Page - 341 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

341Disruption of Old Structures He taught partly there and partly at the Wiener Technische Hochschule, until he retired and eventually died in Seitenstetten.95 However limited the evidence we have on some of these figures, it is striking to see both that Hell still had some means left to recruit his collaborators from former Jesuit circles, and the limits of those means. As an ex-Jesuit, he was at least not entirely isolated from his former Jesuit network. But he had difficul- ties retaining these assistants: when the state called them to imperial purposes outside Hell’s sphere of influence, they disappeared from sight. The infrastruc- ture for practical astronomy was still in place, and the very continuation of the Ephemerides is strong testimony that theoretical work was being done at Hell’s observatory in Vienna. But Hell’s work pace was definitely affected negatively, and—above all—as a “nodal astronomer” he had lost much of his momentum and impact. The fate of observatories across the Habsburg lands depended on the preferences of other decision-makers. The Jesuit observatory of Graz was quickly closed, and those of Trnava and Vienna followed in its wake. Instead of growth in the number of observatories, there came a period of decline. The Benedictine order made no considerable expansion in astronomy, either: only a minor “satellite” was added to its prestigious observatory of Kremsmünster in nearby Lambach. New university observatories in Buda and Lviv, both run by ex-Jesuit staff, were neither sufficient to foster a new generation of astrono- mers, nor provide career opportunities to those trained elsewhere. Secular talent thus also hardly found more opportunities in the Vienna- ruled territories after 1773 than earlier. An example is the highly gifted Franz Xaver von Zach, whom we have already met briefly in conjunction with the posterior defamation of Hell’s Venus observation results. Between his fallout with Liesganig in Galicia and his European journey, which eventually managed to secure him sufficient patronage to embark on a career in Germany, von Zach traveled to Vienna in 1781–82 in search of a position, and appears to have visit- ed Hell, to no success.96 Having finally established himself in Gotha and be- come one of Europe’s leading astronomers by the turn of the century, von Zach’s bitterness toward the Jesuits never waned, and in his publications he continuously accused them of devious scholarly practices as well as nepotism designed to keep outsiders out of science.97 95 Information on Güsmann, unless otherwise noted, has been taken from Wurzbach, Biog- raphisches Lexikon (1860) 6:21–22; cf. Schörg, “Die Präsenz der Wiener Universitätsstern- warte,” 99. 96 Brosche, Der Astronom der Herzogin, 31. 97 See Brosche, Der Astronom der Herzogin (with ample references).