Page - 75 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 2 ♦  75 from the late 1860s he began to pursue a clear anti-Czech narrative and became one of most energetic pro-German nationalist activists, founding several German-Bohemian cultural institutions.134 The Habsburg Empire as an Entangled Space: Philologies With the strengthening of philological and historical education—united in one seminar—classical philology grew in importance. Based on the model of the non-Habsburg German Confederation universities, the classics were elevated to become a main humanist subject in the Habsburg Empire, serving as a point of departure for humanist education.135 Here, private recommenda- tions by Thun-Hohenstein’s network of trusted men were crucial, although the ministry, cautious of Franz Joseph’s reactions, always highlighted its choices with reference to the nominee’s religious denomination. Emblematic here is the reasoning presented in the nomination of Ludwig Lange in 1855. Lange was placed second on Prague’s philosophical faculty’s short list be- hind the Catholic Karl Halm, but he cherished the support of his predecessor, Georg Curtius: “Despite his outer religious commitment [to Protestantism], he [Lange] lacks nothing of genuine Catholic conviction,” reads the min- isterial document. Meanwhile, Halm was described as Catholic only in denomination, and the document stated that his influence on the students would be “more alarming than that of a Protestant.”136 As in the historical fields, scholars from abroad were valued highly, but, in contrast to historiography, in philology several chairs had been occupied by Habsburg scholars already since the Vormärz. Nevertheless, young schol- ars from abroad were nominated from the outset, while older scholars were either transferred to smaller universities or, if nearing retirement, pensioned off. Bonitz, who served as Thun-Hohenstein’s confidant for classical phi- lology and who consulted with the philologist Friedrich Haase in Wrocław/ Breslau,137 played a critical role here. Even in Cracow, where matters were again complicated owing to language issues, the ministry appointed the historian of classical literature Antoni Małecki, who had graduated from Berlin and taught at a gymnasium in Poznań/Posen. While the deaths or retirements of older professors meant that philology showed more mobility among scholars than did the other humanistic disciplines, the younger gener- ation of both professors and students had already been educated by scholars who came from abroad.