Seite - 178 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

178 ♦  Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 left free for Privatdozenten, thus limiting the number of appointments. But the ministry was also skepti- cal about habilitating large numbers of scholars and only hesitantly agreed to a few faculty proposals. This affected scholars from the non-Habsburg areas of the German Confederation most of all; they were rejected be- cause their foreign diplomas were not acknowledged. But political issues could also be a problem. In 1862 Józef Oettinger, an active progres- sive Jewish politician, was proposed as a Privatdozent for the history of medicine but was rejected by the min- istry, which accused him of being a “fanatical Pole” who organized nationalist celebrations as a leading member of the Cracow Reform Synagogue.10 This was, however, one of the very few habilitations that were accepted by the university but opposed by the ministry during this period. After the liberalization of Habsburg policies, the provincial government had no objections to Oettinger, and, seconding this recommendation, the ministry agreed to his habilitation in 1869.11 The language issue rarely led to conflicts; if it did, it was mostly shortly before the language changes. German-speaking professors obstructed the appointments of scholars who were not fluent in German, and Polish pro- fessors proposed Polish-speaking scholars irrespective of their knowledge of German. The trend here was opposition to the appointments of the other group’s candidates, with one side claiming that “Polish” scholars had poor scientific qualifications and the other not only arguing in favor of their scholarliness (Polish-language scholars stressed that the nominees were at figure 5 Józef Dietl, elected rector in 1861, became the most important spokesman of the pro-Polish professorate of the Jagiellonian Uni- versity and, after being prematurely pensioned, became the mayor of Cracow. (Walery Rzewus- ki Museum of History of Photography, Cracow / Muzeum Historii Fotografii im. Walerego Rze- wuskiego w Krakowie, MHF 20099/II. Photog- rapher: Zakład fotograficzny Rzewuski Walery.)