Community House.

Understandably, given its ambitious aims and Rudbeck’s efforts to take them even further, this institution often ran at a loss. In many cases it was a great loss—much greater than anyone had expected. When criticized, Rudbeck tried to explain this away as a result of inadequate original estimates, in addition to unforeseen factors that were beyond anyone’s control. The war that broke out between the Dutch and the English in the early 1660s had, for instance, significantly driven up the price of food, especially staples like salt and fish. Others believed the whole thing was a miserable fiasco. Sensing the general will in the chamber, Rudbeck felt that “ ‘the powers that be’ [were] once again trying to take everything from us.”

Knowledgeable insiders were indeed predicting that the Community House would soon suffer a premature death. Besides its economic woes, which were at the center of the debate, Professor Stigzelius attacked it for failing to attract any good students, and bringing instead only a “group of the unlearned.” Rudbeck strongly objected to such fears of flooding the university with illiterates, and countered with a passionate defense that touted the merits of the program. Successes of the Community House, he was pleased to say, were considerable. No less than twenty-one orphans, eight sons of tradesmen, and, remarkably, even seven children of peasants had been able to obtain degrees in this way from the university.

Yet the dreadful economic circumstances persisted, and forced the council to address its future. Rudbeck argued strongly in favor of sustaining the Community House, though by now he was championing a lost cause. Only two other professors joined him, one of them being Olaus Verelius. The Community House was slated to be abolished, gradually reduced in its services until it disappeared completely in 1676.

Such was the story of this odd early experiment with social welfare, well over one hundred years before utopian communities would spring up in Britain, the United States, and elsewhere. It is interesting to note, however, that about 150 years before Marx and Engels started contemplating the plight of the poor and persuading some people to call themselves communists, there was already a Swedish Communitist receiving free food and housing in Uppsala.

Meanwhile, unfortunately for Rudbeck, the university’s income from its properties continued to shrink, falling to about half its bloated early 1660s value. This unpleasant experience gave rise to many grueling decision-making dilemmas, made more taxing as the university had no emergency reserve funds. Many buildings were in need of repair, and stayed that way. Professor Claes Arrhenius, for one, was complaining about how the faculty and students were forced to suffer in this dusty chaos and, worse still, “destroy their clothes.”

With a sense of impending doom, the university urgently called for the creation of a special committee of eight professors to investigate the overall situation at Uppsala University. Arrhenius, a young, ambitious historian, was one professor who scrambled to join this committee.

When he was not appointed, he complained angrily in the council meeting that he had been “passed over as usual.” Although Rudbeck had nothing to do with the election of members, Arrhenius’s stinging remark was, among other things, a reference to Rudbeck’s style of leadership: his cavalier tendency to cut straight through the bureaucratic red tape and bypass the cumbersome official procedures so highly regarded by Arrhenius. At this point Rudbeck could hardly control his fury. He confronted Arrhenius, and demanded to know when, exactly, he had been passed over.

What remaining rules of procedure that were still being respected gave way to a shouting match—a vigorous quarrel that lasted until the chorus of voices was drowned out by Rudbeck’s determined baritone forcing his question again to Arrhenius. No answer. Relentless as ever, Rudbeck asked the question three or four more times. Finally, he burst out, “I hear once again such nonsense that you have been ignored, and when I ask you how, you will not answer me. I shall sing you a different tune… . I have been to Stockholm two times without asking a single penny. You went one time to Ekholm [a village outside Uppsala] and took ten daler compensation.”

This was undoubtedly true, as Rudbeck had made many trips on behalf of the university and had never asked for any compensation, while others seemed to take great efforts to note every possible expenditure. Later, though, Arrhenius would write a long, fawning letter going into ridiculous detail to exonerate himself from Rudbeck’s accusation. He would also explain his silence at that moment in the meeting by claiming that he had not heard the question.

But Rudbeck’s behavior was now working against him. Arrhenius complained that he had been “threatened” when Rudbeck promised to “sing [him] a different tune.” Professors rallied to Arrhenius’s side, asking what right Rudbeck had to treat a colleague in that way. At the very next meeting, too, the council appointed Arrhenius to the new committee. Rudbeck’s outspoken opposition, not to mention his unpredictable outbursts, was making him a dangerous man. And if the new committee had anything to say, he would be an endangered man as well.

THEIR PERFECT OPPORTUNITY would come the very next month. In late June 1670, the university’s chancellor, Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, was planning a visit to Uppsala to celebrate an official occasion. Hours before his arrival, Stigzelius hustled together enough members of the council to hold a secret meeting. After they carefully drafted a list of grievances, Stigzelius rushed them to the chancellor the very day he arrived in town. Rudbeck’s old nemesis was no longer professor of theology—in February of that year, Lars Stigzelius had been consecrated the new archbishop of Sweden.

Briefed about the situation, De la Gardie opened the meeting of the council the next day. The success of the professors’ ambush is made all too clear by the minutes of the meeting. After hearing some complaints, the chancellor spoke out in an unmistakable reference to Rudbeck: “It is beautiful that one builds; however, it is best if the resources allow for what one builds.” In other words, ratio est, pecunia deest: “reason is there, money is not.”

If we listen to these forceful detractors, the turmoil of the 1660s happened as a result of Rudbeck’s activities alone. There was little understanding, or willingness to consider, any subtle nuances of the matter. How, for instance, the confident and flourishing 1650s had raised expectations beyond realistic capacities; how authorities had swelled the ranks of the university with many new positions—Queen Christina tending to make her appointments to the university first, and inquiring about available funds afterwards, if at all. Other leaders, such as the university chancellor, had also seemed unconcerned about mundane matters like budgets when there was an opportunity for expansion.

Competing with the waves of professors hired with little secure means of adequately funding the positions, Uppsala University’s treasurer Bo Chruzelii was busy pursuing his own line of recklessness. Sloppy accounting and embezzlement of funds had combined, by the time of his death in 1653, to put the university in a potentially hazardous situation that would not easily bear all the extra appointments. So, when the crash came, it was completely unexpected, and the university was totally unprepared.

Now, in the summer of 1670, it was obvious what the problems were, or rather who the problem was. It was also painfully clear that no one would come to Rudbeck’s support. Some colleagues tried to wiggle out of any association, while others sat in silence. To Rudbeck’s dismay, even the chancellor appeared to be under their influence. The talented professor who had offered “blood and sweat” for his university now stood completely alone, both in his defense and in his defeat.

The very next week, July 4, 1670, Rudbeck showed up at the council meeting with a long letter. Despite protests from the council members, Rudbeck obtained permission to read it. Breaking down the charges point by point, he answered every accusation with a detailed account that had not been possible before. The anatomy theater, the botanical garden, the exercise house, the Community House—Rudbeck showed that he had in fact never carried out a single project that did not have the authorization of the council, the chancellor, or the Crown.

The professors were also reminded of what many had conveniently forgotten. In many of those projects, Rudbeck had donated his time, his talent, and indeed much of the materials for their completion. The university had not needed to hire an architect or an on-site manager for the anatomy theater, for instance, because Rudbeck had drafted the designs himself and then led the construction free of charge. The accusation of mismanagement was like a thrust to the heart. Virtually the same pattern applied to many other large projects as well as many other discrete contributions: the donations of musical instruments, the business trips to Stockholm, the seven hundred letters he had written—all of this he had done for the university he loved so dearly. In everything, Rudbeck had neither requested nor received a single Swedish ore.

After delivering this thundering statement, Olof Rudbeck demanded to be released from his administrative duties.

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