Page - 165 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 4 ♦  165 As had been the case during Leo Thun-Hohenstein’s term as minister of education, there were not enough qualified teachers to satisfy the demands of the growing faculties (see also table 10). Nonetheless, only those whom the ministry considered politically passive were successful.51 Although there is no consistent pattern in the exchanges between the two empires, in no period did appointments from abroad exceed those from within the monarchy. The first peak of appointments from abroad occurred between 1849 and 1854, with around 20 percent of scholars appointed at Habsburg universities coming from institutions in non-Habsburg states of the German Confederation. However, a number of the appointees had been exiled to the Habsburg Empire owing to political and religious persecution; they found sanctuary in the philosophical faculties of universities seen as a Catholic counterpart to Prussia. The second peak, in the 1870s, included professors at the philosophical and medical faculties, owing to the strong expansion of university education and the improved financial situation of the Habsburg Empire. Still, the percentage of scholars appointed from abroad was clearly decreasing at Habsburg German-language universities, making them more autarchic but also more hermetic than in the early years after the reform. The perception that Habsburg universities tended to be autarchic rather than overpopulated with foreigners is reinforced by statistics showing that nominees from the German Empire included up to 30 percent Habsburg re- turnees,52 a third of whom had previously held a professorship at a Habsburg university and more than half of whom had gained their doctoral degree in the Habsburg Empire. Of the eighty-two scholars born in the German Empire who taught in the Habsburg Empire in 1848–1918, twenty-six were appointed to the medical faculties (65 percent of them from 1880 onward) and fifty-six to the philosophical faculties, with the overwhelming majority (around 90 percent) in the humanities. Although 35 percent of such professors gener- ally left for the German Empire after several years, there was a significant discrepancy between Vienna, where more professors remained, and other universities. Although appointments from abroad were almost exactly di- vided between the three possible options for promotion53 and appointments from the position of full professor, the status division remained quite clear: while the University of Vienna appointed mostly scholars who were already working as full professors and associate professors (who became full profes- sors), other universities promoted Privatdozenten, 25 percent of whom were appointed directly to full professorships.