Page - 154 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

154 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 Lamenting the financial situation of universities was a kind of ritual throughout the empire. Seeking higher salaries, scholars would apply for positions abroad as a bargaining tool. Professors proposed for a position at a foreign university could better their financial status, and home univer- sities often strove to retain them by offering higher remuneration. In such cases, the Ministry of Education was willing to raise salaries considerably, well beyond the regular ones.23 Further, privileges for one’s institute could be gained in this way, including equipment, assistants, or even additional associate professorships.24 This worked both ways; not only did universities in the German Empire offer better salaries,25 but professors at non-Habsburg German universities also used the appointment procedures to secure a better position in salary negotiations at their own universities. This means of aug- menting one’s income was certainly important, and it seems that scholars frequently used it, entering into negotiations with other universities just to bargain with their own administration, with no intention of actually taking an appointment elsewhere. The introduction of equal salaries for professors at all universities did not change the appointment pattern considerably. Before and after 1898, ap- pointments had a similar structure, following the above-described hierarchy, although one could assume that a position in Innsbruck, for example, would now be more valuable than one in Prague, given the differences in the cost of living. Yet the structure of nominations remained the same after the sal- ary changes. This persistence of traditional hierarchies, resulting from the appeal of both financial and symbolic capital, was best described, somewhat ironically, by Theodor Mommsen, who commented that Habsburg scholars are “sentenced to Chernivtsi, pardoned to Graz, promoted to Vienna.”26 This symbolic hierarchy was also discernible in appointments from other institu- tions. From 1898 the technical academies and the Academy of Agriculture in Vienna also offered the same salaries as the universities. This too did not change the appointment structure; universities still appointed scholars from technical and agricultural academies, without significant movement in the other direction, apart from a few scholars who taught simultaneously at both universities and technical academies. The issue of finances was not restricted to salaries but also included the costs of reorganizing institutes to meet the professors’ needs; some re- arrangements involved considerable expense. This affected appointments; for example, Ludwig Boltzmann was appointed to the chair of experimental physics in Graz in 1876, even though he was proposed in third place in the