Page - 77 - in Nikola Tesla and the Graz Tech

77 The period after Archduke Johann’s death in 1859 was marked by the conflict between the board of trustees and the professorial council, which wanted to be directly subordinated to the provincial committee (the executive body of the provincial parliament or Landtag re-established in 1861). This was done with the adoption of the organic statute of 25 April 1864. This meant that the Joanneum was elevated to the rank of a college of technology or a techni- cal university. As a consistent continuation of this development, the Landtag (provincial parliament) issued a statute regarding the Joanneum collections and the library on 17 December 1866, by which the board of trustees was abolished, the collections and their directors placed under the direct care of the provincial committee, which appointed a separate official in charge of the Joanneum. The statute of 1866 distinguished the following areas: 1) Historical collections (archive, coin and antique cabinet); 2) Natural science collections (mineralogical, geognostic and palaeontological cabinet, zoologi- cal cabinet, botanical cabinet with botanical garden); 3) State Library. Over the next few years, the College of Technology was separated from the collections in terms of organisation and space. In 1874 the educational institu- tion was taken over by the state, but it was not until 1888 that it was able to move into the newly built building in Rechbauerstraße. In 1868, the Joanneum Archive, which had been collected since 1811 and comprised a wide range of archives of Styrian provenance, was merged with the Estates Archive to form the Styrian Provincial Archives and moved to the vacated premises of the sec- ondary school in Hamerlinggasse. Thus the archival collection area was also separated organisationally from the Joanneum.