Page - 153 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 4 ♦  153 the universities, concerning the current Austrian situation, 1863), in which he pleaded to reduce the monopoly of the University of Vienna in regard to professors’ salaries. He fiercely opposed the idea of a central university with satellites serving only as “nursery or transit schools for other universities, or even [as] institutions for accommodation and provisioning of deficient talents and workforces.”12 While Rokitansky wrote from a double position as a Viennese professor and an official in the ministry, most disputants took a more one-sided stance. While professors at provincial universities strove to level salaries and criticized Vienna’s predominance,13 Viennese profes- sors opposed any equalization of salaries, stating that this would “severely damage larger universities.”14 One of the points often raised was that equalization of salaries would disadvantage the University of Vienna because of the higher cost of living in the city; professors, especially those with larger families, would then prefer to remain at smaller universities, where the cost of living was less expensive. Smaller cities seeking to have a university established there, such as Salzburg, saw exactly this as being to their advantage.15 As some writers claimed, scholars in university cities were even unable to find apartments befitting their social standing, especially near their institutes.16 More drastic were descriptions of professors with families who were “hindered in [their] spiritual development owing to concerns about food.”17 Such descriptions were surely slightly dramatized, but living conditions were in fact a problem for all members of the Habsburg civil service, especially in Vienna,18 and some professors indeed found themselves in financial trouble.19 This issue was also included in the appointment papers; professors often claimed the need for so-called Naturalwohnung (i.e., a residence owned by the univer- sity) in institutes so that they could closely supervise their research facilities and experiments.20 Salary discrepancies across medical faculties were even more serious. University positions were frequently linked to positions at the university clin- ics and city hospitals (for example, as chief physicians). This made a transfer to a smaller university unattractive even despite an advance in academic rank. The ministry was also reluctant to offer higher salaries than usual in such cases, limiting the possibility of transfers from Vienna.21 In addition, some associate professors simultaneously had tenured positions as assis- tants: in this case even the University of Prague, offering the second-highest regular salaries, could not match the earnings of these scholars, particularly those from Vienna.22