Page - 139 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

139 cHApter 4 German-Language Universities between Austrian and German Space What should a minister of education [do], when every smaller or big­ ger province wants to teach in its own language, when he can neither freely command universities nor schools nor teachers’ appointments? In all provinces one wants to have only natives at the universities; for [Privat]Dozenten here, there are no aims, no career, because the bridges to Germany were previously dismantled owing to arrogance, and not all can be professors in Vienna. . . . Withal, there is much talent here. —tHeodor billrotH to WilHelM lübke, 24 deceMber 18671 The restructuring of Habsburg universities as described in earlier chap- ters, the centralization of German-speaking academia, and the structural disentanglement of Slavic universities as a result of ministerial ordinances and academic practice went hand in hand with processes of internal spe- cialization, which in turn influenced academic spatial practice. Scholarly mobility within the monarchy—conditioned by internal differentiation and linguistic affinities with neighboring regions or, in the Czech case, by their absence—exemplified the concurrence of the processes of internal special- ization and academic spatial practice. Three examples provide interesting insights into how circulation among academic institutions was entangled with infrastructural, political, and cultural factors: (a) German-speaking