Page - 107 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 3 ♦  107 of the Franz Joseph Czech Academy for Science, Literature and Arts (Česká akademie císaře Františka Josefa pro vědy, slovesnost a umění).81 Habsburg cultural eclecticism had peaked (see figure 4). A German Outpost in the East: Chernivtsi Given the multiplicity of languages spoken and heard in Chernivtsi, the choice of the language of instruction was central in petitions. The person be- hind most of them, Constantin Tomaszczuk, was predestined to represent the cultural variety of the city. Born of parents with a similar Bukovinian cultural background but (according to the secondary literature) different national allegiances, Tomaszczuk stylized the planned university as an oasis of dif- ferent nationalities held together by one shared language, German. His plans insisted that only “common education” (gemeinsamer Bildungsgang) could create the “political nationality of Austrianness” (politische Nationalität des Österreicherthums). This hinted at the direction that education should take: “German science has the claim of universality. And only because German education has universal standing, the non-German sons of Bukovina strive Figure 4 Residence of the metropolitan of the Greek-Orthodox Church of the Bu- kovina, now the main building of Chernivtsi University. (Private collection. Author unknown.)