Page - 20 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

20 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 place they would have in universities, and what the function of universi- ties would be were raised several times, leading to a variety of solutions. Some of the most influential changes were the reforms of 1849, when the new Ministry of Religion and Education not only reformed the universities but also rewrote their histories.3 The connection between politics and his- tory writing was particularly evident in 1853, as the conservative faction of the Habsburg Parliament pilloried the liberal reforms, while historians and publicists allied with the ministry crafted a gloomy picture of pre-1848 academic misery. Many later historians, up to the present day, have accepted this picture rather uncritically, repeating the story of how Count Leo Thun- Hohenstein triggered the takeoff of higher education immediately after the revolution of 1848.4 In this chapter I challenge this view. I claim that the criticisms of pre- 1848 Habsburg scholarship are often linked with a conceptual imposition of the post-1848 idea of academia and that, instead, one has to accept the func- tional dualism of scholarship during the first half of the nineteenth century. Early nineteenth-century scholarly endeavors can tell us much about how different political activists perceived the role of scholarship in the Habsburg Empire. At the same time, this period shows two different models of spatial structure in Habsburg scholarship: one accentuating a decentralized and multilingual monarchy and one promoting the primacy of Vienna and the German language. Before 1848 Habsburg universities were institutions for the production of loyal subjects, while the primary places for the production of scientific knowledge in the empire included museums, state collections, libraries, bo- tanical and zoological gardens, pharmacies, and a number of more or less formal societies and clubs. The latter, especially, played a prominent role by hosting and financing renowned scholars. The imperial cabinets in Vienna, as well as the imperial library, held resources that attracted researchers from all over the empire, and the state supported such endeavors by awarding positions to the most scholarly and politically suitable individuals. While these positions were mostly administrative, for example, as a head librarian or curator, they allowed enough time for research, making them crucial for the production of new knowledge. Universities were at the time far from the importance they achieved in the second half of the century. They were rather like high schools, concerned more with the education of civil ser- vants than with the development of scholarship. Although fostering scholarly interest among students was not their primary aim, university professors