Page - 347 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

347Coping with Enlightenments (though not always practiced) in the Republic of Letters. More pragmatically and likely, it may have been intended as an “early warning” that, just as a de- cade earlier, Hell would not welcome any attempt by the government to appoint academicians at will: “From this, it is clear why sovereigns who estab- lished a learned society in their states and took it in their high protection, themselves made it a rule not to harm the free election of members, and re- frained from nominating any new member without the voluntary consent of the society.”10 Finally, the repeated emphasis on the personal bond and esprit de corps in the proposal—“friend,” “friendship” appears no fewer than eight times in the three paragraphs explaining what a scientific society is—also pre- pares the ground for Hell’s own recruitment strategy, targeting kindred spirits. Half of the proposed salaried members (initially, there were to be only six of them—in the longer run, Hell planned three in each of the seven classes, plus two secretaries and a treasurer) were ex-Jesuits: besides Hell himself, Scherffer and Pál Makó (1723–93), a professor of mathematics and philosophy from the Theresianum. The most prominent of the non-Jesuits was the professor of chemistry and botany and director of the Viennese botanical gardens, von Jac- quin. The team also included the court mathematician, Joseph Nagel (1717–95), and the military engineer and general Leopold Freiherr von Unterbergen (1736–1819). Hell devised a complex financial model to support the academy. Some of the money was to emerge from the so-called Jesuit fund (Jesuitenfond) created from the income of the confiscated Jesuit property, and a portion of the profit from the sales of the newspaper Wienerisches Diarium was also to be turned to the noble end. Additional money was promised by the Kingdom of Hungary, on condition that one-third of the members of the academy were to be Hun- garians and half of these Protestants. However, Hell hoped to raise the bulk of the funding from what would have amounted to a complete reform of the pro- duction and dissemination of calendars. Calendars were big business in the period, provided one had the means of buying from the state a privilege to is- sue one and having it renewed at ten-year intervals. Hell now proposed the elimination of the existing system, and the establishment of a Calender- Administrations-Collegium out of the members of the academy, with himself as the collegium’s director. This would have ensured expert overseeing of the contents of the calendars—so that instead of a store of idle telltale and super- stitious beliefs, they could become a means of disseminating useful knowl- edge, a goal that resonates with the instruction for the imperial and royal astronomer issued nearly two decades earlier. Besides, through the collection 10 Lengyel and Tüskés, Learned Societies, 68.