Page - 56 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

56 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 sure how to deal with this issue. For example, they were uncertain whether to consider Privatdozenten as state functionaries, who had to be Christian.35 Although Thun-Hohenstein allowed chairs of Hebrew in L’viv, Prague, and Vienna, none of those appointed became full professors.36 Non-Catholics were also legally prohibited from becoming deans and rectors in Vienna,37 although the interpretation of this rule was far from straightforward. In 1852 the university consistory38 challenged the nomina- tion of the Lutheran Hermann Bonitz as dean of the philosophical faculty in Vienna, forcing Thun-Hohenstein to reject his application and under- score the Catholic character of the university.39 The philosophical faculty’s choice was also fiercely discussed in public, with mostly negative opinions underscoring the historically Catholic character of the university. Notably, Sebastian Brunner, the dean of the theological Doktoren-Collegium, launched a fierce campaign against the nomination; shortly afterward, Brunner was appointed the university’s main priest, demonstrating once more the entanglement of church and state, which made the issue of religion complex.40 Non-Catholic university officials were first elected, and their elections confirmed by the ministry, only after Thun-Hohenstein’s resigna- tion on 20 October 1860. But assessments of Thun-Hohenstein’s denominational policy varied, showing the difficulty of his position. Franz Grillparzer, one of the leaders of the liberal movement before 1848,41 criticized the minister for becom- ing increasingly subservient to the Catholic Church. For others, like Georg Emmanuel Haas, quoted at the head of this chapter, he was not a Catholic savior but rather a Mephisto who nominated Protestant foreigners instead of Catholic Habsburg citizens. Language(s) for the Empire Like his teacher Bernhard Bolzano, Thun-Hohenstein, influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment, was skeptical about the political and cultural hegemony of the German language in the empire.42 Shortly after his nomina- tion as the minister of religion and education, in a Czech-language pamphlet published 1849, he underlined the necessity of the “real equal status” of Slavs and their languages.43 Since he saw the interests of the state as paramount, superseding nationalistic interests, he rejected the federalization proposed by adherents of Austro-Slavism and depicted an idealized multicultural