Page - 152 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

152 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 privileges owing to the higher cost of living in that city.) And in individual negotiations over salaries, they were clearly privileged, achieving salaries much higher than the standard ones. The differences were enhanced by the student fees (Collegiengelder) for enrolling in a lecture or seminar series, because professors in Vienna could count on more participants (see table 7). Only after 1898 were professors prohibited from charging for their lectures, an issue that had been fiercely discussed from the moment when student fees were first enacted. Discussing the salary reforms, and in particular the proposal to abandon the fees, the faculties opposed any change to previous practice. They argued not only that Collegiengelder ensured student attendance at lectures but also that they en- abled competition among professors, who, if student fees ceased, would lack the motivation to prepare interesting lectures and would return to being civil servants.10 The issue of medical theoreticians was also raised, since they could not earn money via private practice. If they received no Collegiengelder, this would deter young scholars from specializing in this area. Throughout the late Habsburg period, numerous brochures, petitions, and committees addressed the issue of unequal salaries within the empire, the privileging of scholars at the University of Vienna in individual sal- ary negotiations, and, more rarely, the discrepancies between Habsburg salaries and those abroad.11 In the 1860s Carl Rokitansky had already ad- dressed this issue in his brochure Die Conformität der Universitäten mit Rücksicht auf gegenwärtige österreichische Zustände (On the conformity of tAble 7 Percentage of professors receiving a given amount of Collegiengelder at philosophical faculties in Cisleithanian universities, 1892–93 Collegiengelder (guldens per year) Number of professors >1,000 (%) 500– 1,000 (%) 100–500 (%) 50–100 (%) <50 (%) Vienna 56 16 9 30 21 23 Graz 33 3 18 27 15 36 Innsbruck 29 3 7 34 14 41 Prague: German 31 3 10 29 10 48 Chernivtsi 18 0 6 22 28 44 Prague: Czech 30 23 7 20 23 27 Cracow 27 7 19 37 22 15 L’viv 19 11 16 53 21 0 Source: Petition der philosophischen Fakultäten an den k.k. Universitäten um Regelung der Bezüge Ihrer Professoren, February 1894, p. 2, ÚDAUK, FF NU, Sign. K/a (Pro- fesoři), Inv.č. 186–93, Kart. 9.