Seite - 29 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 1 ♦  29 nationalized scholarship did not offer fierce opposition to state institutions, which were tuned toward other educational scientific models, to the dis- may of many who envisioned freedom and liberalism, irrespective of their cultural or ideological background. It was rather a complementary system separate from state-supported institutions and turning toward a new public. Clearly, many scholars saw the problem of lack of communication across the empire and proposed statist solutions, such as the creation of an academy of sciences, a place uniting scholars from throughout the monarchy and offering them opportunities for communication. Centralizing Science: The Imperial Academy Because the regional aristocrats were investing in local societies, and the central government remained disinterested in forging new knowledge, inter- est in a centralized scholarly institution was limited. The aristocracy even openly complained in the 1840s that the creation of a central learned society would diminish the importance of the well-functioning regional societies and lead to unwanted centralization.41 Provincial elites were clearly opting for a monarchy where cultural distinctiveness was cherished, and scholarship was one means to support this. The creation of a Viennese academy, which had already been proposed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz around 1700,42 was opposed not only by many aristocrats but by Metternich as well, who initially did not support the idea of autonomous science and scholarship. He would al- low the academy only if it were in the political interests of the empire, and this was not the case until after 1845, when pressure against censorship and an oppressive regime grew stronger. The Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts, inaugurated in 1847, served, however, not only as a meeting point for scholars but also as a project structuring the scholarly geography of the em- pire, centered on the capital city. The absence of the word royal (königlich) from the academy’s name symbolized that the Cisleithanian part stood at the center, thus securing Hungarian distinctiveness at the scholarly level. Speakers at the inauguration of the academy underscored its political role beyond any doubt. Its aim, apart from forging scholarship, was “to se- cure the . . . beneficial knowledge and experience . . . as well as to support the government’s functions through answering questions and problems that belong to the scope of scholarship.” 43 Metternich saw the institution as both a state-controlled outlet for scholars and a means to better the empire’s