Page - 97 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 3 ♦  97 1867.30 Since the geopolitical situation had also changed, and the Warsaw Main School had closed in 1869, there was once again no “Polish” univer- sity in central Europe, which was an important issue for the nationalists. To prevent a boycott, the government declared Polish the sole teaching lan- guage at the Jagiellonian University on 30 April 1870, fulfilling one of the main wishes of the Polish parties. On 4 October the same was announced for L’viv’s technical academy. Some politicians as well as professors felt that the academy made the existence of the university in L’viv unnecessary, proposing to move the university to Opava (Troppau, Opawa), to bind Silesia more closely to the monarchy.31 The next minister of state, Karl Sigmund Hohenwart (February– October 1871), had to secure support for his cabinet from the Polish parliamentarians who had united into the so-called Polenklub (Polish Club) and was willing to make further concessions, supported by the minister of education, Josef Jireček (February–October 1871). Instead of moving the university to Silesia to keep German as the language of in- struction, on 4 July 1871 Polish and Ruthenian were made de jure equal languages of instruction in L’viv, making Polish the de facto language of instruction. Strengthened by this measure, the Polish majority at the University of L’viv repeatedly requested that the ministry regulate the lan- guage question, that is, acknowledge Polish supremacy by not increasing, or even by decreasing, the number of professorships with Ruthenian as the prescribed medium of instruction. Finally, shortly after the division of the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague in 1882, the Polish professoriat succeeded in its demands. In a ministerial decree on 5 April 1882, Polish was declared the language in which lectures should be taught “as a rule,” with Ruthenian lectures held only with the approval of the ministry.32 It is clear that the Cisleithanian minister-president Eduard Taaffe (1879–93) fulfilled the nationalists’ demands regarding higher education as a means to appease the Czech and Polish parties and gain their support for his government. The political assertion of the Poles’ cultural and educational supremacy had, however, other effects than those intended by Galician nationalists; it resulted in the intensification of Ruthenian intellectual life and support for demands for independent academic institutions. This was even more important since at the time Ukrainian was banned in the Russian Empire; therefore, numerous supporters of Ukrainian language and scholarship were moved to give their patronage to Galician institutions.33