Page - 179 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 5 ♦  179 least equal to the German-speaking candidates) but also emphasizing the importance of the Polish language for practical reasons. In Cracow such a controversy, around the chair of forensic medicine, led to the ministry serv- ing as a mediator.12 In 1868 at the University of L’viv, the ministry made an exceptional decision to allow parallel lectures in Polish in philosophy and economics in the law faculty. Two other issues of contention were habilita- tion procedures (whether they could be conducted in Polish and based on a Polish-language publication) and the use of Polish in history lectures.13 In these cases, the faculty was divided almost perfectly along linguistic lines, with the exception of one German scholar who voted in favor of Polish. The language changes of 1871 affected L’viv more seriously than Cracow, not only because all but four of the scholars who had been active in 1870 left L’viv, but also because the faculty encountered severe problems in de- termining who should propose their successors. That non-Polish-speaking scholars would continue their activities until they were replaced was regarded as unrealistic: the ministry reported that the press and the students were campaigning against these scholars, which hindered their work at the uni- versity.14 Only in three cases did the ministry and the university agree to an exception to the condition of learning Polish within three years and lecturing in this language. Two of these three scholars had been transferred to L’viv from Cracow in 1869. However, only Eduard Buhl, who taught the history of German state and law in the law faculty, remained at the university after a three-year probationary period, knowing Polish but lecturing in German.15 In 1877 the university vehemently refused to make Buhl’s situation the basis for a legal exception that would allow instructors to teach in German.16 The only chair that used German for instruction remained that in German language and literature, to which the bilingual Catholic priest Eugeniusz Janota was appointed in 1871. He was, in fact, the only Galician scholar affiliated with Polish culture to hold a professorship in this discipline until 1919. While in Cracow the language question was solved with the introduction of Polish, this issue remained pivotal for several decades in L’viv, where teaching and other activities were conducted in two languages, Polish and Ruthenian. Because the administrative language was Polish from 1879, the obligation for instructors to know Polish was seen as an issue of practice; later this worsened the academic opportunities for Ruthenian- and German- speaking Jewish scholars. Both Ruthenian and German were the language of instruction in some gymnasia, despite growing pressure for assimilation.17 In general, habilitations of scholars who lectured on Ruthenian topics, or