Page - 236 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

236 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 professorship was established in Vienna in 1885, followed by one at the German University in Prague in 1892 and, later, positions at other faculties, except Cracow; most of the universities had associate professorships in this field, but the Czech University in Prague had only a Privatdozent.103 The professionalization of Semitic philology, which was also taught at theolog- ical faculties, meant that it was not covered exclusively by Jewish scholars. Gustav Bickell, a converted Jew and politically involved Catholic, held the chair of Semitic languages in Vienna from 1892.104 Readers in Semitic lan- guages were similarly rare. While all universities included readers of French, Italian, and English, they rarely offered Czech, Russian/Ruthenian, Hebrew, or Yiddish. In contrast, other, much rarer languages were taught on a reg- ular basis, such as Armenian in L’viv, Lithuanian in Cracow, and Spanish, Modern Greek, and Hungarian in Vienna. Jewish scholars met with a number of obstacles on their way to accep- tance in academia. Although, officially, habilitation did not take confession into account, and in 1867 Jewish emancipation was proclaimed, the general atmosphere of polite hostility in both society and the university certainly inhibited Jews from entering academia, especially Jews who were migrat- ing from the east to the capital, who were victims of a cultural othering by both culturally assimilated Jews and an anti-Semitic public.105 In Galicia and Bohemia, their options were cultural assimilation or othering.106 Jewish scholars who assimilated met with fewer obstacles, and most of the national groups of the Habsburg Empire included prominent and influential intellec- tuals of Jewish faith. In absolute numbers, the number of Jewish students in Cisleithania grew almost continuously, but since the overall student population was soaring in the Habsburg Empire, relative statistics give a more balanced view of the confessional division at universities. Around 1890 Jewish inhabitants constituted around 9 percent of the population in Vienna (having grown rapidly from 2 percent in 1857), 9 percent in Prague, and around 30 percent in Cracow, L’viv, and Chernivtsi; smaller but growing numbers, especially after 1900, were found in Graz and Innsbruck.107 At the university in Vienna, young Jews accounted for around a third of all students (peaking in 1885), predominantly in medical and legal studies. Similarly, at the Charles- Ferdinand University in Prague (and later the German Charles-Ferdinand University), Cracow, and L’viv, between 20 and 30 percent of all students were Jewish, similarly concentrated on medical and legal studies; at the law faculty in Chernivtsi, more than 50 percent of the students were Jewish in