Page - 218 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

218 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 Most important, however, universities, as places of cultural presentation, came to represent not only a national linguistic ideal but also a religious ideal centered around Catholicism, agreed on not only by the public and the min- istry but also by the majority of scholars, who were predominantly Catholic. One cannot, however, say that the universities were exclusively Catholic, or even exclusively Christian. After the Thun-Hohenstein period (1849–60), when the Catholic ideal of a university was virtually prescribed, the num- ber of non-Catholics rose. Nevertheless, the career progress of Jewish and atheist scholars was hindered. In the first place, this occurred in the fac- ulties themselves, since the majority of full professors were conservative Catholics. Also, radical student groups at most universities in the monarchy were increasingly, and also violently, opposed to the appointment of Jewish scholars. All this created difficult questions for faculties and a sense that the appointment of such scholars could cause serious disturbances. This also had significant consequences for the spatial policy of the Cisleithanian universities. After the liquidation of the Ministry of Religion and Education in 1860, the Unterrichtsrath largely continued the confessional policies of Leo Thun- Hohenstein. Similarly, the church’s interest in university matters remained unchanged. In the 1860s controversy arose once more over the religious char- acter of universities, involving the question of the inclusion of the Protestant theological faculty into the university in Vienna, including church officials.5 This clash intensified the divergences between Catholics and non-Catholics both in the university and in the public sphere, which did not cease until the end of the century. In January 1861 a self-declared majority of scholars, under the leadership of Josef Hyrtl, proposed that a declaration be written that the University of Vienna would become exclusively Catholic, which also found support in the Unterrichtsrath and the Catholic public sphere. The majority of the scientific press, which would have preferred a declaration calling for a clear-cut division between scientific and religious issues, se- verely criticized this informal assertion of Catholic predominance.6 But once more the university showed which side of the ideological struggle it favored. When it was the turn of the medical faculty to propose the rector of the uni- versity, it chose Hyrtl; his two speeches—his acceptance speech in 1864 on materialism and his speech on church domination over science, given on the occasion of the university’s five-hundredth anniversary in 1865—became (in)famous because of their controversial assertion of a conservative Catholic worldview.7