Page - 180 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

180 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 who published in Ruthenian and on Ruthenian topics, were not welcomed before 1890 and were often rejected (officially) owing to language issues.18 Ruthenians were not the only victims of the dominance of Polish-language purists. For the well-known Jewish neurologist Gustaw Bikeles, who spoke broken Polish (his low level of competency probably caused both by his hear- ing impairment and by the fact that German was his first language), language was a vital issue. After five years as a Privatdozent, in 1906 he was proposed as an associate professor. The faculty, supported by a medical expert, agreed to award him only the title and character of associate professor, claiming that Bikeles would never gain a full professorship owing to his deafness and thus should not be fully supported.19 The Division of the Charles-Ferdinand University and the Disintegration of Bohemia The language issue was also a major problem in Bohemia: only through min- isterial support could Czech scholars acquire chairs at the Charles-Ferdinand University until its division in 1882. Apart from ideologically motivated ap- pointments immediately after 1848, and the nominations of Czech professors by the minister of education Josef Jireček in 1871 (described in chapter 3), characteristic here is the situation in 1870. In this year the gynecologist Jan Streng was promoted to the chair of the Institute of Gynecology because he spoke Czech.20 The Prague medical faculty had proposed three German Bohemian scholars, claiming that they “had all gained their education at the University of Prague, are completely fluent in the Czech language, and had been appointed to other universities [Graz, Bern, and Tübingen, respec- tively]. This was because of their scientific achievements during their early careers as young scholars.”21 What the faculty proposal meant by “fluent in the Czech language” was, however, different from what Czech-speaking Prague scholars expected. For the scholars in the proposal, Czech was a sec- ond language, while Czech scholars had requested a true native speaker, who would count as a Czech national. As I show below, this nationalist-driven distinction was not always as clear as it seems. Similar disagreements came to the fore in 1881. The rules for the di- vision of the university stated that each institute would be located at the university (German or Czech) where the head of the institute chose to teach. Thus, the conflict over who would be appointed was particularly meaningful.