Page - 177 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 5 ♦  177 from the non-Habsburg German Confederation after 1848, which, as the previous chapter showed, was the space in which German-language uni- versities were functioning. These changes influenced Galicia in particular. Before these language reforms, the possibility of appointing Polish- or Ruthenian/Ukrainian- speaking scholars from the German or Russian Empires existed, but it was far from the first choice. With the relaxation of appointment policies and increased involvement by the Galician provincial government, such ap- pointments had more chance of success. From the 1860s the ministry even advised the Jagiellonian University to search for candidates abroad if local scholars could not be found; the University of L’viv also later took this advice seriously.4 Still, similar to the situation at the Habsburg German-language universities, such appointments often aimed, according to the records, at strengthening local academic quality and educating local scholars to prevent future nominations from abroad.5 Appointments from abroad were also the last resort for the ministry, which opted for Habsburg scholars in cases of dispute, often proposing them against the will of the faculty.6 Owing to the strengthening of university autonomy, and a desire not to aggravate the po- litical tensions, the ministry only rarely nominated Habsburg scholars if the Galician university and provincial government opposed them. Becoming Polish: Galicia Cracow was the first Cisleithanian university to abandon German as the language of instruction; thus, it was a field for experimentation for the pol- iticians. The first language changes, in 1861, targeted only a few scholars, causing little disturbance in the faculties.7 To balance these departures, however, the ministry had to appoint, among others, two young scholars from Prussia owing to the lack of qualified scholars in Galicia. While the university was bilingual throughout the 1860s, 1869 witnessed an almost complete change to Polish.8 This transition was facilitated by national mobilization among Galician and foreign Polish speakers. Following an open letter by Józef Dietl in 1861, in which the newly chosen rector (see figure 5) invited Polish scholars to habilitate in Cracow,9 the university received a large number of petitions for habilita- tions and chairs. These were mostly viewed negatively by the professors, who repeatedly stated that only disciplines not covered by professors should be