Page - 95 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 3 ♦  95 cultures was to strengthen the Slavs in opposition to the German element in Galicia. Nevertheless, this argument was very mild compared with the strong assimilationist movements openly endorsed by many intellectuals and politicians, who pleaded for the assimilation of Ruthenians to the Poles.20 On 4 February 1861 the Jagiellonian University was given bilingual status. The lectures in the medical faculty were to be held in Polish (apart from the history of medicine and the so-called medical encyclopedia, that is, a cursory overview of medicine early in the course of study), although with special attention to German terminology and literature. Further, the philosophical faculty was to have German lectures in German language and literature, history, and classical philology (for the sake of future teachers). Nevertheless, these subjects would have parallel Polish chairs, with lectures and seminars in both languages. The law faculty remained de facto sepa- rated into “general legal subjects,” such as statistics, economics, and Roman law, with lectures in Polish, and “positive Austrian and German subjects,” encompassing civil and criminal law, administration, the history of German and Austrian law, and so on, with lectures in German. Moreover, professors teaching in German were expected to know Polish terminology, and those lacking it were to be replaced within a year.21 These language changes did not entirely fulfill the hopes of the na- tionalists, however. Nationalists from Czas and the university’s deputations pleaded for complete Polonization and did not stop trying to achieve this aim. At the same time, the issue of Ruthenian as a medium of education was still on hold, confirming the strengthening Polish dominance in the province.22 Despite the efforts of Hryhorij Šaškevyč (Григорій Шашкевич)—the min- isterial official in charge of Ruthenian schools, the author of the Ruthenian grammar book for gymnasia, and a member of the Supreme Ruthenian Council (Holovna rus’ka rada, or Головна Руська Рада)—Ruthenian first became a teaching language in gymnasia in 1867. Further, it was used only in the first four classes (at the Imperial and Royal Academic Gymnasium23 in L’viv), as the ministry considered that Ruthenian “did not reach the level of development” necessary for dealing with scientific issues, according to the official statement on this issue in 1849.24 Similarly, Ruthenian university chairs were to be created only in accordance with Ruthenians’ linguistic and cultural development, which had all the consequences that such an imprecise idea embodies—an issue that I will show remained controversial until 1918 and beyond.