Page - 251 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 7 ♦  251 Hertha Firnberg (1970–83) substantially reorganize the tertiary education system in Austria.38 One reason for the pervasiveness of the Habsburg system, and perhaps the most important one, was that by 1918 the most prominent universi- ties—in Cracow, Prague, and Vienna—had already been acting according to national geographies. Because they were the centers of the three linguistic sections of the Habsburg Empire before the Great War, they simply contin- ued to play this role in the new states. While this is quite clear for Austria and Czechoslovakia, where basically one model predominated, Poland could draw on three imperial experiences. The academic senate of the Jagiellonian University, however, opposed modeling the university laws on Russian or German institutions and succeeded in convincing the government to retain the old Habsburg laws, thereby, they argued, continuing a glorious organiza- tional tradition extending from the times of the university founder Casimir III (1310–70) through Franz Joseph to an independent Poland.39 Clearly, smaller changes took place, such as the introduction of remuneration for Privatdozenten in most of the new states, increases in specialization (as in the faculties for sciences in Poland and Czechoslovakia), and the distinction between the law curriculum and that for political sciences. However, at the level of metaregulations, the 1849 reforms survived until World War II. New Spaces Given the new state boundaries, in 1918 the personnel at post-Habsburg universities encountered the question of loyalties anew. After the Habs- burg per iod had witnessed the dualism of loyalism and nationalism, which were not necessarily conflicting ideals, the new countries demanded that the political and intellectual cadres align themselves with the communities they were to represent. This meant no end of complications, though, and academic migration proved to be a complicated exercise in the geographic amassment of peoples within newly drawn boundaries. Many imperial scholars and pol- iticians had been educated and had lived in structures that no longer existed; hence, for them, moving, say, from Vienna to Bratislava or Warsaw was now more a migration to a new country than a return to the motherland. Indeed, some intellectuals had difficulties finding their own direction after the end of their respective empires.40 However, some migration was forced because individuals did not adhere to the new rules, did not speak the language