Page - 53 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 2 ♦  53 the ministry through the prescribed curricula. Compared to Lehrfreiheit, Lernfreiheit was certainly in second place, as in the case of the replacement of Unterrichtsgeld (tuition fees paid per semester) by Collegiengelder (tui- tion fees paid per lecture). This change was a means of not only supporting the Privatdozenten but also assuring that students did not take unnecessary lectures: “The fees will be, as the freedom of learning continues, a barrier to youthful improvidence, which one cannot do without anywhere where it [the freedom of learning] exists.”20 In addition, professors and deans were obliged to take attendance at lectures, a requirement that the ministry repeated on several occasions, signaling its importance for the successful disciplining of students. Lehrfreiheit was also limited by concessions to state authorities: the ministry oversaw the lecture catalogs and could cancel lectures, remove teachers, or transfer them to universities in which their ideological or political opinions would find little or no resonance. As I argue below, Thun- Hohenstein frequently used these measures to discipline professors. Further, the ministry, based on faculty proposals, regulated who should teach which lectures at specific universities. For instance, professors who in 1849 were allowed to teach “every topic of their scientific field” could from 1851 on- ward teach only “related subjects”21 in their faculty; any change was subject to ministry approval. Similarly, Privatdozenten remained under ministerial control. Furthermore, the ministry later controlled the lectures, rejecting those whose syllabus or designation was politically suspect.22 That said, the extent to which the authorities actually did (or could) supervise the content of seminars and lectures in practice remains open to conjecture. A Catholic Counterbalance to Prussia Ministerial decrees and speeches depicted the universities in other parts of the German Confederation, especially those enjoying academic freedom, as the ideal of scientific and social development. This idealization remained, however, more in the sphere of rhetoric and was by no means unconditional. Rather, bits and pieces of regulations from various states of the German Confederation were adjusted to fit Austrian regional peculiarities, in partic- ular, religion, which was certainly the largest issue in the process of reform. The idea of a local model based on “German” universities had begun already before Thun-Hohenstein. The minister of education between March