Page - 348 - in Der griechisch-orientalische Religionsfonds der Bukowina 1783–1949 - Kontinuitäten und Brüche einer prägenden Institution des Josephinismus

348 Die Institution: Struktur & Werte Bewusstseins sowie der Vorstellung von einer gewissen Entscheidungs- und Handlungs- freiheit zusammen. Im Hinblick auf Ordnung und Orientierung waren daher sowohl die Existenz der Institution Religionsfonds als auch ihre Kontinuität auf das Engste über ein funktionierendes Zusammenspiel auf annähernd gleicher Höhe mit der Entwicklung des Staates verknüpft. The Bukovina Religious Fund: continuity of an institution? The study of the Bukovina Greek-Oriental Religious Fund put the methodological focus of its analysis (starting from the fundamental ideas of Blänkner and Rehberg on the study of institutions) on three levels of observation : institutionalisation, institution and actors, as well as institutional mechanisms. Time had to be factored in and was mapped in the form of the institutional change, which for the Religions Fund, certainly from the mid-19th century, occurred against the tensions between dominant political ideas of the supranational/whole-empire and the national/irredentist side. Four substantively linked theses developed from this situation : about the formation of the Religious Fund and its task, about the institutional change and the national issues, about institutional change and regional modernisation, and about the persistence of institutional structures and their longue durée. It should be noted that it has not always been possible or helpful to attempt a strict separation between the Religious Fund as a concrete institution and the Greek-Oriental Church of the Bukovina. There was, for instance, an institutional and personal overlap in the bishop, individual members of the consistory and in the real agenda of the Fund as well as in the Church bodies who controlled and influenced it. In some cases the boundaries between the two institutions are thus blurred and could not always be drawn precisely. The final discussion aims to juxtapose the insights won in the form of a summarising overview. This is not to repeat summaries and details of the individual sections, but rather to respond to the main points of the theses listed at the beginning. For historical studies, the institutionalisation process of the Bukovina Religious Fund, i.e. the gradual transition from an initially mainly standardising organisation into an institution that formed the space and the society of the area, is closely linked, in tem- poral terms, with the measurable success of enlightened reform measures introduced by Joseph  II.8 Sociological research, in contrast, attributes legitimacy to an existing in- stitution mainly on the basis of its temporal stability and sometimes also on its sense of 8 Merker 1989, Aufklärung, 13 ; recently Bendel & Spannenberger 2015, Aufklärung. Open Access © 2020 by BÖHLAU VERLAG GMBH & CO.KG, WIEN