Page - 71 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

71The Making of a Jesuit Astronomer in the Habsburg Provinces (or shortly the Pazmaneum), a seminary established in 1623 to train Catholic priests and still in the management of the Society of Jesus.100 A different kind of pedagogical experience creates, remarkably, a bridge be- tween Hell’s descent from the mining region and a family of widely recognized mining experts and his formation in the Habsburg capital at the time of the first wave of “enlightened” reforms pursued by the government. According to some accounts, he came in contact with the aristocratic Königsegg family in the mid-1740s (either as an upper-grade philosophy student in Vienna, or while in Levoča), and he even offered instruction in mathematics and Mark- scheidekunst (mine metrology) to a young member of the family destined for a career (probably in the mining chamber) in Banská Štiavnica.101 After his re- turn to Vienna in late 1747, Hell is said to have received several assignments from “Count Königsegg.” The Königsegg count in point can be no other than Karl Ferdinand (1696–1759), who after an initial career in the Catholic Church laid down his cassock and embarked on a quite spectacular period of diplo- matic service, culminating in the position of vice-president of the Council of the Austrian Netherlands. In 1748, shortly after his return to Vienna, he was appointed president of the Münz- und Bergwesens-Directions-Hof- Collegiums, a newly created authority to supervise the affairs of mints and mines, sep- arated from the Imperial Court Chamber (besides being placed at the helm of the court committee for the southeastern regions of the Banat and Illyria).102 These appointments show that Königsegg, characterized by contemporaries 100 Lukács, Catalogi personarum, 8:526, 9:44. 101 [Von Triesnecker], Lebenslauf, 1; “Maximilian Hell,” in Schlichtegroll, Nekrolog, 284–85; Carl Ludwig Littrow, P. Hell’s Reise nach Wardoe bei Lappland und seine Beobachtung des Venus-Durchganges im Jahre 1769: Aus den aufgefundenen Tagebüchern geschöpft und mit Erläuterungen begleitet (Vienna: Gerold, 1835), 4; Pinzger, Hell Miksa, 1:14. The latter two are obviously based on the former ones. 102 Gerhard Seewann, “Königsegg-Erps, Karl Ferdinand Graf,” in Biographisches Lexikon zur Geschichte Südosteuropas, ed. Mathias Bernath and Felix von Schroeder (Munich: Olden- bourg, 1976), 2:453–54. For the identification of Königsegg as Hell’s contact, see Ansgar Rabenalt, “Astronomische Forschung im 18. Jahrhundert in Kremsmünster: Zu den ersten Berechnungen der Bahn des Uranus nach dem Briefwechsel zwischen Placidus Fixlmill- ner O.S.B. and Maximilian Hell S.J. (1771–1790),” Mitteilungen des Oberösterreichischen Landesarchivs 15 (1986): 93–216, here 109. On the context of the general overhaul of the administrative system during the first years of Maria Theresa, see Klaas van Gelder, “Net- works, Agency, and Policy: A New Approach to Maria Theresa’s Advisors during the War of the Austrian Succession,” in Maria Theresia? Neue Perspektiven Der Forschung, ed. Thomas Wallnig, Elisabeth Lobenwein, and Franz-Stefan Seitschek, Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert: Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunderts 32 (Bo - chum: Dr. Dieter Winkler Verlag, 2017), 151–70.