Page - 372 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 8372 Over the subsequent years, we find Hell making efforts to support these pro- vincial initiatives with all the weight of his scientific expertise and the institu- tional means still available to him. His correspondence is replete with detailed advice and instructions to Weiss concerning the construction of the university observatory in Buda.100 The 1780 and 1781 volumes of the Ephemerides gave generous space to reporting about the astronomical activity carried out at the new observatories of the Kingdom of Hungary, the “most splendid new obser- vatory of Eger” being especially commended.101 Thus, the reputation of the Ephemerides, once established in cosmopolitan contexts and by cosmopolitan means, was put into the service of a patriotic project of promoting scientific knowledge produced in local, Hungarus spaces. In his correspondence, Hell was quite explicit that this was in direct defi- ance of unpleasant developments in the metropolitan center. In the letter to Bernoulli already cited, complaining about the increasing narrow-mindedness of the Viennese government in supporting the sciences, he came to the conclu- sion that “my Hungary (for I am myself an Ungarus) has a more sound attitude to astronomy, which is held in high esteem among the Ungari,” adding as a demonstration data from the recently published compendium of statistician Ignaz de Luca (1746–99) on “Austrian” men of learning, Das gelehrte Österreich (Learned Austria, 2 vols. [1776, 1778]): “Among these prominent authors, Ungari make up the largest proportion […]; this demonstrates that Hungary has flour- ished, and still flourishes, more than the rest of the hereditary kingdoms with respect to the cultivation of all manner of sciences.”102 Hell may have been disturbed by the fact that de Luca categorized him as an “Austrian” on the grounds that his parents were “both born Germans,”103 and perhaps consoled 100 Hell to Weiss on February 16, 1779; on April 14, 1779 (twice); on June 9, 1780. In Pinzger, Hell Miksa, 2:128–34. 101 Maximilian Hell, “Observationes astronomicae Agriae in Ungaria in observatorio novo Excellentissimi, Illustrissimi ac Reverendissimi Episcopi Agriensis D.D. Caroli, e Comiti- bus Eszterhazi,” Ephemerides 1780 (1779): 32–33; Hell, “Observationes astronomicae in Novo Observatorio Universitatis Regiae Buda in Ungaria, a Cel. D. Francisco Weiss As- tronomo Regio Universitatis,” Ephemerides 1781 (1780): 28–29. During the last decade of Hell’s life, whenever observation reports were published in the Ephemerides at all, Buda was included, though Eger less regularly. In this period, the reporting activity was fully confined to the main observatories in the Habsburg monarchy (besides the ones in Hun- gary, Vienna, Kremsmünster, Prague), with sporadic attention to Scandinavian sites. 102 In the same letter, Hell elaborated in considerable detail on the merits of the bishop of Eger in supporting the cultivation of the sciences, astronomy in particular, in Hungary, as well as the spectacular development of the observatories of Trnava and Buda. Hell to Bernoulli in Berlin, February 15, 1777 (ubb). 103 Ignaz de Luca, Das gelehrte Österreich: Ein Versuch (Vienna: Von Ghelen, 1776–78), 1:176.