Page - 339 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

339Disruption of Old Structures in the interval between Weiss’s passing in January 1785 and his own death in May of the same year is unclear. After Weiss’s departure for Buda in 1777, a former assistant of his and an- other ex-Jesuit, Franz Taucher (1738–1820), took over as director at the observa- tory in Trnava. Originally from Cluj, Taucher was educated in Trnava during the flourishing period of the Austrian province. When Sajnovics left for Vardø in 1768–69, Taucher rose to the rank of adjunct and finally director. After Weiss and the rest of the university staff and students had left, Taucher carried on a dreary existence at the former university compounds until the year 1785, when Weiss passed away.85 He then brought with him the remaining instruments from the Trnava observatory to Buda, where he once again followed in the foot- steps of Weiss as director of the university observatory, a position he retained until his retirement in 1806.86 After 1785, the observatory of Trnava was neither equipped nor manned. The team in Buda included an assistant—first to Weiss and then to Taucher—a Hungarian-Croat ex-Jesuit born in Zagreb, Ferenc Xavér Bruna (1745–1817), appointed as professor of mathematics in 1798 and even emerging to the rector’s seat in 1811. The downfall of the Jesuit order thus prevented what might have become a “second wave” of observatory establishments in Habsburg-ruled lands after the “first wave” in the period from the mid-1730s to the mid-1750s. Without the re- sources of the Society of Jesus, it was up to the state or the still surviving orders to fund new institutions. The claim that the status of the ex-Jesuits in astrono- my remained unchallenged is true in the sense that there were no obvious in- heritors or competitors. It is, however, correct only from a strictly internal- scientific point of view. Seen from another angle, the Jesuits had now lost their ability to decide for themselves, since all former colleges, including their obser- vatories, had been taken over by the state. The imperial astronomer himself was never removed, but other Jesuit astronomers became more vulnerable, which may be illustrated with a few further examples. The title page of the Anni 1776 volume (published 1775) of the Ephemerides astronomicae states that this particular issue had been “determined through calculations made under the direction of Maximilian Hell, by the Honorable Freiherr Ignaz Baron von Rain (1737–after 1776) and Franz Güsman (1741–1806), 85 Taucher’s letters to Weiss in Buda from this period (e.g., those dated Trnava, August 29, 1776, May 5, and December 4, 1784) offer dark reading. Witness, for example, his constant fear of a decree ordering the closing down of his observatory; his sentimental account of the celebrations of Saint Loyola, patron saint of the Jesuit order; or his stubborn refusal to give Emperor Joseph ii, sworn enemy of the Jesuits, access to the observatory during his visit to Trnava in 1784. Vargha, Correspondence de Weiss, 1:127–28, 2:210–13. 86 Vargha, Correspondence de Weiss, 2:226–27.