Seite - 74 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

74 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 The universities in Prague and Galicia also experienced new trends in historiographical research. Thun-Hohenstein searched for bilingual scholars who would support his idea of Catholic state patriotism, and thus finding candidates was not always easy. It proved especially complicated in Galicia, as most known Polish-speaking historians had either been involved in Polish uprisings or actively supported Polish nationalism and thus were unsuitable. Thun-Hohenstein also shunned nominating the towering figure of historiog- raphy in Prague, “the historian of the Czech nation,” the Hussite promoter Palacký.126 Nevertheless, the minister also clearly hesitated to appoint scholars to these universities who could be regarded as cultural or national foreigners or could spark nationalistic conflicts. Even in L’viv, fluency in all three languages of the city—German, Polish, and Ruthenian—was seen as a prerequisite.127 While agreeing with the need for knowledge of local languages, Thun-Hohenstein appointed only those men who supported his ideologi- cal principles. The universities protested vehemently, claiming that more prominent historians were available. In Cracow, ignoring faculty protests, Thun-Hohenstein decided to nominate Antoni Walewski, a conservative loyalist with no major historical publications and no formal education in history.128 Walewski was rumored to be a formal secret agent of the Habsburg government whose aim was to undermine the Polish character of the Jagiellonian University, for example, in the actions against the allegedly nationalist agitation of several professors in 1853.129 With cultural conflict looming in Bohemia, the ministry decided on a two-professor solution in Prague: one chair of history would be associated with German culture, the other with Czech culture. As the Czech chair, Thun-Hohenstein appointed his close friend, Václav Vladivoj Tomek, who not only was conservative and Catholic but also promoted a positive picture of German-Czech relations, making him an apt candidate for a university position in the bilingual province.130 As I demonstrate later, Tomek was a loyal supporter of Thun-Hohenstein’s administration and philosophy re- garding the development of the university. His “German” counterpart was Constantin Höfler, the Großdeutsch131 ultramontane historian of Catholicism recently dismissed by Munich, who seemingly also cherished Tomek’s sup- port.132 In his first years in Prague, Höfler published a broad range of studies on Bohemian history, and he befriended and cooperated with Palacký and Šafárik, managing the cultural tensions well.133 While German culture and a German civilizing mission had always been at the forefront of his writing,