Page - 21 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 1 ♦  21 were still often internationally renowned scholars, especially in the sciences and medicine. Even the University of Vienna, located amid formidable imperial collec- tions, “did not enjoy a good reputation in the learned world.”5 The exception was the medical sciences, for which Habsburg universities were renowned well beyond central Europe.6 Lorenz Oken, the famous natural scientist and foremost organizer of pan-German scholarly communication through his journal Isis (established in 1816) and his role in the creation of the Congresses of German Natural Scientists and Physicians (Versammlungen Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte), wrote in 1818 a fitting description of the problems Habsburg scholarship encountered, commenting on the inauguration of the Patriotic Museum in Bohemia. Praising the collections in Graz, Prague, and Vienna as some of the most interesting in Europe, he stated that they would not lead to scientific development if they were not included in the communi- cation network of science: “What do you do with it? Nothing. Nothing. And once more nothing.”7 In particular, he blamed repressive censorship for the passivity of Habsburg scientists: “But why do the scholars do nothing? There is the rub. Here we come to our old song. Restraint of the press, restraint of mind. . . . Do you not realize that everything in the world is so reciprocal, that scholar stimulates scholar. If you had a lively general literary life and work . . . they [the scholars] would be allowed to write everything that the wind whispers in their ears.”8 Censorship, which inhibited intellectual exchange within the monar- chy as well as with scholars in other countries, figured in critical writings almost universally as the main hurdle to scientific flourishing. However, a second factor, the lack of scholars in the centralized scientific institutions, was also seen as a serious obstacle, not only by Habsburg scholars but also by foreigners, such as the British surgeon William Wilde. Reporting on his journey to the empire in 1843, Wilde portrayed Vienna as a city with a lively scholarly production, especially in medicine (patho- logical anatomy and ophthalmology), and a profound scholarly history. He wrote, “It is more than Egiptian blindness in them [the Austrian monarchy and the ruling house] to remain passive spectators of the overpowering ef- forts of the Sclaves [Slavs] and Magyars, and not to strengthen and bind together . . . the German elements of the constitution.” He continued, “Is it not an unaccountable and unwarrantable neglect of the German race, whose scientific worth and capability is so much underrated in comparison to the Hungarians, Bohemians, and Italians, to whom academies are permitted.”9