Page - 220 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

220 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 and at the University of Cracow,11 stood behind him, the pressure of public opinion, which accused Wahrmund of religious betrayal and of being a Jew, finally led to Wahrmund’s transfer from Innsbruck to Prague.12 Because of the Cisleithanian universities’ constitution and the domi- nance of full professors, the universities, as assemblies of scholars, could hardly be progressive, and the strengthening of liberal thinking around 1900 was a belated version of the liberalism of the 1870s rather than a reaction to contemporary developments. (Indeed, most academics remained aloof from the more radical political views commonly held by the public and students around the fin de siècle, particularly ideas of socialism and nationalism.) This was not liberalism in the modern sense but a “fragmented” liberalism,13 constituting an antithesis to the academic atmosphere following the initial reforms of 1848, which, in turn, at least for the first few years, were consti- tuted as opposing the restrictions of the Vormärz period. Similarly, as demands for language changes emerged as an internal issue in Cracow, L’viv, and Prague, belatedly in comparison with the demands of the press or public opinion, the question of religion was more an external issue than an internally perceived problem of the universities. Because stu- dents assumed the role of pioneers in both the conflict over language and that over religion, professors were increasingly confronted with clashing political positions within academia; at the end of the century, a variety of extreme positions that had broad social and political support contested those of the academics. In comparison with the question of, say, female students and ac- ademic teachers, which had been debated in academic senates, declarations on ideological disputes were not officially issued, except that in isolated cases the universities drafted declarations of neutrality. Except during World War I, when the political role of scholars changed, university scholars were far from taking on the pioneering role some had assumed in 1848, and with the exception of a minority of engaged scholars who acted as public intel- lectuals (who were marginalized in academia),14 the university was turning into an intellectual ivory tower. Looking at the names of the creators of the Volksbildung (folk education, i.e., popular courses for the broader populace) and its most prominent lecturers, one can see that, for these scholars, en- gagement in the popularization of science went hand in hand with a lack of academic capital in universities.15 The unwillingness of professors to accommodate controversy within academia was visible, for example, in the rejection of modern art, not only in the famous conflict over the Fakultätsbilder (Faculty paintings) of Gustav