The protagonists: Mathilde Hübner and Ottokar Hanzel

Having passed the entrance examination, in the autumn of 1899 Mathilde Hübner entered the Imperial and Royal Training Institute for Female Teachers at 14 Hegelgasse, in Vienna’s first municipal district, passing her ‘leaving examination with excellent marks’ in 1903. As the historians Monika Bernold and Johanna Gehmacher have established, ‘this qualified her to become a temporary acting teacher in primary schools and a needlework teacher at primary and lower secondary schools’. After a two-year period of practical service she had to appear before a commission and pass an examination qualifying her to teach at primary schools, which entitled her to tenured employment as a teacher. In 1907 Mathilde Hübner also passed the examination qualifying her to teach at lower secondary schools with honours, which led to tenured employment as a lower secondary school teacher.

From a cultured middle-class background, Mathilde Hübner had been interested from a young age in educational issues, in particular the education of girls and women. As a member and from 1910 to 1914 vice-president of the Allgemeiner Österreichischer Frauenverein (General Austrian Women’s Association), the ‘radical wing’ as Gisela Urban calls it, of the first wave of feminism in Austria, she campaigned for women’s access to educational institutions and professional opportunities which had hitherto been closed to them.

She followed this path herself, endeavouring to be allowed to take the Maturitätsprüfung (higher secondary school leaving examination qualifying an individual to enrol for university-level education) in 1906. Having successfully passed this examination she applied to enrol at the Technische Hochschule (polytechnic university) in Vienna in 1907. After being refused several times she was eventually granted the status of guest auditor two years later, the first woman in Austria to attain this status.

Ottokar Hanzel was born in Ebreichsdorf, near Wiener Neustadt in Lower Austria on 4 November 1879, the son of Monika Hanzel (née Hocke) and Bohuslav Hanzel, a dyer and later factory manager. Having attended a higher vocational school and passed the Maturitätsprüfung, he enrolled to study civil engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna in the autumn of 1899.

The Maturitätsprüfung also allowed him to join the Imperial and Royal Army as a one-year volunteer according to the provisions of the compulsory military service order that had been introduced in Austria-Hungary from the end of 1868. On 23 April 1900 he joined the Fortress Artillery Regiment ‘Kaiser No. 1’. Male citizens who like Ottokar Hanzel had completed higher secondary education or its equivalent were allowed to volunteer for one year’s service instead of the normal period of service which lasted three years. However, for many men this meant that they had to complete their service at their own expense; young men without means could only serve this year at public expense upon application and after demonstrating exceptional aptitude.

In 1904 Ottokar Hanzel passed his examination to become a reserve officer with ‘excellent’ marks and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the reserve in 1905.

Translation: Sophie Kidd