Page - 41 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 1 ♦  41 to light the variety of approaches to the function of universities and schol- arship. At the same time, an analysis of the petitions shows that while some demands were common across the whole empire, the views from the capital and the provinces differed in many respects. The regional disparities height- ened once liberal possibilities were in sight, and the ministry had to negotiate among differing interests and unify the structure of the academic space. The proceedings at the Jagiellonian University, where several drafts were discussed, help to illustrate the problem of restructuring universities in a monarchy with different academic traditions. The first petition to the em- peror, composed by the rector Józef Brodowicz and accepted by the students and professors in March 1848, aimed to reintroduce university autonomy according to the 1818 bylaws, encouraging freedom of teaching and learning and granting the university exclusive legal control over students—intra and extra moenia (within and outside of university walls). Furthermore, the proj- ect pleaded for the restitution of funds and lands (including those from the parts of the Commonwealth now under Prussian and Russian rule) and for the subsumption of all educational facilities in the city under the university’s governance with a guarantee that “apart from the university and establish- ments linked to it, no other educational institutions would be established without its knowledge and explicit consent.”93 This was a particular concern for religious corporations that were responsible for their own schools. The petition demanded, furthermore, “that no Jesuit or ex-Jesuit ever finds him- self in any teachers’ corporation, and moreover, that this order, most fatal for human kind, never sets foot on this soil.”94 This project thus aimed to reclaim the privileges the university had enjoyed in the eighteenth century, when it controlled virtually the entire Polish part of the Commonwealth and successfully hindered the establishment of other academic institutions. This resolution, however, never left the building owing to a subsequent conflict between Brodowicz and the students. The next petition, proposed in the autumn of 1848 by Józef Majer, included the abolishment of courses on religion, the use of Polish as the medium of instruction in all subjects, and the introduction of the history of Poland among the courses taught, as well as, similar to Brodowicz’s pro- posal, financial demands. This project also met with opposition, especially because of the questions of religion and language it raised. The canonical jurist Feliks Leliwa Słotwiński, for example, opposed it, stating that religion should guard students from the “errors of philosophy” and that the exclusive use of Polish not only would negatively affect disciplines such as Austrian, Roman, and civil and church law but would also “attest national hate . . . and