Page - 237 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 6 ♦  237 some semesters.108 In Vienna and Prague, Jewish students were thus overrep- resented relative to the overall population, while in Galicia and Bukovina the proportions were representative of the general population, and in Graz and Innsbruck the numbers were low: in some semesters there were no students of Jewish confession in Tyrol. At the same time, estimates for Vienna indicate that around 10 percent of those appointed to professorships were Jews, but the number of Jewish Privatdozenten was much higher.109 Steven Beller, for instance, estimates that the proportion of Jewish scholars in Vienna in 1910 was around 40 percent (between 50 percent and 60 percent in the medical faculty, and 21 percent in the philosophical faculty).110 While the exact number for Prague is unknown, during the debate of 1907 (see below) it was considered to be disproportionally high, although, as at Vienna, fewer Jewish scholars reached the higher levels of academia. Likewise, statistics for Chernivtsi indicate that 10 percent of professors were Jewish, while the number at other German-language universities was statistically negligible.111 This disparity was often discussed in public, and it merged with tradi- tional Catholic anti-Semitism to nourish the popular image of the Verjudung (Jewification) of scientific institutions. One must add, however, that Catholic- based anti-Semitism—already of a racial variety—must be considered a public cultural othering that affected, especially in Vienna, assimilated Jews who saw themselves as members of the German bourgeoisie. This was a situation similar to that of the Poles of the Mosaic confession, including those who were clearly aligned with the Polish national groups, such as the above-mentioned Gumplowicz, Natanson, and Askenazy. The issue of assimilation was perceived differently by the different groups involved, ranging from a sign of “civilization” and “progress” (Haskala and Reform Judaism, and the liberal and socialist press) to a signal of racial and cultural decadence (Christian Social parties, radical nationalists), with a nationalist imaginary dominating over the course of the century. A discussion in the Polish-language journal Krytyka in 1914 can help illustrate academic discrimination in the early twentieth century. A letter to the editor described several cases of Jewish assistants at the medical faculty of the University of Cracow who were denied the possibility of habilitation and then emigrated. In response, the anonymous “Doctor K.L.,” from the tone of the article neither Jewish himself nor really a pro-Jewish supporter, claimed this to be a loss for Polish science. While the faculty was now closed to Jewish scholars, the author named several Jewish physicians who