Seite - 62 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

62 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 The Moravian scholar also drafted the final text of the petition, which gives insight into how Habsburg scholars perceived scholarship and its social role at the time. Apart from the arguments raised initially by Bratranek, the petition emphasized the locality of education and the universality of science: “The university is primarily to be considered a nursery and a base for the development of science; science is, though, of a universal nature; thus, its development will be held back by such establishments which are turned toward special and, besides that, very local [circumstances].”68 As most scientific texts were written in German, French, or English, reliance on translations for teaching slowed the free flow of knowledge. Not only did translations lag behind the originals, but not everything could be translated. Moreover, Polish did not possess a developed scientific terminology at the time, according to the petition, and even leading Polish scientists published in German owing to the lack of a Polish-reading public.69 The petitioners thus claimed that for the sake of science, it should be instructed in a world language, in this case German. The universality of science, as put forward in the petition, was not a mere argumentative device to legitimize the language change. The argu- ment here was that the scientific process necessitated the communication of results in the international arena, independent of language: “The scientific literature differs most sharply in its universality from the belles-lettres. While one has to appreciate that it perfectly demonstrates the nationality, and also the individuality of its bearer, the desirable thriving of science re- quires a strongly objective attitude, which rejects all national and individual sympathies.”70 This put the educational function of the university behind the imag- ined universality of a République des Lettres and of the dominant “world languages.” At the same time, science here was deprived of its locality; it became a cosmopolitan, transnational occupation, reserved only for elites. Local publication and circulation were not only secondary but also unim- portant for the production of scientific knowledge per se because they did not take place in the “learned languages.” Polish was nevertheless prominently mentioned in the petition as a language of science and scholarship, suggested as having a “lively future that was not to be doubted.”71 However, the petition continued, “it is of importance for students that their swift advancement in their scholarly development is not impeded through philological work on the perfection of [Polish scholarly] terminology.” Further, while the university