Page - 108 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 2108 Petrasch had already founded and for several years successfully managed the Societas Eruditorum Incognitorum in Terris Austriacis (Society of unknown scholars in Austrian lands), the first German scientific society of the Habsburg lands, in Olomouc (Olmütz) in Moravia. Von Petrasch’s very detailed plan in- cluded elaborate statutes, set out principles about the exact composition of the future membership, stressed the need for them to enjoy freedom from cen- sorship, and—naturally—proposed a handsome budget to be covered from the income of the academy’s publishing house. While the plan was deeply in- spired by the famous writer and language reformer Johann Christoph Gott- sched (1700–66), the purview of the academy was not to be confined to lan- guage and literature. On the contrary: von Petrasch criticized all the famous foreign predecessors and counterparts for being too restrictive, and set a com- prehensive agenda “for the improvement of the arts and the sciences, to pro- mote the benefit and the rise of the Austrian hereditary lands.” Significantly, there was a great emphasis on international integration via correspondence and the election of external members. Eventually, von Petrasch’s plan shared the fate of that of Leibniz: it was shelved. While the chief of the Imperial Chamber, Count Johann Joseph Khevenhüller-Metsch (1706–76), had some concerns about its comprehensiveness (stressing the need for distinguishing “useful” sciences from “idle” ones) and the tendency for “freethinking” that von Petrasch’s views on censorship implied to him, the main reason was lack of funds. For the time being, arguably, the main instrument of the internationaliza- tion of Viennese science was the new observatory and the fulfillment by Hell of the parts of the instruction that required him to pursue a commercium litter- arium (learned correspondence) and the publication of an astronomical alma- nac. It is worth considering the Ephemerides, and the development of Hell’s correspondence and personal relationships, in conjunction with his own as- tronomical contributions over the first one and a half decade of his career as imperial and royal astronomer.56 The first volume of the Ephemerides ad meridianum Vindobonensem came out in 1757.57 It continued to Hell’s death and beyond, under his successor von 56 An earlier version of the development of the Ephemerides was presented in László Kontler, “The Uses of Knowledge and the Symbolic Map of the Enlightened Monarchy of the Habsburgs: Maximilian Hell as Imperial and Royal Astronomer (1755–1792),” in Nego- tiating Knowledge in Early Modern Empires: A Decentered View, ed. László Kontler et al. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 79–105. 57 The issue for the year 1757 has no appendix, but appendices were added for every issue from the volume for 1758 onward. As to the year of printing, Hell’s Ephemerides, like any other almanac, was routinely issued before the year it covered. However, the year of