Page - 141 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 4 ♦  141 Careers and the Formation of Scholars A brief glance at the scientific personnel active at Cisleithanian universities reveals a network dominated by the University of Vienna, which had the largest number of professors and Privatdozenten, at times making up more than half of the scholars in each academic rank at German-language univer- sities (see table 3). At the medical faculty, most scholars were Privatdozenten, with fewer associate professors and still fewer full professors; at the philo- sophical faculty, Privatdozenten outnumbered professors. The network of personnel thus formed a pyramid at the medical faculty, with a large number of instructors2 at its base and a diminishing number of scholars toward the peak, and an hourglass at the philosophical faculty. These two structures, fa- voring competition at all levels and producing a broad stratum of underpaid or even unpaid teaching staff, still called in German the Mittelbau (midlevel faculty), was characteristic for the University of Vienna. The Prague uni- versities, the Galician universities, and the medical faculty in Graz were also slowly changing to a pyramidal structure, which corresponded to the need for Privatdozenten to cover lectures. A pyramidal structure indicated a steep career path, and while Privatdozenten at the Czech Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague and the Jagiellonian University could hardly switch universities, many young scholars in Vienna decided to move to other univer- sities in the Habsburg Empire or abroad (the latter was common in medicine), or to nonacademic institutions. In contrast, Chernivtsi, Innsbruck, and the philosophical faculty in Graz usually employed fewer Privatdozenten than professors, and the structure of the teaching faculty would have formed an inverted pyramid. These universities thus had a limited influence on the education of scholars at the beginning of their careers. Even though many scholars chose to habilitate to further their careers outside of universities, the Privatdozentur was, in most cases, the first step on the academic ladder. And in Vienna, where nonuniversity academic jobs were abundant, turnover in the Privatdozenten was still high. Even though the number of older habilitated scholars in the capital city was substantial, the average age of Privatdozenten, measured every ten years, did not vary significantly across universities.3 One cannot say with certainty what rea- sons led young scholars to leave the university. But the average age was distorted by the exponential growth of the Viennese Privatdozentur, and it underscores the quantity of well-educated habilitated scholars the capital