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72 ♦ Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918
The Habsburg Empire as a Conservative
Space: Historiography
The importance of historiography for the new narrative of the monarchy
was signaled already in 1847 when Joseph Chmel gained support for his
pan-Habsburg projects and began to lead the historical commission at the
Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts in Vienna. The universities, whose
main function, according to Joseph Alexander Helfert, was “the fostering
of the humanities and familiarity with the institutions and history of the
fatherland,”114 followed closely. Helfert, who before 1848 was a jurist and
historian of church law and in 1848–60 served as Unterstaatssekretär (un-
dersecretary of state) in the Ministry of Education,115 pulled the strings in the
ministry throughout Thun-Hohenstein’s tenure, especially in the historical
disciplines. In his eyes, a patriotic, statist direction in education was the
only way to create a feeling of nonethnic national unity, an outlook Thun-
Hohenstein clearly agreed with.
Searching for uniting origin myths, Helfert directed historians’ attention
especially toward the Middle Ages and early modern history to find common
enemies of the central European populace, such as the Mongolians.116 He also
embraced the marriage policy of the Habsburgs, which in his eyes created
larger states that could better protect the population, as in the case of Albert
II’s unification of Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia in 1438.117
Such a construction of the Habsburg monarchy as a state brought into
being by a historical imperative also required writing the histories of par-
ticular provinces to substantiate their development as naturally leading to
the creation of “Greater Austria.”118 However, such an analysis first required
the historical sources for all provinces to be collected and edited, which
Helfert, in agreement with Chmel, saw as necessary before any attempt at
analysis. For this purpose, the ministry created an up-to-date institute for
source research, the IAHR; the preparations for this included an examination
of the leading European historical institutes.119 The past was reduced to the
“glorious” Middle Ages, while the more recent history of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries remained clearly in the background.120 Despite
Helfert’s declarations about the linearity of historical development, cultural
memory was selective, excluding, for instance, Josephinism and empha-
sizing the uniting force of Catholicism, promoted by the conservatives. In
accordance with Helfert’s view of historiography as a patriotic, and thus
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book Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space"
Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918
A Social History of a Multilingual Space
- Title
- Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918
- Subtitle
- A Social History of a Multilingual Space
- Author
- Jan Surman
- Publisher
- Purdue University Press
- Location
- West Lafayette
- Date
- 2019
- Language
- English
- License
- PD
- ISBN
- 978-1-55753-861-1
- Size
- 16.5 x 25.0 cm
- Pages
- 474
- Keywords
- History, Austria, Eduction System, Learning
- Categories
- Geschichte Vor 1918
Table of contents
- List of Illustrations vi
- List of Tables vii
- Acknowledgments ix
- Note on Language Use, Terminology, and Geography xi
- Abbreviations xiii
- Introduction A Biography of the Academic Space 1
- Chapter 1 Centralizing Science for the Empire 19
- Chapter 2 The Neoabsolutist Search for a Unified Space 49
- Chapterr 3 Living Out Academic Autonomy 89
- Chapter 4 German-Language Universities between Austrian and German Space 139
- Chapter 5 Habsburg Slavs and Their Spaces 175
- Chapter 6 Imperial Space and Its Identities 217
- Chapter 7 Habsburg Legacies 243
- Conclusion Paradoxes of the Central European Academic Space 267
- Appendix 1 Disciplines of Habilitation at Austrian Universities 281
- Appendix 2 Databases of Scholars at Cisleithanian Universities 285
- Notes 287
- Bibliography 383
- Index 445