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76 ♦ Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918
The new philology, accentuating exegesis and grammar in place of
the previous mechanical learning of vocabulary and translation,138 played
a prominent role in the cultivation of classical values but was also an emi-
nently political issue. This was not only because of the stress on researching
minutia and the rejection of grand narratives. Paradigmatic here is the
chair in Prague. Georg Curtius was appointed professor and director of
the Philological Seminar (Philologisches Seminar), and August Schleicher
was appointed shortly thereafter as an associate professor of comparative
linguistics. These nominations were important for two reasons: they counter-
balanced the long-serving but unproductive full professor Michael Canaval,
and both newly nominated scholars worked on comparative linguistics,
which owing to its emphasis on similarity and contact among languages was
of political importance in the multinational monarchy. One can clearly per-
ceive the political dimension of this innovation in both Schleicher’s linguistic
Stammbaumtheorie (family-tree theory) and Curtius’s research on classical
philology. While Schleicher promoted the close kinship of Lettish-Slavic and
Germanic as Indo-Germanic “sister languages,”139 Curtius wrote that “com-
parative linguistics has proven that countless centuries before the beginning
of Greek and Italian history, the common ancestors of the Indians, Persians,
Greeks, Romans, Germanic people, Slavs and Celts constituted one folk.”140
This vision was strongly reminiscent of the narratives of the past that
historical research was to provide, according to the political imagination of
the conservatives. Emphasis on the political value of philology was quite
common. Curtius’s successor, Ludwig Lange, even included a version of a
political program for nationalities, which sought to unite them in spite of
their cultural differences in the pursuit of the higher aim of humanity. In his
inaugural lecture, he described Greek and Roman ideals as a “spiritually
refining force . . . in a present dampened by materialism, especially for youth,
[who are] receptive to all things good and beautiful.” Moreover, he contin-
ued, “we can learn from the Romans how one can remain fully national and
nonetheless achieve humanity. As Romans did not become Greeks, the new
nations [Völker], be they Slavs or Germans, should not dismiss their national
peculiarities, if they are valuable; nationality should only be cleansed of the
muck in the acid test of attempts at humanity.”141
The prominent role of comparative linguistics in the appointment policy
of the 1850s was not visible only in the cases of Schleicher and Curtius;
comparative studies was a popular political device for accentuating national
interconnections. In particular, it highlighted the role of research on the
original language of the Slavs, seen, depending on the author, as Old Church
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Buch Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space"
Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918
A Social History of a Multilingual Space
- Titel
- Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918
- Untertitel
- A Social History of a Multilingual Space
- Autor
- Jan Surman
- Verlag
- Purdue University Press
- Ort
- West Lafayette
- Datum
- 2019
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- PD
- ISBN
- 978-1-55753-861-1
- Abmessungen
- 16.5 x 25.0 cm
- Seiten
- 474
- Schlagwörter
- History, Austria, Eduction System, Learning
- Kategorien
- Geschichte Vor 1918
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- List of Illustrations vi
- List of Tables vii
- Acknowledgments ix
- Note on Language Use, Terminology, and Geography xi
- Abbreviations xiii
- Introduction A Biography of the Academic Space 1
- Chapter 1 Centralizing Science for the Empire 19
- Chapter 2 The Neoabsolutist Search for a Unified Space 49
- Chapterr 3 Living Out Academic Autonomy 89
- Chapter 4 German-Language Universities between Austrian and German Space 139
- Chapter 5 Habsburg Slavs and Their Spaces 175
- Chapter 6 Imperial Space and Its Identities 217
- Chapter 7 Habsburg Legacies 243
- Conclusion Paradoxes of the Central European Academic Space 267
- Appendix 1 Disciplines of Habilitation at Austrian Universities 281
- Appendix 2 Databases of Scholars at Cisleithanian Universities 285
- Notes 287
- Bibliography 383
- Index 445