The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-03-24
PAY OF GERMAN PROFESSORS.
1t Is Small, But the Places Are
Greatly Coveted.

Greatly Coveted.
Prussia is about to increase the total amount
that she pays her officials by almost S., coo, 900
year, says the New York Sun. Part of the
increase will benefit the university professors,
who are Prussian state officials. The regular
professors in Berlin university, for instance
will have their salaries raised about $500 each
a year; the average PROFESSIONAL salary will
then be 81 coo a year in Berlin and 81, 400 a
year in other Prussian university towns. That
seems rather a low figure when remem-
bers that Berlin university has had in the
last twenty years such instructors as Preit-
schke, VirchOw, HeimholtZ, Bergman, Wag
ner and Dubois Raymond and dozen others
whose names are as familiar to the educated
in Toxic, Cairo and Cape Town as they are
to the students of San Francisco, Chicago and
New York. To be sure, professor has fifty
to 100 attendants at each of his lecture courses
and from every one, with occasional eX-
ception, he collects from S. to $40 lecture
money term, but he is allowed to keep but
little more than half the money thus earned.
Probably only a very famous and very
popular professor is able to profit more than
81, coo year from the student fees in his own
lecture courses.
Yet q regular professors chair in German
university is a much coveted place. Thou
sancs of men strive for the salaries that
appear meager even to the eyes of the
American used to German conditions of life.
Young men of many talents and inteTna-
tional reputation cling to the universities for
years, supported only by the wretched earn
ings that fall to tutors in the mere hope
of honor and dignity known as a regular pro
fesSorship. tutor of this turn Of mind lives
a life of self-denial without many parallels
among men Of his class. He has one room,
takes only unbuttered rolls and coffee for
breakfast, any coffee for luncheon, and
only a slice of meat and a taste of vege-
tables and coffee for dinner He crowds
his daily wants down to the point just this
side of absolute want rarely spending more
than 5000 a year, and wearing, season after
season, the same suit Of Clothes with the
same amazing StVle of hat
When the tutor becomes an extra" pro-
fessor he may afford a suit year, a slice of
meat with his luncheon and two slices with
dinner, but not much more than that,
that he moves into little fiat and puts
brass plate the door. As a full-fedged
professor his ideal of luxury is realized in
an eight-room fat and all he cares to eat
of his favorite dishes, which, with the train
ing he has had in his tutor days, it is safe
to say are never expensive. He never aspires
to keeping a horse taking his family
or himself to the seashore or mountains, that
is, if he be dependent his own resources;
unless professors, who gain their dignity
when young, marry rich wives, and then the
wide, wide world with all it's luxuries yawns
for them as it does for men with rich wives
anywhere else on the globe. For the or
binary professor, studying and walking and
lecturing the glad diversions Of a life
that has reached the acme Of human
tentment.