Page - 137 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 3 ♦  137 Contrary to what some politicians had feared, the language changes did not mean the dissolution of the empire. Slavic scholars—even those with clear-cut definitions of national identity—claimed in their writings that a complete linguistic separation in university education was neither possi- ble nor wise and accentuated practical bilingualism.199 This was due to the prevailing idea of science as a universal endeavor but was also championed for purely practical reasons. I discuss this further in the chapter on Slavic universities. In fact, knowledge of German was necessary for a university career, and this was an obstacle for scholars from the Russian Empire in Galicia, whose German was mostly deficient. In addition, scholarships were seen as obligatory, and thanks to the central institutions in Vienna, this was the first city of choice. Thus, the empire and its resources remained a vital reference point for scholars at the non-German-language institutions. Street and university conflicts were major topics in the press at the time and have strongly influenced the historiography of Cisleithanian universities up to the present. These overshadowed the contacts and commonalities be- tween universities. Such commonalities were influential not only at the time but also after 1918, creating, for instance, a common space of disciplinary assignments. The next two chapters examine in more detail the spatial struc- tures that emerged from the liberal-national policies described here. I begin by discussing German-language universities and the career patterns there. As I argue, the careers of scholars there were increasingly directed toward the German Empire and less and less toward the Habsburg Empire, creating a system in which scholars from Slavic universities hardly had a place. But this system was also closing toward the German Empire, owing mostly to large numbers of graduates and staff at the University of Vienna. This in turn affected the role that different German-language Habsburg universities played in scholars’ careers.