Page - 253 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 7 ♦  253 the founders of the University of Belgrade’s medical faculty, can be named as one of several prominent examples.45 Nonetheless, such moves away from Vienna were more the exception than the rule. One has to consider that this faculty was gigantic in comparison to others, with many scholars having low chances at a professorship, especially given the new smaller Austrian reality. In general, most scholars active at German-language universities during the Habsburg period remained in Austria. Although there is no comprehen- sive list, one can find only a few scholars per faculty who left for abroad.46 Indeed, the potential for migration was not high since the imperial, multicul- tural pan-Habsburg universities had disappeared long before the Great War. These changes did not affect only Austria, since every Habsburg uni- versity entertained scholars with various cultural allegiances. Thus, this also held for the former Galicia, where the new boundaries meant that some professors were now “foreigners.” Notably, both Cracow and L’viv professors of German language and literature remained at their universities until they retired; as noted above, there were no really qualified Poles to teach this subject. But most non-Polish scholars left. The goodbyes were not always easy. Two Czech physicians who left during the war, moving to universi- ties in Czechoslovakia, apparently retained no contact with their previous institutions, and one of them was the subject of a local scandal.47 After the Polish-Ukrainian conflict over L’viv, there was no option for Ukrainian scholars to remain there either, and they turned to both internal and external migration (see below); unresolved issues also remained, such as the issue of pensions for scholars who left Poland.48 The German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague The case of the German University in Prague can help illustrate how minority institutions functioned in the new states. The new cultural power relations meant major changes and problems for the power and cultural divisions within Prague. Even before the Lex Mareš (Mareš Law, 19 February 1920)49 declared the Czech University the only successor to the ancient Charles (-Ferdinand) University and named the German University simply Německá univerzita v Praze (German University in Prague), the Czech University had seized the previously joint university buildings, archives, insignia, as- tronomical observatory, and so on. New rules were enacted, even for the division of cadavers among the medical faculties; instead of the previous