Page - 169 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 4 ♦  169 and 29 percent success rates, respectively. If scholars based in the German Empire were proposed first in the terna, such proposals led to a successful appointment (that is, one of the scholars from the German Empire in the terna was appointed) 40 percent of the time. If an Austrian was proposed primo loco, in only 4 percent of cases was a scholar from outside the monarchy ultimately appointed to that position. Overall, the humanities had the highest rate of successful appointments from the German Empire (51 percent) and the medical sciences the lowest (30 percent). Unsurprisingly, the University of Vienna had the most success in appointing scholars from the German Empire, with its proposals approved 70 percent of the time,64 while in Prague only 50 percent of such proposals met with a positive response. Looking at these discrepancies, one should also consider that the Ministry of Education was unwilling to appoint scholars from abroad be- cause they were much more likely to be reappointed to a university outside the empire than were scholars from within the empire. Both the universities and the ministry considered whether candidates for chairs would remain at the university and in the empire, exploring whether the candidates would take the appointment seriously or not. The ministry also often referred to prospective open positions, mentioning that a given scholar should not be ap- pointed because in the near future he might be proposed by another faculty. Usually this meant that he would soon be promoted to Vienna and would thus not be a lasting gain for the original university.65 Smaller universities tried to counter this by offering contracts to schol- ars who would agree to stay for a longer period;66 the University of Graz included a clause about a five-year renunciation of accepting appointments at other universities, but this practice of including such a clause was rare.67 Some faculties seeking to convince the ministry to promote a local scholar argued that the new scholar would be a more permanent gain for the univer- sity. When the philosophical faculty in Innsbruck proposed Alois Cathrein for the chair of mineralogy and petrology, the commission stated two reasons for his primo loco position, which disregarded both his scholarly qualities and the custom of appointing professors from other universities for a chair. The first was his concentration on Tyrolean geology, and the second the fact that he would not be eager to accept a call from another university, as “might be the case with other candidates.”68 The financial disparities between universities in the Habsburg and German Empires (see table 11) made it especially complicated for smaller universities to appoint foreign scholars. Half of the scholars appointed from