Page - 188 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

188 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 Only the Galician-born anatomist Andrzej (also in Czech: Ondřej) Obrzut was appointed to another medical faculty, moving to L’viv in 1896. Scholars from the Czech University were seldom considered for chairs at other insti- tutions, and, if so, this mostly occurred through personal contacts. The most prominent was Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who expected to receive the chair of philosophy in Vienna56 (but was not nominated by the faculty). While exchanges with other Habsburg institutions rarely took place, a significant number of scholars moved between the technical academies in Bohemia and Moravia and the university. Eleven scholars came from the Czech technical academy in Prague and one from the technical academy in Brno, while nine were appointed to these two institutions (see also table 12). In particular, the academy in Brno profited from Prague’s Privatdozenten: the number of Privatdozenten in Prague around 1900 (that is, when the technical academy opened) was exorbitant in comparison with the number of possible professorships, and thus moving to Moravia was a welcome ca- reer choice.57 The scarcity of opportunities for appointments outside Prague, as well as the limited exchange with other institutes, was criticized, and various solutions were proposed. From the 1890s on, Czech scholars pleaded for the establishment of a second university in either Brno or Olomouc, which, it was hoped, would also improve academic quality through exchanges and competition among scholars. Masaryk wrote on this occasion that “a second university, giving more freedom for the students and also for some profes- sors, would speed up and strengthen scientific development. This moment can be named with a word: scientific competition—students would have a broader choice of teachers, they would be less dependent on individual professors, and the scientific currents and directions of one university would have unmeasured influence on the other university. After all, there is no doubt that if there is no competition, haughtiness and the Chinese spirit appear.”58 Similarly, Goll saw exchange as augmenting scholarly quality and criticized the sacrifice of Czech scientific needs, and thus of the needs of the Habsburg Empire, for political reasons, rebuffing the claims of German nationalists in Moravia who opposed the creation of a Czech-language acad- emy there.59 While Czech intellectuals of all political outlooks saw a second Czech university as vital for their culture, some scholars regarded exchanges with German culture, particularly German universities, as integral to maintaining the quality of Czech scholarly culture in particular and intellectual life in