Seite - 71 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Chapter 2 ♦  71 speak Polish: for the chair of pathological anatomy and, as German-speaking counterparts of Majer and Kozubowski, in physiology and anatomy.109 All other scholars nominated at the time had been born in Galicia, and they re- mained at the university after the language changes in 1861. At least two of these, Józef Dietl and Antoni Bryk, admitted that German was their primary language when giving their acceptance speeches. However, Dietl swiftly became a Polish nationalist activist, while Bryk taught in Polish and partic- ipated in Polish-language scholarly endeavors. The medical and natural sciences were the exception rather than the rule, however. In the humanities, the period between 1848 and 1860 witnessed a real revolution, setting the scene not only for major developments within the universities but also for an enormous change in the intellectual atmosphere throughout the empire. In the following, I illustrate these developments in three disciplines that were reformed with a Habsburg distinctiveness from “German” ideas in mind; in the late nineteenth century, these disciplines’ trajectories united the Habsburg space. First, historiography was attuned to show Habsburg commonalities, as well as linkages among the provinces; it simultaneously fostered provincial histories and the narrative of state unity. Its central institution, the Institute of Austrian Historical Research (Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung [IAHR]), produced the most cen- tral European historians well into the twentieth century. Moreover, while scholars at the provincial scholarly societies turned to national histories,110 the narratives emanating from the universities, even from the Slavic ones in Prague and Cracow, were far more conciliatory.111 Second, the concentration on comparative theories in all branches of linguistic research challenged ideas of national distinctiveness, bringing forward the linguistic entangle- ments of the past and the present and hailing them as beneficial. The scholars nominated in this period showed a marked disinterest in both the linguistic purism so treasured by nationalist activists and the histories of literatures, the main component of the imagining of nations.112 Finally, the vision of phi- losophy that Thun-Hohenstein followed in his nominations opened Habsburg academia to a range of Catholic approaches, like Karl Christian Krause’s panentheism and Anton Günther’s speculative theology. At the same time, Thun-Hohenstein fought against Hegelian or Kantian ideas, blaming them for stimulating revolutionary events such as 1848.113 This, on one hand, left a void within secular approaches, which was filled in the 1870s by positivist and neopositivist philosophy and, on the other hand, ensured the prominence of Catholic philosophies at the universities well into the fin de siècle.