Seite - 54 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

54 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 and May 1848, Franz Freiherr von Sommaruga, announcing the abandon- ment of censorship and the introduction of freedom of learning and teaching, saw “German universities” as models but clearly stated that their structure should be adopted “only as much as the conditions in the fatherland allow.”23 At the same time, in Exner’s view, the success of “non-Austrian German universities” supported the introduction of their system, which was even seen as necessary because “future cross-boundary communication between them and the Austrian universities requires it.”24 This pointed in the direction of exchange but also redefined the desired boundaries of the scientific space. Thun-Hohenstein’s confidant Carl Ernst Jarcke, an influential Prussian-born jurist, in a memorandum in 1849 also pleaded for free exchange, arguing that Prussia “owes its influence in Germany, which reaches far beyond its material power, mostly to the fact that it was able to obtain, if it wished, any higher talent from every corner of Germany.”25 However, academic reciproc- ity was not without its limits: “I would recommend that inviting Protestant teachers to Austrian universities should at least not be the rule,” wrote Jarcke in the same text.26 Making Austria a “Catholic counterbalance to Prussia” was hailed in 1853 as one of the major tasks of the university system.27 The development of the philosophical faculties hints at the role of schol- arship as a means of both external propaganda and internal popularization of the state ideology. Their foremost duty was the education of teachers and the production of textbooks. If one considers the number of foreign scholars appointed, new seminars created, and books bought for the libraries, phil- osophical faculties were ridiculously expensive, especially since student numbers were low. Directly after the completion of the reforms in 1853, the philosophical faculties in Cracow, Graz, and Innsbruck each had fewer than 20 students, L’viv had 75, and Vienna and Prague each had slightly fewer than 100. The medical and law faculties, in contrast, witnessed growing demand.28 In 1855 the philosophical faculty in Vienna had 24 professors and 275 students, while its medical faculty had 19 professors and 579 students through most of the 1850s; even the theological faculty was more popular than the philosophical faculty.29 Defending the reforms, Thun-Hohenstein often expressed his concep- tion of science as a panacea for the national and social problems of the Habsburg “composite state.”30 One could say that science and scholarship, and thus universities, became one of the favored channels of propaganda and a source of arguments to legitimize certain claims, be they loyalist, pa- triotic, nationalistic, or whatever. In Thun-Hohenstein’s eyes, the monarchy