Page - 185 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 5 ♦  185 issue was dealt with and August Seydler, a professor of theoretical astronomy and practical physics, retired; his chair was then divided into two.40 The growing division of the scientific landscape worsened when two parallel nationally defined institutions, the Franz Joseph Czech Academy for Science, Literature and Arts and the Association for the Fostering of German Science, Arts and Literature in Bohemia (Die Gesellschaft zur Förderung Deutscher Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur in Böhmen),41 were established in 1890 and 1891, respectively. The bilingual Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences did not cease to exist, but its work increasingly reflected the Czech- German split.42 Dividing institutions along cultural lines or establishing separate Czech- and German-language institutions created a largely dual public sphere, which influenced scholarly contacts and even patient-doctor relations. Some clinics had regulations that on odd-numbered days German was used (for German-speaking patients) and on even-numbered days Czech, resulting in a similar division of patients, who, for the sake of communication as well as legal issues concerning childbirth (especially the spelling of names), would wait for “their” physicians, leading to bizarre and often also perilous situ- ations. Similarly, the distribution of cases and even corpses followed this linguistic division.43 This led to running jokes that Prague scholars from the opposing cultures could only meet during conferences abroad. A more macabre version was that such a meeting was possible only at the death- bed of a prominent nobleman.44 Since one finds in the records a number of hardly believable stories (e.g., that in the construction of new institutes, only German workers and craftsmen should be employed),45 such stories might indeed contain a kernel of truth. However, the division of the faculties was not as fixed as one might imagine, and in several instances it was either questioned or deliberately violated. The theological faculty remained undivided until 1891 owing to the influence of Prague’s Prince-Bishop Friedrich Schwarzenberg; after his death in 1885, Prague theologians hindered the division for six more years by appealing to his legacy.46 In addition, the university administration, the ar- chives, and the university library were not divided until the interwar period. But the supposed academic disintegration had even more flaws. Recent his- toriographical research has uncovered many more informal contacts among professors in Prague, even though these were hidden from the public eye in informal places such as the Café Louvre. Indeed, renowned scholars such