66 Kant: A Biography
from Leipzig, the center of the German book-trade, it is natural that we
should suffer, since all literary novelties come late to us, and authorship is
hindered by the lack of bookstores."^22 When Frederick the Great visited
Königsberg in 1739, he quipped that the city was better suited "to bring
up bears than to be an arena for the sciences."^23
Given Königsberg's remoteness, it is perhaps not very surprising that
not all disciplines were taught equally well. Not many came to East Prus¬
sia with the express purpose of teaching at the university, and some of those
who taught at the University of Königsberg were underqualified. In some
courses "the teacher was not well acquainted with his discipline and wanted
to learn it by lecturing (docendo)."^24 Some of the best talent was home¬
grown or consisted of people who, having been born in Königsberg, had
studied elsewhere. The course offerings were uneven. Some disciplines were
not taught at all; others, like chemistry, natural history, economics, and po¬
litical science, were not well represented. Mathematics and physics were,
by all accounts, taught poorly. Though experimental physics was taught,
the experiments that could be performed with the equipment available at
the university were by all accounts poor. In the natural sciences Königsberg
was not among the leading universities of Europe or even of Germany at
the time.
In 1744 the university had forty-four full professors (Ordinarien), all of
them badly paid. The full professors received only a small salary; the other
professors (außerordentliche Professoren) and the lecturers (Privatdozenten)
received nothing.^25 They had to live entirely off the fees the students paid
them for attending their lectures and recitations. None of them could have
made a living without some other income. In fact, all faculty members, un¬
less they were independently wealthy, had to have secondary incomes. This
meant some other official position (Nebenamt), a business, or another oc¬
cupation. Some ran dormitories for students, others took in students as
boarders into their own households, still others had businesses, and at least
one of them ran a pub. Even in Göttingen, where professors were much
better paid, many had vegetable gardens. The theologians, who usually were
also pastors or higher officials in the Lutheran Church of Prussia, were
better off than those who taught law, medicine, or philosophy (though the¬
ologians taught even some of those disciplines). Philosophers were paid the
least, but since every student had to take some courses in philosophy, there
were many students in the public lectures on philosophy.
The Albertina had four schools or Fakultäten: philosophy, theology, law,
and medicine.^26 Philosophy was also known as the "lower faculty," as com-