Franz Serafin Exner

This article deals with the philosopher Franz Serafin Exner. For his son see Franz Serafin Exner (physicist) .

Franz Serafin Exner, lithograph by Josef Kriehuber , 1831

Bust of Franz Serafin Exner in the arcade courtyard of the University of Vienna

Franz Serafin Exner (born August 28, 1802 in Vienna , † June 21, 1853 in Padua ) was an Austrian philosopher . He was a professor of philosophy and an important university and school reformer.

biography

Franz Serafin Exner was the only son of the customs officer Josef Exner (1770–1836), who immigrated from Prussian Silesia , and his wife Magdalena, née. Supper from Rauchwarth, daughter of a winemaker from Gumpoldskirchen , Lower Austria . After attending grammar school in Vienna, he studied philosophy from 1818 to 1821 and, from 1822, also law . After studying in Padua in 1823 and doing his doctorate in Vienna in 1827, he was teaching assistant for education and philosophy until 1831. The influence of his teacher Rembold in Vienna made him decide to devote himself entirely to philosophy.

At the age of 29 he was appointed to the full professorship for philosophy in Prague in 1831, where he remained for 17 years - until he was appointed to the Ministry of Education (Department for Education Reform) in Vienna in 1848.

In 1840 Franz Exner married Charlotte Dusensy (1816–1859) in Prague. Apart from one premature deceased, his children include four sons and a daughter:

• the lawyer Adolf Exner (1841-1894),
• the physicist Karl Exner (1842–1914),
• the physicist Franz Serafin Exner (1849–1926),
• the doctor and physiologist Sigmund Exner (1846–1926),
• Marie von Frisch , b. Exner, mother of the zoologist and Nobel Prize winner Karl von Frisch .

During his time in Prague he turned down several offers ( Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen 1842, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn 1845).

As early as 1844, as part of an advisory role, he had been commissioned by the study commission in Vienna to develop a new curriculum and new teaching regulations, and he was a member of the study commission for the reform of higher education in Vienna.

In 1848 he returned to Vienna as a ministerial advisor to the Ministry of Education (Department for Education Reform ), where he played a major role from 1849 to 1851 under Minister Leo Graf von Thun-Hohenstein , who had been his pupil and supporter of his reform ideas in Prague was involved in the reorganization of university operations, which dealt primarily with the freedom of teaching and learning and the connection between research and teaching. In order not to jeopardize the sustainability and dynamism of the projects, he repeatedly turned down the offer of a ministerial post. Already seriously ill, he went to Northern Italy in 1852 as ministerial commissioner for the Lombard-Venetian school system in order to carry out the study reform in those provinces that were then still part of the Austrian Empire. As a result of a rapidly progressing lung disease, he died early in 1853 in Padua. There is a memorial stone dedicated to him in the Renaissance courtyard of the University of Padua .

Educational work

Exner's writings are for the most part philosophical in nature. He was a Herbartian ; It is above all his criticism of Hegel that made him scientifically known beyond the borders of his homeland. Nevertheless, in practical terms, his commitment is a milestone for the reform of the education system in Austria. In his projects he is getting closer to the German study conditions. In close cooperation with the philosopher Hermann Bonitz , whom Exner had called for help from Berlin, he carried out the draft of the organization of grammar schools and secondary schools in Austria . The conversion of six-class high schools into eight-year high schools became the basis for the reorganization of university studies, since the two-year general philosophical studies were now attached to the high school.

Works

• The position of the students at the universities. A speech. Prague 1837.
• About nominalism and realism. Prague 1842.
• About Leibnizens' Universal Science. Prague 1843.
• The psychology of the Hegelian doctrine. 2 booklets, Leipzig 1842 and 1844.
• About the doctrine of the unity of thought and being. Prague 1848.
• With Hermann Bonitz: Organizational design for Austrian grammar schools and secondary schools. Vienna 1849.

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Exner, Franz . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 4th part. Typogr.-literar.-artist publishing house. Establishment (L. C. Zamarski, C. Dittmarsch & Comp.), Vienna 1858, p. 115 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Carl von Prantl :  Exner, Franz . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 447.
• Exner Franz Serafin. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 1, Publishing House of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1957, p. 275 f. (Direct links on p. 275 , p. 276 ).
• Richard Meister :  Exner, Franz Seraphin. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 698 f. ( Digitized version ).

swell

• Deborah R. Coen: Vienna in the age of Uncertainty. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-226-11172-8 .
• Wolfgang Brezinka: Education in Austria. Volume 1: Introduction: School system, universities and pedagogy at the University of Vienna. Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-7001-2908-4 .
• S. Frankfurter (ed.): Count Leo Thun-Hohenstein, Franz Exner and Hermann Bonitz. Hölder, Vienna 1893, DNB 579403599 .