KNOWLEDGE-SKILL-SCIENCE

Less than three years from now (2015) the University of Vienna will be celebrating its 650th anniversary. This offers an excellent opportunity to point out its distinctive profile amongst other Central European universities and its long tradition of the transmission of attained knowledge from teacher to student, which has been established in the late Middle Ages. Therefore, the aim of this project will be to deepen the knowledge of the University of Vienna and of its development during the late Middle Ages within the context of its political, cultural, social and economic networks, based mostly on unpublished and up to now hardly used materials - first of all the administrative records contained in sources such as the Acta Rectoratus, Acta facultatis and the protocol books of the four "university nations" but also the already edited ones such as the entry registers ("Matrikel"). Additional material from outside of the University, especially charters in various Viennese and other Austrian archives will be included as well, as will be the published calendars of papal letters. Comparison with other Central European cities and universities will offer a basis to evaluate the importance of academic knowledge there and in Vienna, will help to raise further questions and to sharpen the view on the specifics of Vienna, and to widen the range of sources for Vienna University itself. In order to systematize research and presentation, the project will focus on the relations of the University of Vienna with other Central European universities. This has to be done on institutional as well as personal levels and to accomplish this prosopographical data of all kinds must be scrutinized to establish and explain the University`s local and international relations. Above all, the less conspicuous teachers and the little known students will be taken into view. In order to understand and evaluate the data, the other networks the University of Vienna was actually part of have to be taken into account too. Therefore, three subsections will deal with the relations with the ruler, with the Church and with the city of Vienna, partly involving the same personnel as in the main section. By researching the multiple relations of the Vienna University and by fulfilling the aims outlined above, the applicant Meta NIEDERKORN-BRUCK and her co-worker Andrea BOTTANOV will try to fill the gaps still existing in the research of the medieval history of the University of Vienna in the course of this three-year-project. Close contacts with current Austrian and international platforms and projects on medieval universities, education and science history connected to important departments of history (e. g. Münster and Greifswald), mostly run by younger scholars, offer great opportunities for cooperation and exchange of results.

Some female scholars might wonder why female scholars such as us chose this subject history of the University of Vienna in the Middle Ages as a theme for a research project. Because as everyone knows the medieval history of the European universities is in 100% history of education of men and for men. Officially, women could only attend the university lectures under very special circumstances enrollment was impossible - at a university in most European cities up until the second half of the 19th century. The first woman who was able to graduate as doctor medicinae at the University of Vienna, Gabriele Possanner von Ehrenthal, could do this only thanks to the clemency plea to the emperor and not until April 1897. But the one, who has no past, cant have a future and this famous quote applies to the University of Vienna as well. Sadly, we cant change history, but we are fully capable to shape our future - and in this day and age we are fortunate to do our part. And even we would not be standing here doing our research, if it werent for an eccentric young duke, Rudolph IV, who more than 650 years ago thought it a great idea to found a university in the capital of the dukedom of Austria. His brothers, especially Albert III, revived it in 1384 after Rudolfs premature death. Vital was also the influx of exceptional scholars from Paris and Prague (caused by the Great ecclesiastical schism) who helped to develop the University of Vienna into an important center of learning for scholars from all over Europe from Lisbon to Braov, from Uppsala to Pancevo. We are of course not the first scholars to concern ourselves with this subject the interest for the history of the University of Vienna has been present at least since the 17th century. But like those, who came before us, we also think its fascinating and worth researching. As the time passed by, the focuses and themes in researching the University history changed new turns brought new insights. In recent times the history of different social groups und their networks and also the history of science sprang into focus. Interestingly, university scholars from hundreds of years ago had the same problems, which students and teachers face today tight budget, problems with the maintenance of the university buildings, petty conflicts and students who misbehave. What also remains to this day is the University of Viennas international reputation you can still meet here students and teachers from every world direction. And those scholars who roamed its halls and filled it with lectures about Aristoteles and scholastic disputes in fact in a certain way give legitimacy to todays experts on Astronomy and Philosophy. In this sense the University of Vienna has managed to retain its value as an institution for preserving and passing on knowledge not only for the the city of Vienna and not only for Austrian people but for the European society as a whole. To honor the 650th anniversary of the University of Vienna we decided to bring all known students and teachers of the University of Vienna, who have studied and taught here during the Middle Ages under one roof and set up an on-line freely accessible database with each and everyone of them in it - together with their personal data, information about their academic degrees and their career paths. We recorded all the information we could find about when and where they worked and for whom (universities, the church, royal/ducal courts, city administrations) or how often did they change their employer. Of course, our database does not provide its users with absolutely ALL data about all of the scholars that would have been an impossible task to fullfill in only 3 years. But it does provide an overview about their origins, their studies and links to various Viennese and European institutions. Our original aim was to deepen the knowledge about the University of Vienna in the Middle Ages, make newly discovered data combined with well known public, freely accessible and visualize the interconnectedness of the students and teachers among each other and with the European Medieval society. And we very much hope, we achieved it. We also hope to have created a stepping stone for further research of the University of Vienna and its scholars.