Page - 117 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 3 ♦  117 both the proposed scholars and the Ministry of Finance, requiring a careful financial balancing act. The inclusion of the Ministry of Finance in the decision-making process was not merely symbolic but rather allowed the finance minister a direct route to reject candidates. The list of foreign scholars not appointed for fi- nancial reasons is quite long and includes well-qualified candidates and even celebrities.121 In such cases, the ministry preferred younger, and cheaper, Habsburg scholars, even if the faculties opposed them as detrimental to the quality of the faculty. The Ministry of Finance could also influence whether a scholar would be granted an associate or a full professorship. The complications are visible in the appointment of Rudolf Brotanek as an associate professor of English philology at the German University in Prague. While the faculty proposed two scholars from abroad as the top candidates, the ministry decided on the third-choice Brotanek because the . . . foreigners would with high likelihood expect instant appointment to full professor; however, as highlighted in the subservient submission with respect to [Alois] Pogatscher’s appointment to Graz,122 in the refill- ing of the vacant chair of English philology only an associate professor should be appointed, owing to the necessary savings from the appoint- ment of [Karl] Luick to Vienna,123 on which the minister of finance made dependent at that time the second full professorship at . . . the University of Vienna.124 Although the direct exchange of information between the two ministries is hardly visible to historians’ eyes—most often this was hidden behind ominous formulations such as “mit Einvernehmen” (in agreement) and “im kurzen Wege” (meaning brief, internal communication)—financial reasons were the most often cited cause for not adopting a faculty’s proposal. The relationship between universities and the ministry was for a time so unbalanced that the faculties slowly ceased proposing a list of three scholars in every case and began issuing so-called unico loco (i.e., single-candidate) proposals, thus deciding for themselves who should be appointed. Indicative of these power relations is that between 1870 and 1909, out of forty unico loco propositions, all but four led to an appointment.125 Finally, in 1909, the overuse of this practice led to a conflict between the medical faculty of the German University in Prague and the ministry. The Prague medi- cal faculty proposed unico loco an anatomist from Freiburg, Ernst Gaupp,