department was organised and a director of studies was appointed in the person of the curator Ludwig Crophius, abbot of the Cistercian monastery Rein. In the same year, a chair of technical-practical mathematics was established. The Joanneum had thus become a polytech- nic, an educational institution that otherwise existed in the monarchy only in Vienna and Prague. 1829 saw the establishment of two independent chem- istry and physics chairs, and a metallurgy chair was applied for in the same year and approved by the Emperor. However, lessons could not begin until De- cember 1840 in a building specially erected for this purpose in Vordernberg. In 1838 the decision was taken by the estates to establish a secondary school, in which background knowledge for studying at the Joanneum was to be im- parted. Subsequently, the Joanneum set up chairs for mechanics, mechanical engineering and technical drawing, higher mathematics as well as practical and descriptive geometry. In 1845 the professors at the Joanneum were put on an equal footing with their Viennese and Prague colleagues.