Page - 67 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 2 ♦  67 range of increasingly disparate matters in their lectures. In this case, it is rather unsurprising that, contrary to the ministerial goal of specialization, the scholars nominated for the new chairs had a much broader education and a variety of degrees (although this was not always required). One of the newly appointed professors from Prussia summed up the chaos: “Doctor of medical science, magister of obstetrics, Moravian corporate full public pro- fessor of general natural history and agricultural economics, plus deputizing professor of Bohemian language and literature. In this written title you have the typical representative Austrian scholarly figure.”87 In several other disciplines, such as meteorology and astronomy, sci- entific traditions existed, particularly at the technical schools. Transferring teachers in these disciplines to the universities, as well as modifying the research infrastructure, was a step toward turning universities into research institutions. Here, however, another problem arose: the technical academies and universities covered a similar range of subjects, raising the question of how to reform both without creating conflict. In several cases, the minis- try accentuated the importance of the natural sciences as the transmitter between theory and practice at the university, spanning the symbolic bound- ary between technical education and the humanities-led universities. This boundary was especially visible in the division of the practical secondary education provided in the Realschule from the humanistic education of the gymnasia. In this way, the natural sciences were included in the idea of the cultural development of the monarchy, in which the universities were supposed to have a pivotal role in all areas of scholarship. To achieve “the aim of contemporary development of industrial activity,” professors should not only be theoreticians but also be familiar with “practical requirements.”88 Although the technical academies, in contrast to universities, con- centrated on a practical approach, the strengthening of the philosophical faculties at the universities triggered questions about merging the techni- cal academies and universities or else differentiating them more clearly.89 Doubling the institutes of science would require costly infrastructure, the critics pointed out. However, the technical academies had a political value beyond the simple education of engineers: for example, in Brno the techni- cal academy was the only tertiary school in Moravia after the dissolution of the University of Olomouc.90 After teachers of foreign languages were added, the technical academies not only aimed to produce engineers who would work locally but also imagined exporting them abroad, like physi- cians, whose influence had even reached the Ottoman Empire.91 This was of