SOME PREVIOUSLY RELEVANT ASPECTS OF ACADEMIC LIFE: VENIA LEGENDI AND THE STATUS OF A PRIVATE DOCENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LATVIA (1919–1944)

The article presents the results of the research on venia legendi (the right to deliver lectures at the university) and the status of private docent at the University of Latvia (UL) until 1944. The term «private docent» was used worldwide in the 18th century; it is still in use in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In Latvia, it was introduced in the 1860s at the first higher education institution established in the current territory of Latvia – Riga Polytechnicum. The terms «private docent» and «venia legendi» were used in Latvia until the end of World War II. In the present study, the author explains how these terms were used at the UL during the interwar period and during World War II considering the empirical data obtained in the course of research of archival documents and library collections. The article provides an overview of the private docents working at the UL from 1919 to 1944 and their activities in this period.


Introduction
In his research into the history of higher education in Latvia, the author has focused on the comprehensive study of academic traditions. Their origins can be traced back to the world of academia, however, the concept of «venia legendi», or the right to deliver lectures at a university, and the status of a private docent, are intrinsically connected with the development of the academic traditions of the European cultural space. These traditions were greatly influenced by the order established in the German universities, which also significantly affected the institutional framework of higher education in the Russian Empire and also in Latvia, including the oldest university in Latvia -Riga Polytechnicum, which was established in 1862 and is now known as Riga Technical University. The study on the emergence of the concept of venia legendi and the position of the private docent in the world and their introduction and use at Riga Polytechnicum (1862-1896) was published in the 5th issue of the journal «History of Engineering Sciences and Institutions of Higher Education» in 2021 [1]. Both these terms were commonly used in Latvia until the end of World War II. Given that these terms are often misunderstood, the author has studied their use at the UL (until 1923the Latvian Higher School (LHS); UL -1923UL - -19401941-1942; the State University of Latvia (SUL) -1940-1941; the University of Riga -1942Riga - -1944. It may be argued that a dedicated model of the institution of the private docent was developed at the UL. At present in Latvia, the title «private docent» and the term «venia legendi» are used only with the reference to the activities and traditions of higher education institutions in the 19th and 20th centuries, and they are considered historical artifacts. Only a few European countries (Austria, Germany, and Switzerland) have sustained these traditions and private docents still make a real group of academic staff.

Private Docents at the University of Latvia: Establishment and Further Development of the Institution of Private Docents
The idea that private docents would be needed at the newly established national university was expressed at the meeting of the Council of the Latvian Higher School on 2 September 1919, when it was decided to single out several categories of academic staff, but no decision was made at that time [2]. In academic year 1919/1920, only Pēteris Sniķers (1875-1944) (Faculty of Medicine) was considered private docent; he had obtained this status at the University of Tartu in 1917 and had not yet begun his academic career [3]. It was not until the spring of 1920 that the issue of attracting academic staff to the university on a freelance basis was brought up again regarding the persons receiving a full salary at another employer [4]. At the initiative of the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine Roberts Krimbergs (1874-1941), on 4 October 1920, the Deans' Council discussed the possibility of entrusting delivery of some study courses to private docents who would receive remuneration without taking positions of the heads of departments. In turn, Kārlis Kundziņš (1883Kundziņš ( -1967 suggested introducing a clause that this status should necessarily imply the granting of venia legendi. At the next meeting on 11 October, it was additionally stipulated that candidates should deliver two demonstration lectures [5; pp. 85-89]. The first private docents were elected in 1920/1921, in addition, a number of candidates who had been nominated by the faculty for the position of private docents (such as Philipp Schweinfurt , an art historian) were approved by the Council of the LHS as assistant professors. It should be emphasized that until the spring of 1923, most persons who had acquired the right of a private docent were freelance academic staff who taught only a few hours a week.
In Changes in the practice of employing private docents were initiated by Rector (1923Rector ( -1925 Jānis Ruberts  at the meeting of the Deans' Council on 1 October 1923. J. Ruberts suggested paying more attention to the institution of private docents in connection with assistants -«the procedure would be as follows: an assistant who has been declared worthy of promotion should submit an article pro venia legendi to the faculty. If the faculty accepts the article, the assistant will be awarded the title of a private docent after conducting one or two demonstration lectures (one on a topic of their choice, the other -on the topic assigned by the faculty at its own discretion). [..] If the candidate demonstrates the required pedagogical abilities, then, when the vacancy opens, after a certain period one can be elected an assistant professor, and then professor» [7; pp. 118-119]. A few weeks later, Alfrēds Petrikalns (1887-1948), a lecturer and assistant at the Faculty of Chemistry, was appointed a private docent by the University Council. In the course of discussion of such a procedure for nominating private docents at the University Council in early 1924, a representative of the Faculty of Mechanics supported it in principle with regard to the lecturers delivering the theoretical courses and the promotion of existing assistants, but at the same time emphasized that the candidates with the long-term practical experience in the respective industry should have been elected to deliver specialised courses [8; pp. 179-184].
The first report on the UL activities, which covered five academic years (until the end of academic year 1923/1924), contained the regulations on the habilitation procedure of only two faculties (Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and Faculty of Mechanics), while the requirements for obtaining a doctorate were laid down for most faculties, although application of these requirements was less relevant than the granting of the status of a private docent. The regulations of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences emphasized that the habilitation paper must «demonstrate the inherent features of independent research» and present «new research results or application of new methods», therefore, neither surveys or reviews of the previous works nor textbooks could be submitted unless they contained the original author's data. In these regulations, it was specified that the topics of both demonstration lectures should have been suggested by the applicant, whereas the faculty would inform the applicant which of them would be delivered 15 minutes before the meeting. Moreover, if the lecture had been considered not sufficiently good, the applicant should have repeatedly proposed two new topics [9; pp. 221-261].
The Faculty of Mechanics required the habilitation paper be independent in nature, allowing it to be a fully developed project in case the candidate was to be elected to deliver technical subjects. In this case, however, the candidate should have met an additional condition for obtaining the status of a private docent -to have at least five years of successful work experience in the field of specialisation. No formal examinations were required, but an option for the selection board to examine the candidates in the form of a colloquium was reserved [9; pp. 83-119]. The report of the Faculty of Medicine, on the other hand, comprised a brief explanation that only the persons holding Dr. med. degree could have obtained the status of a private docent. The candidates had to submit their research papers for evaluation (rather than a specific habilitation paper) and deliver two demonstration lectures [9; pp. 176-209].
Prior to the adoption of the joint regulation, many cases involving the awarding of the title of a private docent had to be considered individually.   [23][24][25][26][27].
Article 3 of the Regulation stipulates that the habilitation paper must demonstrate the features of an independent research (in technical disciplines, a scientific and technical project or a work of art accompanied by a theoretical explanation may also be recognized as pro venia legendi). A committee consisting of three persons should have been established to evaluate the paper submitted to the faculty and it should have provided its opinion on the applicant within three months (Article 4). After getting acquainted with the Committee's report, the Faculty Council should have voted whether the work could be considered sufficient pro venia legendi (Article 5), thus, the viva voce of the thesis (as opposed to the doctoral dissertation) was not envisaged. In case of a positive vote, the faculty determined the time and topic of the applicant's demonstration lecture (Article 6), which should have taken place within two weeks. The lecture was supposed to last 45 minutes, after that the participants in the lecture could ask questions about both the lecture and the habilitation paper (Article 7). If the Faculty Council deemed it necessary, it could request the applicant to deliver the second lecture on the topic of their choice at the next meeting. The decision on granting the right to the title of the private docent was made by the faculty by secret ballot by a simple majority of votes.
Although most private docents delivered non-compulsory study courses, in many cases, due to the excessive workload of the senior lecturers of the faculty, they were also asked to teach important basic courses that made an essential core of the entire study process. By analogy with the Russian and German universities, private docents of the UL were not considered full-fledged members of the faculty, since only full-time professors and assistant professors were considered the members of permanent staff [10; pp. 196-201]. However, the Constitution of the UL provided for the representation of freelance lecturers (including private docents) both at the University Council (one person from all freelance professors, assistant professors, private docents and lecturers) and at the faculty councils (one delegate from freelance lecturers and assistants, if the total number was from 1 to 10 and two if their number exceeded 10) [6].
Remuneration for the academic work performed by the private docents to a large extent depended on the financial capacity of the university, therefore, it decreased sharply during the economic crisis (from 1929 to 1933). On the other hand, when the economic situation in the country improved, 18 000 lats of the university budget were allocated for covering the expenses of the study courses delivered by the private docents in academic year 1936/1937. The money was supposed to be distributed to the faculties in accordance with the following principles -«To cover expenses of the compulsory and elective courses, but in some cases also of the non-compulsory courses, the expediency of which is sufficiently motivated. Specific proposals shall be considered at the beginning of the following semester based on the same allocation principle, so that each faculty would be able to fund one such course delivered by the private docent, determining the amount of remuneration according to the rates of assistant professors or assistants depending on the material condition of the candidate [11; pp. 33-39].
At the end of 1939, when the amount of available funds decreased due to World War II, it was decided to stop paying compensation for the optional courses delivered by the private docents in both semesters of 1940. The courses delivered by the psychiatrist Verners Kraulis  and Fricis Blumbahs (1864-1949) (see Table 1; pp. [19][20][21], for whom the money he earned at the university was an essential source of subsistence, were an exception [12; pp. 134-141].   The traditions established during the period of the Russian Empire still influenced the awarding of the status of the private docent at various faculties, therefore, at several, i. e. the «old» faculties of the university (especially the Faculty of Philology and Philosophy and the Faculty of National Economics and Law), many difficult examinations were envisioned for the candidates for habilitation, which were at least partially comparable to the examinations of Master's degree candidates. Such traditions were less strictly observed at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, where the main attention was paid to the novelty of the submitted work, as well as at the technical faculties. The Faculty of Medicine, on the other hand, adhered to the same procedure as in the Tsarist times, requesting that only persons holding a doctoral degree who had previously passed difficult and prolonged examinations could have become private docents [13].
The Faculty of National Economics and Law decided that starting from academic year 1938/1939, the title of the private docent would be awarded only to the applicants who both had submitted a paper pro venia legendi and passed the oral doctoral examinations, while persons who had already passed the examinations required for habilitation would not be required to repeat them before obtaining a doctoral degree [11; pp. 208-217]. This decision eliminated the need for double examinations, but created a situation when the habilitation paper accepted by the faculty alone did not allow the applicant to become a private docent. Therefore, the number of habilitation theses accepted at this faculty exceeded the number of persons who obtained the status of the private docent [14].
For a long time, the UL did not have a procedure for storing pro venia legendi papers, many of which were handwritten in some copies, at the library making them available to all interested parties. By analogy with the requirements for doctoral dissertations of 1937 [15], on the initiative of the Rector, the University Council ruled on 26 April 1939 that the habilitation theses should be submitted in four copies, one of which should have remained at the faculty library (the other three should have been sent to the reviewers), and it should have been available at the Faculty Registry Office 14 days before the decision of the faculty council [12; pp. 37-43].
From the point of view of spelling, the question how to properly abbreviate the long word «private docent» in the press or encyclopaedic publications was discussed several times in the linguistic circles.
Professor Jānis Endzelīns pointed out that the common abbreviation priv. doc. was misleading from a linguistic point of view, as it suggests that the full form consists of two words rather than a compound word (in Latvian) [16]. He recommended using privdoc. or priv.-doc., however, from the point of view of the modern language practice, this type of hyphenation is not desirable, therefore, privdoc. or even privātdoc. (in Latvian) should be used.

Dynamics of the Number of Private Docents and Groups
Although the title of the persons who had acquired the right for venia legendi was the same, the group of persons holding this title was quite heterogeneous both in terms of their real academic workload and remuneration, and in terms of legal ties with the university. According to their type of activity, it has already been proposed to classify private docents into two groups [13]: 1) classical private docents (they could be considered real freelance lecturers, but such a designation would be inaccurate, because in addition to these private docents there were some freelance professors and assistant professors, as well as lecturers, assistants and instructors), who worked in other, often well-paid places. Their only connection with the university was the fact that they were delivering certain (more often elective) lecture courses, so they corresponded most closely to the private docents of the German or Russian Empire by the nature of their activities; 2) private docents, who at the time of habilitation were also staff assistants and, among other duties, had acquired the right to deliver an elective lecture course in their specialty. Habilitation procedure was the only aspect these persons had in common with classical private docents, as their main place of work was university. In order not to confuse them with the first group, both components should be mentioned in the description of their academic status, such as private docent and Senior Assistant Eduards Rencis (1898-1962). If a vacancy of a senior lecturer opened, these persons were most often the main candidates for the position of an assistant professor or professor.
Sometimes the status of a private docent could change, most often if the person resigned from the position of an assistant, preserving the rights of a private docent, therefore the affiliation to one or another group can be determined more precisely by the relationship with the university at the time of habilitation. In relative terms, most private docents in the classical understanding of the term worked at the faculties (Philology and Philosophy, Theology), where the list of staff provided for a very small number of assistants. At the Faculty of Medicine, on the other hand, a part of the classical private docents were its former assistants, who had temporarily stopped working at the university after obtaining a doctoral degree. At the technical faculties, there were relatively few private docents who were involved in teaching only certain study courses for a long time. Among them were Jānis Leimanis The distribution of all UL private docents according to their affiliation with the faculty and compliance with one of the groups is summarized in Table 2 (pp. [25][26][27], which contains information on 259 persons. The table presents information on the persons who acquired this status after the spring of 1939 and about whom no information can be found in the twentieth anniversary edition of the UL. It can be seen that this number is significantly higher than the number of persons who acquired venia legendi (177) indicated by L. Adamovičs by the spring of 1939 [17]. In many cases, the institute of private docent and the related habilitation were considered as a logical next stage after the scholarship holder was allowed to remain at the faculty to start scientific work [18]. Not all faculties considered the selection of scholarship holders to be the most successful model, therefore, at the Faculty of Engineering and Agriculture, the first step to academic work was the status of a sub-assistant at a certain department already during their studies. As Professor Gustavs Klaustiņš (1880Klaustiņš ( -1937 emphasized in the discussions of the second half of the 1930s, there was no shortage of promising lecturers in the technical fields, there was a typical professional advancement of the teaching staff from a sub-assistant to an assistant, then a senior assistant and a private docent to an assistant professor or professor [19].
In contrast, at the faculties, including the Faculty of National Economics and Law and the Faculty of Philology and Philosophy, where there were already few assistantships on the staff lists, scholarships were more widely used. The uncertainty of positions and careers of the private docents as described by Max Weber was characterised in the student press of academic year 1940/1941, where the conversation of the head of the department with his student was reported [20], «You are now receiving the Morberg Foundation scholarship .., but what will you do when you have obtained the title of the private docent and lose the right to receive a scholarship?». An economist Benjamiņš Treijs (1914Treijs ( -2002 also reflected upon this episode, describing it as part of his personal experience in some other words [21].
Thus, it can be stated with certainty that the model established by the UL, which was based on the gradual advancement of assistants to the position of private docents, was quite different from the prevailing order in the German or Russian universities, where most representatives of this group of university staff really worked only on the freelance basis. Respectively, they were classical private docents. Such differences can be explained both by the material difficulties of the society after World War I, which prevented the formation of a large group of classical private docents, with the exception of gymnasium teachers, who delivered individual courses at the Faculty of Philology and Philosophy and the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, and a small number of experienced doctors holding a doctorate, and with limited career opportunities in a small country with one university.
In addition to the two groups of private docents already discussed, Table 2 (pp. [25][26][27] highlights the third group, which the author proposes to call «titular (or special) private docents». It was formed by quite different persons in terms of age, academic experience and involvement in the study work at the UL, who had a common title of a private docent and were united by a special status related to certain privileges, as well as different election and remuneration procedures. Most of these titles had been awarded at the stage of university formation, but in some cases they were granted also later, most often when a new department had to be established or a field of study had to be strengthened with the previously unexplored field of science. A total of 15 people can be included in this group, most of whom were affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine and National Economics and Law. It is worth discussing this group in more detail, so its comprehensive description can be found in Table 1 (pp. [19][20][21]. Analysing the number of private docents, two aspects should be clearly distinguished, namely, how many active private docents worked at the university in each academic year, distinguishing private docents who were also staff assistants from others, and how many persons had acquired this status in the given academic year. Answering the first question, the news in the anniversary editions of the UL may be analysed, which indicate that the number of private docents working at the same time was increasing: from 10 (academic year 1920/1921) to 37 (academic year 1938/1939), steadily exceeding 30 throughout 1930s [17]. On the other hand, in the 1920s, the status of the private docent was acquired by an average of about 10 people, but in the 1930s, it increased to 15, reaching the highest number (23) in academic year 1938/1939. Active changes were also happening in academic year 1939/1940, when after emigration of the Baltic-Germans, several faculties had to significantly reorganize their curricula and attract new lecturers.
Another interesting issue is the persons who had applied for the status of the private docent but did not obtain it. Due to the limited number of surviving minutes of the meetings of the faculty councils (preferably the Faculty of Philology and Philosophy, Medicine, National Economics and Law, as well as the Faculty of Mechanics), it is difficult to get a comprehensive picture of the habilitation papers rejected by reviewers at the application stage. The Faculty of National Economics and Law seems to have been the most severe, as its minutes from 16 February 1928 to 23 February 1939 [22] contain information on three habilitation papers in economics and nine in law that were rejected as non-compliant. Taking into account that in this period 13 persons (six at the Department of National Economics, seven at the Department of Law) became private docents and nine more pro venia legendi papers were accepted, but the process of habilitation of applicants had not been completed yet, the proportion of rejected works was very high. In comparison, at a similar stage, 10 persons obtained the status of the private docent at the Faculty of Philology and Philosophy and one   habilitation was rejected [23], while at the Faculty of Mechanics -18 papers were accepted and four were rejected [24].
In some cases, when the habilitation paper was accepted, demonstration lectures were positively evaluated and elections were held at the faculty council, the candidate for the status of a private docent was not approved by the University Council. Thus, Teodors Hermanovskis (1883-1964), a candidate who applied for delivery of the course on traffic policy at the Faculty of Engineering, was not elected in 1921. Jānis Straubergs (1886Straubergs ( -1952, who was supposed to deliver an elective course «Aviation», was not elected by the Faculty of Mechanics in 1926. The voting for the status of the private docent for the engineering mathematician Nikolajs Bomovskis (1880-1942) was negative at the University Council in both the spring and autumn of 1929, he only obtained this status at the third attempt in the autumn of 1932.

UL Private Docents after the Loss of State Independence
In the autumn of 1940, when the university was reorganized to adapt to the Soviet system, the status of all remaining private docents was changed. In the absence of opportunities to be an assistant and a senior assistant professor at the same time, most of the academic staff with this status were appointed as assistant professors or acting assistant professors from 1 October 1940. On the other hand, the question of the adequacy of habilitation papers and the possible individual compliance with the degree system of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was not raised at that time.
After the change of occupation power in the summer of 1941, all transfers in the previous academic year were revoked and the situation as of the spring of 1940 was restored. In order to expand the range of lecturers, several lecturers from the Faculty of Philology and Philosophy and the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences were approved as private docents in the autumn of 1941, they were joined by several doctors in 1942 (see notes in Table 2, pp. [25][26][27]. Viktors Freijs  and Alfreds Jumiķis , two lecturers of the Faculty of Engineering, obtained the title of the private docent in the spring of 1942. In 1943, Jānis Muižnieks (1911-1990), a specialist in aviation engines at the Faculty of Mechanics, and Voldemārs Štāls (1889-1979) at the Faculty of Chemistry obtained the status of the private docent. In 1944, Laimonis Bajārs  and Jānis Rutmanis (1894-1978) obtained the status of the private docent at the Faculty of Architecture. It is believed that the small number of representatives of technical faculties who became private docents during the German occupation (six out of 27 in total) was due to the intensive habilitation of representatives of these fields in the late 1930s, so there was a lack of the candidates capable to develop more comprehensive papers.
During the war, the number of young private docents decreased every year due to wartime difficulties and uncertainties about the future of several research areas (such as the Latvian law or history), as well as the objections of the occupation authorities against certain candidates. As the then Vice-Rector (1940) of the UL Kārlis Straubergs (1890Straubergs ( -1962 wrote in his memoirs, it was planned to deprive the university of the right to grant habilitation [25], therefore, in the last two academic years this case had to be discussed separately at the Dean's Council. In order not to differ significantly from the German universities, the issue whether the doctoral degree or at least a doctoral examination should have been required from all applicants was discussed again, however, in most cases it was decided to stick to the procedure that was in place at that time. The fate of the private docents who remained in their homeland and their academic activities after the second Soviet occupation is a topic worth of special research. At least in some cases, for example, the habilitation papers of a physicist Ludvigs Jansons ) and a mathematician Nikolajs Brāzma  became the basis for the USSR Supreme Attestation Commission to award them both the degree of the Candidate of Science and the scientific title of the Assistant Professor.

Evaluation of the UL Institution of Private Docents
In the publications on the history of the UL, the issue of the institution of the private docent is mostly discussed in connection with the training of new lecturers. Jānis Hugo Inveiss (1896Inveiss ( -1981 acknowledged that the procedure for training lecturers established by the UL, which provided for habilitation and the acquisition of the right for the title of a private docent, is one of the biggest advantages of a democratically managed (self-regulating) university compared to the administrative bureaucratic universities of the USA [26]. It can be stated that he saw a successful synthesis of the career models of the German and American lecturers described by M. Weber in the UL practice ( J. H. Inveiss underwent habilitation at the Faculty of Mechanics of the UL in the spring of 1940 after obtaining a doctorate). Edgars Dunsdorfs (1904Dunsdorfs ( -2002 also acknowledged that the requirements of the UL for new teachers were generally stricter than in the Anglo-Saxon countries [27]. Nikolajs Balabkins also wrote about the acquisition of venia legendi as an essential element of the European higher education system, considering   its absence to be a significant shortcoming in the higher education institutions of the USA [28]. At the end of his life, Benjamiņš Treijs (1914Treijs ( -2002 also praised the institution of the private docents as a logical stage on the way to an academic career. He had the opportunity to compare the advantages and disadvantages of the UL and the Soviet system [29]. Thus, it can be assumed that the model of the institution of the private docent in Latvia in the interwar period was appropriate for its time and sufficiently effective to ensure the change of the academic staff.

Conclusions
In the interwar period, the UL developed a peculiar model of the institution of the private docents, which at many faculties was created as a way for professional advancement for the junior academic staff.
Most of the private docents at the UL were junior members of academic staff, in contrast to the prevailing principles of employing private docents at the German and Russian universities, which focused on attracting persons working outside the university to academic work.