Page - 230 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

230 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 The second center of Catholic interest remained philosophy. Its situa- tion was largely an outcome of the teaching of Franz Brentano, appointed a professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna in 1873, who had been recommended by the influential Göttingen philosopher Hermann Lotze, among others, owing to his “professional” philosophical approach.67 Despite being a Catholic priest and working on liberal Catholic philoso- phy,68 Brentano opposed ultramontanism and the newly prescribed papal infallibility. In accordance with these convictions, Brentano withdrew from the priesthood and his position as a professor in Würzburg. Opposition to the all-encompassing papal authority, however, was clearly exactly what Franz Lott (his predecessor, who apparently influenced the faculty’s choice through communications with the ministry) and the minister of education Karl Stremayr, a proponent of reducing Catholic influence on the state (pre- cisely at the moment of loosening the Concordat), approved of.69 In 1880 Brentano moved for a short time to Saxony in order to marry Ida Lieben, which was not legally possible for ordained priests in the empire. Because he had to change his citizenship for the move, this automatically canceled his professorship, which was neither returned to him nor subsequently filled. A proponent of modern philosophy based on the natural sciences and psy- chology, Brentano remained at the University of Vienna as a Privatdozent, which was unanimously accepted by the faculty without the usual habilita- tion procedures.70 He hoped for a future appointment, but over the next few years, the ministers denied him such a chance, which finally led Brentano to resign from his position in 1895.71 In his time as a full professor, however, Brentano was able to influ- ence Stremayr to appoint two of his students as professors, Anton Marty (Chernivtsi University, 1875) and Carl Stumpf (University of Prague, 1879). Both had written their dissertations under Lotze’s supervision and had pre- vious connections with the Catholic Church. Marty had been a priest but left the priesthood shortly after Brentano; Stumpf had attended the ecclesiastical seminary, leaving it in 1870.72 Both were something of a rarity in the empire: Marty was Swiss, with no habilitation, and had graduated only shortly before the appointment, which took place (probably) without a terna proposal.73 Stumpf was not in the Prague faculty terna; the minister consulted with Brentano and decided to appoint Stumpf against the wishes of the faculty, who explicitly wanted a historian of philosophy.74 Despite the loss of his professorship and his problems with the church, Brentano remained influ- ential. His students achieved high positions at all Cisleithanian universities