Page - 103 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 3 ♦  103 they argued, it should happen no sooner than in ten to twenty years, owing to a lack of qualified scholars.58 In contrast to Czech claims that they were ready for emancipation, German discussions of the time clearly evidenced the rhetoric of depen- dency and cultural underdevelopment. While German Bohemians favored the idea of Czech-language chairs, they stressed incessantly that this should come from Czechs’ cultural work and not through political machinations. Official writings from the faculties before the division of the university into Czech and German institutions also expressed this.59 A plethora of writings from the German professoriat and German cultural activists argued that there were always legal ways to achieve habilitation. Their aim was clearly to underscore the picture of the University of Prague as liberal and open to scholars of all languages. At the same time, such writings confirmed German dominance over the university, reaffirming that Czechs were thus far not represented in this institution. Other memoranda showed hegemonic stereotypes even more clearly. A memorandum by the German professors of the medical and philosophical faculties in 1879 argued that accepting Czech as a language of instruction would show favoritism toward nationalist thinking rather than science.60 The professors believed that Czechs would lose more than they gained through such a change, not only because most scholarly works were published in German, but also because most Czech students could understand German, while only a few German students could understand Czech. Unsurprisingly, according to a memorandum published by Czech schol- ars in response to the German one, it was precisely the German-speaking professors who were obstructing the development of Czech academic activi- ties. Moreover, their ideal of science was described as a “dead printed letter” (“todtes bedrucktes Papier”) that ignored the fact that the scientific better- ment of the university could be achieved only through the multiplication and (cultural) diversification of the teaching staff. Finally, the memorandum stressed that science as described in the German memorandum included the nationalistic claim that, as scholars, Germans do not need to read Czech literature, whereas Czechs should read German literature.61 The claims for German hegemony also took a more critical tone, es- pecially among non-Bohemians. Leopold Wittelshöfer in his Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift (Viennese medical weekly) was particularly critical of Czech culture and published a series of anti-Czech articles