Seite - 10 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

10 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 The strengthening of national projects, which influenced all areas of cultural life, took place within the framework of Habsburg culture and the empire’s intellectual atmosphere. What was, however, the Habsburg imperial scientific space as imagined and practiced by scholars? A brief glance at its strategies and institutions should clarify this. The role of scholarship-related policy in structuring the Habsburg academic space can be illustrated by the opening of the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts (Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften und Künste) in Vienna in 1847. Klemens Wenzel Metternich, the minister of state (1821–48), saw it as both a state-controlled “valve” for scholars—fulfilling their wish to have an in- stitution to further their work and thus easing political tensions previously fueled by the lack of such a place—and a means to improve Habsburg’s standing internationally.43 During the discussions on the creation of the academy, its supraregional character was somewhat disputed both by pro- ponents of a strong Viennese center for science and by those who wanted the Viennese academy to reach the same level as the provincial learned societies of the time. Among the nominees in 1847 and early 1848 were not only Viennese scholars (who constituted about half the nominees) but also Czech-Bohemian, Hungarian, and Italian scholars, signifying the unity of the Habsburg scientific community at that time.44 Galicia, symbolically incorporated through Josef Russegger, a geologist and the administrator of the salt mines in Wieliczka/Großsalze (a corresponding member 45 of the academy in 1848), was officially excluded owing to the political turmoil in Galicia. Michał Wiszniewski, a professor of Polish literature in Cracow, was proposed as a corresponding member in 1848, but his nomination was re- jected by the emperor.46 The first Polish and Ruthenian scholars were chosen only in the late nineteenth century. The academy was to be imperial, as its name indicates; in reality, it never was. Non-German-speaking authors rarely published in its periodicals or participated in its book series. Creating the image of a united monarchy, the series Fontes Rerum Austriacarum (Austrian historical sources) in- cluded sources on imperial spaces that, although centered on Vienna, also included Bohemia in the fifteenth century (see volume 20 of the version edited by František Palacký in 1860).47 Apart from a number of works on various Habsburg monasteries, the most attention was paid to Veneto, a part of the monarchy that the Habsburgs were gradually losing at the time. One can also find documents on and from Carniola, Istria, and Transylvania but not Galicia. Indeed, the series Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, Bohemicarum,