Page - 155 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 4 ♦  155 terna, because appointing the other two candidates would have required modifications to the institute’s infrastructure, something Boltzmann did not desire.27 Several scholars even rejected nominations because of a lack of infrastructure in an institute or the rejection of higher endowments. The natural sciences were especially disadvantaged because new nominations could mean considerable and expensive modifications. Thus, scholars often remained where they were because their own institutions were better tuned to their needs, and even a considerable increase in salary failed to convince them to move.28 Such situations also involved comparison with nonuniversity institu- tions and became a choice involving both gains and losses, which showed that achieving a professorship at a university was not every scholar’s ultimate goal. State institutions were effectively competing for the same scholars, especially because academic appointments as such included neither consid- erable monetary gain nor a change in status. Better conditions at clinics29 or better access to research material in medicine or veterinary medicine30 were some of the reasons scholars chose to remain at nonacademic institutions. In rare cases, some professors actually resigned their positions to pursue a nonacademic career.31 Choosing a nonuniversity post instead of a professorship was not only a matter of personal preference. The ministry was also eager to retain the best scholars in the most internationally recognized institutes: to keep Rudolf Heberdey as the head of the Austrian Archaeological Institute at Athens, the ministry proposed to make his salary and rank equal to those of a full professor, instead of agreeing to his appointment to Graz.32 Salaries were clearly an issue here, since state institutions offered comparable salaries, making university appointments expensive. This was especially true when a nominee working at a nonacademic job was proposed to become an associate professor; this academic position had a low nominal payment and thus was not very attractive. When it was clear that a scholar would demand a higher salary, or at least the same salary as in his previous post, the ministry was often hesitant to even enter into talks.33 Viennese Privatdozenten who had an additional occupation in the city were particularly hard to convince to move to a smaller institution.34 Smaller universities were handicapped not only by their financial sit- uation but also by the ministry’s ongoing concern with assuring Vienna’s role as the central university in the empire. The faculties of the University of Vienna also saw themselves as central institutions in themselves, and