Page - 55 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 2 ♦  55 could thrive only with the acceptance of a particular shared narrative, which would counter nationalistic claims. This narrative included not only loyalty, cultural reciprocity, and Catholicism as cornerstones but also the claim that the empire was the only guarantor of cultural progress: an idea in which uni- versities had a pivotal role and which later (for example, under the minister of education Karl Stremayr, 1870–80) seamlessly mixed with German cultural imperialism. Thun-Hohenstein and his supporters powerfully mobilized a picture of free, unbound scholarship leading the state to a cultural para- dise. This image also served to demonstrate the improvements that political changes had brought about compared to the situation in the Vormärz. In particular, historical disciplines such as the history of law, national histories, the history of languages, and archaeology were to be mobilized and supported, which brought about considerable changes: not only new chairs but also the introduction of seminars. (Seminars were research-oriented courses based on intensive cooperation between a professor and his stu- dents, the predecessors of modern seminars. As they were given room within the university buildings, and increasingly included more professors, they also became the precursors of today’s institutes.) Through concentration on minute source work, Thun-Hohenstein intended to promote “unbiased science” (voraussetzungslose Wissenschaft). This went hand in hand with the renunciation of nationalist historical narratives, on the one hand, and of the philosophy of history, legal philosophy, and natural law, on the oth- er.31 The ministry denounced all kinds of philosophy, from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to Immanuel Kant and Johann Friedrich Herbart,32 and in their place proposed a yet nonexistent “philosophy which enjoys public ac- ceptance by both science and the church.”33 “In the meantime,” wrote the ministry in 1853, “it remains the duty of the ministry to direct policy toward this aim as far as possible, and to prevent every manifest and veiled impulse against the [divine] revelation.”34 Catholicism and its relationship with the freedom of teaching and learn- ing was one of the most delicate issues in the reform movement. While this was not an issue for Thun-Hohenstein, whose philosophy of ideal scholarship involved the Catholicization of the most important matters at the university, especially in the humanities and law, it was a central question for the general character of universities. Although the equality of religious denominations was part of the constitution and not directly addressed in the academic laws, the subsequent decrease in the equality of Jews and the Concordat of 1855 made non-Christians unwelcome. Even the universities themselves were not