Page - 100 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

100 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 general was negated. The lack of acknowledged scholars was seen as evi- dence of the unviability of Ruthenian culture; however, at the same time, the university was a political arena in which professors obstructed Ruthenian claims, arguing that the laws were on their side. The ban on Ruthenian as a language of university affairs (Geschäftssprache), the rejection of enroll- ment certificates (Inskriptionsscheine) in Ruthenian, the opposition to new Ruthenian chairs and habilitations, and, finally, the problematic participation of several professors in the right-wing nationalistic National Democratic Party were widely commented on in the Ruthenian press, and this led to a series of violent conflicts. Thus, the Polish argument of freedom was con- fronted by a Ruthenian claim that the Polish (nationalistic and chauvinistic) majority restricted access to legally prescribed privileges, thus hindering Ruthenian cultural development. In many instances, Poles were presented as imperialists speaking with a forked tongue: on the one hand, criticiz- ing Prussia for blocking Polish in the Province of Posen (Provinz Posen, Prowincja Poznańska) and, on the other, hindering Ruthenians’ demands for equal opportunities.41 Emancipation and Dependency: Doubling Bohemia The structure of the arguments in the Czech-German discussion on univer- sity education has common traits with the Polish-Ruthenian case. Throughout the nineteenth century, Czech nationalists (patriots in the parlance of the day) strove to emancipate themselves from German language and culture. Jan Evangelista Purkyně put the feelings of many Czech activists toward German succinctly, addressing in 1862 in Karlovy Vary/Karlsbad the par- ticipants of the thirty-seventh Congress of German Natural Scientists and Physicians with the words quoted at the beginning of this chapter. Notably coinciding with the end of neoabsolutism, the claim that Czech and German should be treated equally returned after a hiatus in the 1850s. For Czech scholars, the 1860s did not lead to many changes, how- ever. Underrepresented at the university in Prague, Czech scholars were grouped at other scholarly institutions, most notably the Museum of the Czech Kingdom (already then known in Czech as Národní muzeum, that is, the National Museum), the Prague Archives, and, especially, the Czech technical academy. The latter was created through the division of the Prague Polytechnic in 1869 (which thus preceded the split of the university by more