Among the more than 150 monuments in the Arkadenhof of the University of Vienna, whose main building (architect: Heinrich Ferstl) on Vienna’s Ringstrasse was opened in 1884, you can find the who’s who of the country’s intellectual elite. In addition to some monumental monuments, such as Leo Graf von Thun-Hohenstein (Minister of Education from 1849 to 1860), two double monuments are also striking. Both turn out to be monuments to father and son. Father Johann Ritter von Oppolzer (doctor) is iconographically united with his son Theodor Ritter von Oppolzer (astronomer) in white marble, as are the dark busts of Joseph Johann von Littrow and his colleague Karl Ludwig von Littrow (both astronomers). Hardly noticed and little known is the fact that the name Exner can be found three times in the arcade courtyard. Here too there is a father, Franz Serafin Exner (senior; philosopher), and two of his sons, the eldest Adolf Exner (lawyer) and the youngest Franz Serafin Exner (junior; physicist). Their monuments, two marble busts and a metal relief, are only a few meters apart. They were built in 1893, 1896 and 1937.
