Page - 277 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Conclusion ♦  277 quite clearly, not only that scholarly productivity rose when scholars were allowed to teach and write in their preferred language but also that, at the same time, they published more in international languages and sought out international contacts. The vital difference was whether academics had to write in only one language or had a choice of languages. This was, unsur- prisingly, discipline specific. While scholars working in the natural sciences published, with few exceptions, in several languages, those in the humanities chose to write in the languages of their reading public, and this, again unsur- prisingly, affected the topics they chose to deal with. This period also saw the foundation of disciplines that pertained to the humanities and that en- gaged in the processes of nation and empire building. And German-speaking scholars were also involved in these processes, tuning their disciplines to specific needs. With this observation in mind, one can apply some of the conclusions from this study of Habsburg scholarship to the current debates on the lan- guage of science, scholarship, and higher education. This adds neatly to Michael Gordin’s history of changing ideas about the principal languages of science by showing the ramifications of nationalism for the German language. In Gordin’s narrative, English becomes strengthened as a proxy language in which results by non-English-language scholars are repro- duced.18 In central Europe, German had this role; interestingly, while the motivation to write in it changed—from belonging to the imperial corps to wanting to present national science internationally—its predominance did not. World War I only slightly scratched German’s predominance, although it was already, as Gordin also remarks, losing its attraction as the global scientific language by then. While it is clear that English is currently the language of the natural sciences, the discussion about the language for the humanities is ongoing. In particular, the application of a point system from the natural sciences in the humanities, privileging international peer-reviewed English-language journals, has met with widespread criticism by academics. While I did not analyze in this book the connections among the language of publication, pub- lications’ content, and their intended readership in detail, I have attempted to describe the connection between universities and the humanities. One can be sure that the disciplines that supported national claims—and in central Europe nationalism facilitated the humanities’ rise to power considerably— will change once the language their findings are presented in changes. One cannot, however, be certain in which direction the trend will go—the recent revival of conservative policies reinforces, for instance, both publishing in