Seite - 352 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 8352 in Vienna by Grand Duke Paul of Russia (1754–1801, r. as tsar 1796–1801) along with his duchess Sophia Dorothea of Württemberg (in Russia re-named Maria Feodorovna [1759–1828]), as well as the duke of Württemberg and his family, at the turn of 1781–82.25 The high stake for Joseph ii was to detach these realms  and dynasties from their Prussian sympathies, and one of the means was to arrange the marriage of a niece of Charles Eugene of Württemberg (1728–93, r.1737–93), Elisabeth (1767–90), to Joseph’s nephew Francis (1768– 1835, r.1792–1835) who—as the emperor lacked a male heir—by this time was a long-term candidate for the imperial throne. Accordingly—and contrary to Joseph’s character and inclinations—lavish entertainment was carefully de- signed, with feasts, balls and outings, visits to the imperial collections, opera performances, a demonstration of Farkas (Wolfgang von) Kempelen’s (1734– 1804) famous chess-playing machine, and a piano competition between Mo- zart and the Italian musician and composer Muzio Clementi (1752–1832). Be- sides these attractions, the program included two visits to the university: a formal one at the university’s annual celebration on the day of Immaculate Conception, and an informal one, on December 15, 1781, to the observatory. Hell showed the guests around and gave them an account of the “Lapland ex- pedition,” whereupon “His Majesty deigned to take the place of the teacher and, to the admiration of all, described the many instruments there, particu- larly the meridian line, and the use of those that H.M. had brought to the ob- servatory from the museum of prince Charles of Lorraine.”26 Despite such oc- casional honors, the fate of the academy plans showed that Hell’s scope of action on the institutional front had narrowed in the capital, while he was also becoming one of many respected but equal agents on a public scene that had its own rules of emulation, competition, recognition, and conflict resolution. This is also how he is recorded by the enthusiastic portraitist of that scene— from academic and polite sociability and literary life, through manners and morals, to hygiene and crime, and many more—writer and librarian Johann Pezzl (1756–1823) in his “sketches of Vienna”: as one of the remaining former Jesuit savants still capable of enhancing the renown of the university.27 One of the developments on that scene that Hell followed with a blend of dismay, consternation, and accommodation was the spread of German and the shrinking space for Latin. As a Hungarus, he wished to see Latin prevail as the lingua franca of his multi-ethnic fatherland. As a partisan of the Catholic Church, he savored a glorious past in which there existed a single, universal 25 For a detailed account of this episode, see Beales, Joseph ii, 2:126–32. 26 Beales, Joseph ii, 2:131. Cf. Wiener Zeitung, no. 101 (December 19, 1787): 10. 27 Johann Pezzl, Skizze von Wien (Vienna: Krauss, 1787), 5:746.