Page - 107 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

107Enlightened and Jesuit Networks, and a New Node of Science knowledge had not come to be recognized as integral to the sinews of power until the eighteenth century.53 As such, the creation of the new observatory and the appointment of a qualified, dynamic professional at its helm was part of a more comprehensive endeavor, not confined to the university reform. Vi- enna in the 1750s was swarming with scholarly initiatives, some of them launched and steered directly by the government, others more or less free from its tutelage but encouraged or condoned by it, all of them aiming at helping the Habsburg capital to keep abreast with international developments. The creation of the Oriental Academy and the Theresianum has already been mentioned. In 1754, a Botanical Garden, initially rather a hortus medicus to support the practical training of students of medicine, was also established by Maria Theresa on the advice of Van Swieten, who proudly reported on this move—together with the acquisition of a mineral collection as well as the im- perial sponsorship of von Jacquin’s expedition to the Caribbean—as a proof for the emerging “taste for the sciences” in Vienna to Linnaeus.54 In 1757, the Botanical Garden was attached to the university, and—thanks to reorganiza- tion on more broadly scientific grounds and massive growth in stock—it start- ed to flourish from 1768 under the leadership of the founder of the Viennese botanical school: von Jacquin, now transferred from the mining academy in Banská Štiavnica to the Viennese chair of botany and chemistry. Besides, plans for an academy of sciences in Vienna,55 on the agenda with fluctuating vigor ever since Leibniz (supported enthusiastically by the general and statesman Eugene of Savoy [1663–1736]) first conceived the idea of an imperial academy of sciences there in the 1710s, were renewed in this period, and a project was submitted to von Haugwitz in 1750 by Josef von Petrasch (1714–72). In 1746, von 53 Even then, these remained primarily associated with the growth of military capacity. Cf. William D. Godsey, The Sinews of Habsburg Power: Lower Austria in a Fiscal–Military State 1650–1820 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 54 Klemun and Hühnel, Nikolaus Joseph Jacquin, 51–52. 55 The following summary is mainly based on the very detailed presentation of these plans in Joseph Feil, Versuche zur Gründung einer Akademie der Wissenschaften unter Maria Theresia (Vienna: Gerold, 1860), 7–44. On Leibniz’s academy project, see Günther Ha- mann, “G.W. Leibnizens Plan einer Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften,” in Akten des ii. Internationalen Leibniz-Kongresses, ed. Kurt Müller, Heinrich Schepers, and Wilhelm Totok (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1973), 205–27; Regina Stuber, “Die hannoversche Sukzession von 1714: Leibniz im Wiener Abseits?,” in Leibniz, Caroline und die Folgen der englischen Sukzession, ed. Wenchao Li (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016), 31–50. It must be added that during the same period the idea of an academy as a monastic environ- ment for shared scholarship was widely discussed among the Benedictines of Central Europe. See Thomas Wallnig, Critical Monks: The German Benedictines, 1680–1740 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 91–101.