Page - 64 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

64 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 Walking a tightrope, the ministry was seeking a means to accommo- date national claims while guaranteeing that universities would serve as imperial institutions. This balancing act was not unlike those related to questions of religion and relations with non-Habsburg parts of the German Confederation, which I discuss later in this chapter. More important, the ministry advanced a language model differing from, but not contradictory to, that promoted by nationalist activists. It pleaded for multilingualism in social life, one part of which, education, should take place in German. Since Latin had been the lingua franca only a few years previously, this was not a novelty for scholars. Even the nationally oriented academics and politicians used the same argument to reject lectures in Ruthenian a few years later.79 The language issue was perhaps the most important element in the im- plementation of the reforms. It was closely connected, however, to changes in the disciplinary nexus and in appointment patterns, which I turn to now. This also brings us back from the provinces to Vienna and to its practical relation with the idea(s) of German science. Tradition, Locality, and the Natural and Medical Sciences After the reforms, the empire, unsurprisingly, lacked scholars capable of carrying out the new academic and political projects. Additionally, Thun- Hohenstein’s ministry publicly presented the restructuring of the academic landscape as a thrust toward a new knowledge, and thus a break with not only the legal cornerstones of Vormärz universities but also the scholars who had shaped the prerevolutionary academia. This meant, initially, the inclusion of previously marginalized scholars in faculties. The first appointments at Habsburg universities after 1848 were in- deed directed toward the transformation of the professorate, especially in the humanities and historical legal subjects.80 Since the development of historical or philological scholarship had been limited in the Habsburg Empire before 1848, it was hard to find appropriate specialists within the country, especially ones acquainted with new methodological approaches. In addition, the reforms introduced the new concept of seminars, which were created for modern languages as well as for history, the latter in the form of a philological-historical seminar that focused on the classical lan- guages required for teachers at the gymnasia.81 Simultaneously, the natural and medical sciences followed a rather different path of change, marked by