Page - 231 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 6 ♦  231 except Cracow.75 The ministry also violated university autonomy in some cases, appointing candidates not even named in the ternas, although most of Brentano’s students have been acknowledged to have been formidable scholars and were mostly at the head of the faculties’ proposals.76 Brentano’s influence was not seen as entirely positive, and he had oppo- nents in Vienna: Ernst Mach, a professor of philosophy, especially the history and theory of inductive sciences (Philosophie, insbesondere Geschichte und Theorie der induktiven Wissenschaften), commented sarcastically on choos- ing a candidate for his successor: “This school leaves marks on everybody, but they will be shaken off earlier by the most outstanding [scholars].”77 Nevertheless, Mach acknowledged several of Brentano’s students, assess- ing them as independent scholars but overly influenced by the Viennese philosopher. Among Brentano’s critics was Friedrich Jodl, whose appointment record exemplifies academic and administrative maneuvering between religion and philosophy. In 1885 the chair of philosophy at the German University in Prague was vacated, as Stumpf accepted a call to Halle. The faculty pro- posed three scholars from the German Empire to succeed him. The minister of education, Sigmund Eybesfeld, decided on Jodl, a liberal Catholic from Munich. The justification for this decision demonstrates that, twenty years after Thun-Hohenstein, the ministry still not only carefully considered the religious views of the scholars in question but even sought the approval of the church with regard to professors of philosophy: “In this concern, it was wel- comed by me that the late Archbishop of Prague, Cardinal Schwarzenberg, took the occasion to discuss with me, a short time before his passing away, the question of the appointment for the intended chair, in which he had a lively interest, and in this connection indicated the appointment of Dr. Jodl as particularly recommendable.”78 Ten years later, in 1896, when deciding on the appointee for the chair of philosophy in Vienna after Robert Zimmermann, the minister of educa- tion Paul Gautsch (1879–93, 1895–97) similarly preferred Jodl for religious reasons. In the meantime, however, Jodl had abandoned liberal Catholicism, become a sturdy opponent of ultramontanism, and begun participating in anticlerical organizations. The faculty had proposed three ex aequo schol- ars. Gautsch scrutinized them more with regard to their religion than their philosophical achievements: Benno Erdmann was rejected because he was German and Protestant, while Alois Riehl was a thorn in the flesh of the Catholic authorities, “which [he] seemed to brusquely oppose in Freiburg