Page - 228 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

228 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 freie Wissenschaft (Catholic worldview and free scholarship), published later as a brochure.58 This caused serious disturbances: conservatives protested on the streets of Innsbruck and demanded his dismissal from his professorial post, and university professors criticized Wahrmund in the local media. What began as a local Innsbruck conflict then expanded owing to the controversial actions of Nuncio Gennaro Granito Pignatelli di Belmonte, who intervened with the ministry, seeking to have Wahrmund dismissed from his duties; even if this intervention was unsuccessful, for many it meant that the nuncio had overstepped his competence. This was seen as a culture war, where culture refers not to an ethnic or linguistic affiliation but rather to religious confession. Progressive students of all national affiliations pro- tested against the church’s involvement in university matters and against the lack of a ministerial reaction, although for some intellectuals it remained a “German Volkstheater [people’s theater] in Austria.”59 In Prague, protests in favor of Wahrmund even led to the first joint demonstration by Czech and German students since 1859.60 The Wahrmund affair, however, showed not only that some matters in the fin de siècle counted more than nation, language, and ethnicity but also that the government did not really know how to balance the legal autonomy of universities with the growing Catholic and German-national pressure. In this instance, Wahrmund was officially relocated to Prague and even received a higher salary; in other cases, however, the ministry clearly took a pro-Catholic stance.61 Since future ministers were unwilling to aggravate the confessional ruptures, not unlike the situation with nationalist tensions, Salzburg gained a university only in 1962.62 The Ideology of the Empire: Catholicism While the Wahrmund affair demonstrated that the few religious issues that did arise led to heated debates, the ministry and the faculties discussed the endurance of a Catholic worldview in academia secretly behind closed doors. Catholicism penetrated into Cisleithanian universities throughout the state, and scholars applying for positions were well aware of it; young scholars often mentioned that they were Catholic in their curricula vitae when applying for habilitation. This was a widespread practice, especially at the German University in Prague, where candidates seeking to become Privatdozenten also frequently added the ethnic designation “of German