The Badge of Honor of the University of Vienna was established during the First Republic as an award for personalities who gave the university “excellent material support”. The reason for the foundation of this form of honor was the emergency situation of the university after the First World War and the massive aid that the university received from Austria and abroad after the end of the war.
On June 9, 1921, the Academic Senate's Decoration Committee decided to award the newly established Badge of Honor to eight internationally known personalities for the first time, including the Argentinian President Hipólito Yrigoyen, the later American President Herbert Hoover and the anthropologist Franz Boas from New York.
