Seite - 279 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

Conclusion ♦  279 Empire profoundly changed its structure, but not in an either-or relation, as historians writing about nationalisms tearing apart Habsburg central Europe have claimed. Instead of a narrative of the empire’s slow demise, Judson speaks of the empire accommodating nationalist demands, and of the ways national movements were shaped by imperial structures and possibilities.21 In a similar manner, John Deak has described the evolution of imperial statehood into a multinational space.22 As I have argued throughout this book, the geographic reorganization of the empire similarly reshaped and partially fragmented academia, but most early twentieth-century scholars did not contest the empire as such. They lived it and readily took hold of the opportunities it provided. For instance, when proposing reforms at their uni- versities, they kept the effects these changes would have on the whole empire in mind. This is true of most scholars at the German-language universities but also of most Slavic scholars, like Masaryk or the Cracow scholars who argued for the necessity of mathematical education in 1907. Even nationalist scholars took advantages of the resources the empire provided and bemoaned their lack after 1918. In contrast with the historiography that has come out of central European scholarship, this work suggests a large number of entanglements that I see as characteristic of the Habsburg Empire: a linguistically divided but still culturally entangled scientific space. Historians in the twentieth century have largely disregarded the productive edge of this multicultural state, the Habsburg Empire, looking at it with a national framework in mind. But during the empire’s existence, monoculturalism and trends toward intellec- tual seclusion were often outweighed by developments and changes favoring interdependence. Finally, my work suggests the necessity of greater inclusion of periph- eral histories in the general narrative of the Habsburg Empire, which also means rethinking it from a spatial perspective. In the particular case of uni- versities, it does not entail rewriting Habsburg history from the viewpoint of the periphery, although that would be a welcome perspective for other re- search foci.23 The history of universities, however, helps to demonstrate that the decision-making was imperial; that is, legal documents issued for, say, Chernivtsi, were also binding for Vienna. The legal discrimination against Jewish scholars, illustrated by Hermann Rosenberg’s forbidden habilita- tion in philosophy in L’viv in 1854, is one of many examples. Clearly, the ministry acted in accordance with this particular legal ruling for the next decade or so while making decisions for Vienna or Graz. And the ministry retained this structure of decision-making and legal interdependence until