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 * In entering upon the honorable but also responsible office of rector of our university I shall first perform the duty of thanking my honorable colleagues for the trust which placed me in this position of high esteem.

Few institutions have outlived the century so vigorously as the rectorate of this university, which has become more and more strengthened by the course of time. The reason for this lies not only in the purposeful end of this office, but equally in this, that each rector placed in the balance his greatest possible sacrifice toward the fulfillment of his task of representing, for the time, this highest academical honor. So each rector has become an example for his successor for the most conscientious fulfillment of duty. So accrued to the office an authority which will make it possible to exercise a discreet power in fulfilling the assumed responsibilities, as well as in upholding the honors and rights of the office when sustained by the wisdom of the academic senate, by the willing cooperation of all colleagues, and by the trustful demeanor of the academic youth, who have always found in the rector the promoter and chosen solicitor of their true interests.

In the alternation of faculties, and in view of the alternation between members of the mathematical-natural-science and of the philosophical-historical groups of professorships (a principle observed by common consent in the philosophical faculty), the rectorship after a period of five years fell to a representative of the first-named scientific group. I am grateful from a special combination of circumstances for the honor of bearing the rectorate in a year in which Austria celebrates the fiftieth-year jubilee of His Majesty the Emperor. You have just heard from the lips of my honored predecessor what preparations have

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