Page - 156 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

156 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 based on the “fixed convention,” they were allowed (predestined) to acquire “the best people of all”35 for their chairs. When a provincial university convinced a full professor from Vienna to agree to be included in a faculty proposal, this did not go down well with the ministry. Indeed, this had less to do with finances than with the need to keep the best people in Vienna. “It is not advisable to allow a professor of the University of Vienna to trans- fer to a smaller university, because this would create a precedent, which would imply critical consequences for the thriving of . . . the University of Vienna”36 was the reasoning given in one of the few such cases. Only on special occasions did the ministry allow such appointments despite the in- stitutional hierarchy. When Julius Hann, an associate professor in Vienna, retired from the directorship of the Central Bureau for Meteorology and Terrestrial Magnetism in Vienna, he, guided by medical advice, asked for a transfer to a “smaller university, namely, in Graz, or alternately in Innsbruck,” to concentrate on teaching; this petition, approved by consen- sus in Graz, was also accepted by the ministry.37 After Hann had recovered physically, a second petition, this time a plea to return to Vienna, was issued and accepted.38 From Chernivtsi to Vienna: The Structure of the Academic Space The hierarchical differences described above are clearly discernible in the types of appointments. As noted above, scholars were generally promoted by one rank or more when transferring universities. At the Innsbruck medical faculty, the appointees had mostly been Privatdozenten (75 percent; equal numbers of them were promoted to full and associate professor positions), whereas at Vienna almost all appointees had been full professors at another university. (For details on transfers of full professors, see table 8.) At Graz, the “in-between” university in the academic hierarchy, appointees were ei- ther full professors from Innsbruck or, in approximately equal numbers, Privatdozenten and associate professors from Vienna. The Privatdozenten appointed to Graz were, with three exceptions, promoted by only one aca- demic rank, that is, to associate professors. For most professors transferred to Vienna, it was the last stop in their career, whereas slightly fewer than half of imported scholars stayed in Graz (20 percent moved to Vienna and 12 percent to the German University in Prague), and slightly over 30 percent