Page - 164 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

164 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 careers at other universities and then being appointed back to the capital (or not) is dominant, especially in the medical faculties. Moreover, this had serious consequences for Jewish scholars, as I outline in chapter 6. Despite the statistics being biased by immobile Privatdozenten, full professorships in particular were linked to mobility, including moves to and from Vienna, where mobility largely meant that Viennese graduates taught at other uni- versities before being nominated for a position in Vienna. A Protestant Counterpart to the Habsburg Empire? The Empire and Its Big Brother One of the most contentious issues in the Habsburg appointment policy of the nineteenth century remained, however, the relationship with the German Empire, influenced both by geopolitical changes and by the political imag- ination. As noted earlier, the ministry treated scholars from the German Empire differently from Habsburg Germans, with a lower rate of acceptance if nominated by the faculties. Further, the exchange of professors between the two empires was not always welcomed, not only in the interest of supporting young Habsburg scholars, but also out of concern that German scholars might introduce unwanted ideas and methodologies. Such arguments can be found not only in ideological areas like historiography but also in med- icine.47 At the same time, one can easily discover a certain snobbishness or even orientalism among scholars who thought to bring academic culture to Austria, such as the neoabsolutist linguists mentioned in chapter 2. The “Godliness” of (non-Habsburg) German professors, a mocking description coined by the governor of Bohemia in 1879,48 hampered Habsburg scholars from nominating foreigners in some cases. Nevertheless, political reasoning was as important as cultural cautious- ness. Immediately after 1870, the ministry feared that German scholars could “use their position in Austria for secondary aims among the youth, which is already fevered by current events.” 49 A few years later, the same argument can be found in the appointment records for the chairs of German language and literature in Prague, where the ministry rejected the proposed appointment of German professors who “gave no guarantees regarding their political beliefs”; the ministry appointed only (local) temporary replacement professors.50 Ironically, the 1870s were, however, one of the periods in which German scholars were most frequently appointed (apart from the 1850s).