Page - 200 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

200 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 Czech organizations and participated in popular projects such as Ottův slovník naučny (Otto’s encyclopedia).107 He also published in German in the proceedings of the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences, much like his Czech colleagues. His educational achievements were even more impressive, and his students shaped histology well into the twentieth century.108 While Rohon did not publish in Slovakian, Obrzut and Horbačevs’kyj wrote in Polish and Ruthenian (respectively) in addition to Czech and German.109 As can be observed with other scholars in the empire, there were often three language “types” they could use: that of the institution, that of the linguistic culture they identified with, and German, the scientific lingua franca. In many cases these three converged in one language (i.e., German), and only in rare cases did the three types correspond to three different languages. Since Galicia often resorted to hiring scholars from the German and Russian Empires, the search for a “Polish” scholar there had a different significance. The language argument was used, as in Bohemia, with na- tional categories in mind, and since the category of linguistic adequacy was flexible, it helped the majority of the faculty force scholars with un- wanted cultural affiliations out of the university. When the chair of surgery in Cracow was to be filled in 1882, the faculty clearly favored scholars known for their patriotic Polish engagement.110 At the same time, it opposed Johann/Jan Mikulicz-Radecki, who was backed by the Viennese star sur- geon Theodor Billroth. The commission acknowledged his practical and scientific abilities but could not confirm his language skills.111 In L’viv the faculties rejected several habilitations by Jewish scholars without any clear reasons.112 One of the unsuccessful candidates, Naphtali Sobel, was also a victim of Galicia’s intellectual life, which was increasingly turning its back on the German language and everything associated with it (see above for details); however, the argument would likely have been different had Sobel not been Jewish. Candidates’ knowledge of Polish was carefully analyzed and discussed during appointment procedures. For non-Galician scholars who published in German, the faculty was often unsure whether the nominees’ fluency was sufficient for lecturing. With two personally mediated exceptions, Czech-speaking scholars from Bohemia were not taken into consider- ation for possible appointments and habilitations owing to their linguistic insufficiency.113 Also, Galician universities could not recruit their entire professorship from among their own graduates or scholars identifying as Poles, especially