Page - 135 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 3 ♦  135 Retaining Common Space: Legislative Initiatives The change from a ministry that imposed centralized university policies to a ministry that served as an administrative and supervising body involved many legislative questions. Stremayr had already requested opinions on habilitation procedures and on the admission of women to universities in 1873.187 The same consultations also happened a few decades later, with a similar request for the opinion of the faculties.188 Universities also tried to increase their influence, not only proposing improvements to single fac- ulties but also strengthening the symbolic capital of academia as a whole by organizing and preparing joint expert reports, especially on salaries or new chairs. Between 1891 and 1896, an informal commission on the re- muneration question, initiated by and based at the German University in Prague, developed a petition to improve remuneration, gathering, among other information, data on the salaries and Collegiengelder of all faculties and organizing meetings of university representatives.189 In 1907 delegates from all of the universities, led by the philosophical faculty at the University of Cracow, prepared a memorandum on the improvement of mathemati- cal education at universities.190 In the same manner, Privatdozenten as well as assistants organized collective petitions to support their claims.191 Interestingly, discussions about such cooperation were widely circulated in the academic and semi-academic press in different languages during the late nineteenth century, confirming that not only universities but also university matters as a whole were understood as matters of state in learned circles.192 However, when joint bodies were institutionalized to provide expertise for further policies, linguistic divisions again became visible. In 1898 the universities created a legislative support mechanism called the Academic Conferences (Hochschulkonferenzen) for the German Empire and German- Speaking Cisleithania, thirteen years later renamed the Austrian Conference of Rectors (Österreichische Rektorenkonferenz).193 The organization of uni- versities into networks transgressing the empire’s boundaries underscored the dualism between state and culture and the drifting apart of scholarly cultures and networks. Although they maintained common interests and political structures, their separation implied changes in their perception of cultural needs, often exceeding Habsburg boundaries and thus coming into conflict, as the broadly perceived interests of the empire did not al- ways match the needs of a language community.194 Even discussions about