Actors

In its beginnings, the university was a legally privileged association of people, the “universitas magistrorum et scholarium” (community of teachers and students). The egalitarian ideal represented in this term was never really fulfilled. Instead, the university was a differentiated organism of individuals and groups who were distinguished by age, graduation, status, gender, affiliation to various university bodies and other criteria. They have influenced the history of the University of Vienna in so many ways in the past 650 years that only select examples can be presented.