Seite - 69 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 2 ♦  69 the conservative geognosy of Friedrich Mohs, used a descriptive approach borrowed from zoology and biology, consisting of a systemization based on exterior characteristics.98 Second, because nominations and the establish- ment of new chairs were not happening simultaneously at all universities but depended on local conditions (e.g., natural history was divided into chairs of biology, mineralogy, and zoology only after the last professor in that field had died), some professors moved from university to university numerous times within a short period. Moreover, the regular deaths and retirements of older scholars at both universities and technical academies increased the turnover further still. The story of the chair of physics and mathematics in L’viv illustrates the chaos in the natural sciences at the time, with regard to both geographic and disciplinary mobility. The mathematician Victor Pierre moved to the University of L’viv from the L’viv Polytechnic in 1853 and took over the chair of Alexander Zawadzki, a biologist who had taught at the philosoph- ical faculty in Przemyśl and who, after 1848, was a professor of physics and mathematics at the University of L’viv. Zawadzki was removed from the university99 and transferred to the Realschule in Brno, where he served as the vice president of the Naturalists’ Society in Brno (Naturforschender Verein in Brünn)100 and actively supported Gregor Mendel.101 By 1857 Pierre had been appointed to Prague to replace the deceased Franz Adam Petrina (František Adam Petřina). Wojciech Urbański, who had been a Privatdozent for mathematical physics in L’viv from 1850 on, served as a replacement lec- turer but two years later became the main librarian of the university library and ceased teaching. Finally, in 1860 a recent graduate from Vienna, the twenty-three-year-old Alois Handl, was appointed to the chair of physics and mathematics, only to leave the university because of the language change in 1872. After a short period at the Military Academy (Militär-Akademie) in Wiener Neustadt, Handl became a professor in Chernivtsi.102 Such move- ments frequently involved new linguistic environments; because L’viv’s and Prague’s polytechnics were strong in scholarship but financially weak, schol- ars at these academies were more likely to move to a university in another city than were the lecturers at the Viennese technical academy. While there were conflicts of interest concerning personnel in the phil- osophical faculties, the medical faculties in Vienna, Prague, and Cracow, as well as the medical-surgical academies, experienced more continuity than breaks with tradition. In particular, the possibility of habilitation was taken more seriously than at the philosophical faculty. Because the clinical and