Seite - 27 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 1 ♦  27 With time, regional societies, initially pluricultural and not tied to a particular national group, were increasingly inscribed into nationalistic policies, and their resources were used to propagate different national posi- tions. Paradigmatic here is the Patriotic Museum in Bohemia. In the article advertising the opening of the museum in 1818, Franz Graf von Kolowrat clearly depicted science and scholarship as a means to forge a transcultural understanding: “The history of all people [Völker] identifies epochs in which the energy of nations, directed outward, excited by long tempests, when calmness returns, reclaims itself, reconciles bedraggled muses, and elevates the arts and sciences to flourish.”36 However, in due course, the museum con- tributed substantially to the establishment of Czech nationalism by opening its publications to Czech-speaking authors. From 1827 the Patriotic Museum in Bohemia published the Monthly of the Society of the Patriotic Museum in Bohemia, in Czech and German versions (Monatsschrift der Gesellschaft des Vaterländischen Museums in Böhmen and Časopis Společnosti wlastenského museum w Čechách), both edited by František Palacký. Although both jour- nals were established to “foster enlightened knowledge among the people [líd],”37 their content differed: Časopis dealt mostly with Czech literature and history (publishing analyses as well as, for example, poems). Indeed, the editorial for the first edition stated, “Often proclaimed and felt in our nation was the need for such a journal, which, adapted to the knowledge of the more enlightened [people] among the folk, fills the gaps and deficiencies existing in our language and literature. . . . [T]he content of the journal will be: firstly the broad scope of useful sciences and arts, then the knowledge of the homeland, and finally and especially the answer to the needs of our language and literature.”38 The German-speaking publication also included a wide range of his- torical and philological studies concerned with the Czech nation and with Slavic culture but met with only marginal interest, with fewer than two hundred readers per issue. In 1830 it began to appear quarterly, and by 1832 it had been canceled; readers were informed that the journal would appear irregularly, which heralded the end of its existence.39 The Czech journal was renamed Časopis Českeho Museum (Journal of the Bohemian Museum), and financial problems forced it under the patronage of the Czech Foundation (Matice česká), an autonomous branch of the museum concerned with lit- erature that also owned a printing house specializing in Czech-language publications. Scholars gathered around these early museum-built networks of Czech patriotic scholars and educated a public desperate to hear spoken