Page - 37 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 1 ♦  37 students, as was later claimed. Thus, even if the Studienhofkommission had succeeded in keeping nationalists of all sorts outside the university walls, 1848 proved that it had not eliminated liberalism. More important, universities, like the other scholarly institutions dis- cussed in this chapter, were not universally accepted by political groups within the monarchy. The use of German as the language of instruction was not a problem only for the increasingly nationalized provinces. By predomi- nantly nominating German-speaking scholars, universities failed to include provincial residents as teachers, estranging the universities from the city elites, especially in Galicia.81 One exception to this rule was the historian Joseph Mauss (born in Tengen, now in Baden-Württemberg but until 1806 part of the Habsburg Empire), who enjoyed celebrity status in L’viv and is said to have encouraged his L’viv students to participate in the November Uprising in 1830–31.82 Scholars’ adaptation to the urban culture they en- countered played an even more important role after 1848, often deciding entire careers. Scientific excellence clearly did not necessarily correlate with open- ness to nationalism, even if later generations did remember many scholars who united these characteristics. Yet, even in the Vormärz, the public was increasingly involved in regional scholarly endeavors linked to linguistic projects, such as the Patriotic Museum in Bohemia or the Ossolineum. In the prerevolutionary discourse, these two assets apparently began to merge, especially among non-German elites. Universities, highly esteemed as vital institutions of cultural and intellectual life, especially in smaller cities, were seen as places whose potential had yet to be fulfilled. By 1848 students and significant parts of the city public in L’viv, Pest, and Prague were also certain that the solution to academic misery was not only greater freedom but also the inclusion of local languages as the medium of instruction. As a result, the 1848 revolutionaries requested linguistic equity, which should not be hastily interpreted as only a nationalistic claim. On the Barricades: Universities in 1848 The revolution of 1848, often seen as a turning point in the history of the Habsburg Empire, brought far-reaching changes for universities and in- tellectual life in central Europe. First, the short-term liberal government remodeled the universities based on the Prussian system, although with