Page - 271 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Conclusion ♦  271 the demands for reforms, including acceptance of the equality of different national groups. Throughout the 1850s, however, and then under the min- ister of education Leo Thun-Hohenstein, a pro-state ideological direction was advocated. Conservative Catholic scholarship, promoting conservative nationalism, clearly prevailed. Several disciplines were to be Catholic only, such as philosophy, and positions of academic authority, such as the dean and rector, were similarly reserved for Catholics. While Protestant scholars could be appointed for professorships, this largely resulted from a lack of Catholic scholars in several disciplines, and such appointments remained rare. Most scholars from abroad whom the ministry appointed to teach at Habsburg universities were Catholics, and they had often experienced con- flict in their previous environment because of their religious denomination. In the 1870s the anti-ultramontane ministry grew skeptical about nominating Catholic scholars, but this was only a short-term change; most ministers of education preferred Catholics. In the 1870s scholars of Jewish faith became more widely represented at universities. Before 1868 they were clearly discriminated against by a combination of career discouragement and ministerial policy. This situa- tion changed after liberalization and the enactment of policies requiring equal treatment of denominations. However, the growing numbers of Jewish Privatdozenten and professors at the universities met with strong criticism from right-wing groups like the Christian Socialists. Combined with grow- ing anti-Semitic propaganda, this even led to assaults on individual scholars. By the end of the nineteenth century, the atmosphere in Graz and Innsbruck, cities with few Jewish inhabitants, had grown tense, leading the ministry to consider appointments of Jewish scholars to these cities carefully and mostly to decide on Catholic scholars instead. As a result, the universities in Vienna and Prague had a growing number of Jewish Privatdozenten who had little chance of being appointed to other universities. Owing to the re- luctance of the Viennese and Prague faculties to make home nominations, the possibility of promotion there was likewise limited. This meant that these Jewish scholars often worked in private clinics (a widespread prac- tice among physicians), extra-academic institutes (such as the Institute for Radium Research [Institut für Radiumforschung] in Vienna), or Vienna’s municipal institutions.5 Whereas in the German Empire Jewish scholars moved to institutions in smaller cities,6 in the Habsburg Empire they relo- cated to Vienna, contributing to the astounding flourishing of extramural research there.