The dates have been checked against the lecture catalogs, which are arranged by semester rather than year (so, for instance, two professors might be indicated as holding the same position in any given year, having changed after the summer semester). The ranks normally depended on seniority (years on the faculty), and individuals would move up in an orderly fashion as older professors retired or died; but there were exceptions. Each position had its own set of courses to be taught — e.g., the 1st professor was responsible for Dogmatics — and the pay improved considerably with rank: 450 reichsthaler/year for the 3rd professor, 800 for the second, 1000 for the first; I suspect that the lower ranking professors received no salary at all, and lived from honoraria received from their private lectures, and from whatever pastoral job they held on the side.