Overview

Combining history of science and a history ofuniversities with the new imperial history, Universitiesin Imperial Austria 1848–1918: A Social History of a Multilingual Space by Jan Surman analyzes the practice of scholarly migration and its lastinginfluence on the intellectual output in the Austrian part of the HabsburgEmpire. The Habsburg Empire and its successor stateswere home to developments that shaped Central Europe's scholarship well into the twentieth century. Universities became centers of both state- and nation-building,as well as of confessional resistance, placing scholars if not in conflict,then certainly at odds with the neutral international orientation of academe. By going beyond national narratives, Surman reveals the Empire as a state with institutions divided by language but united by legislation, practices, and other influences. Such an approach allows readers a better view to how scholars turned gradually away from state-centric discourse to form distinct language communities after 1867; these influences affected scholarship, and by examining the scholarly record, Surman tracks the turn. Drawing on archives in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Ukraine, Surman analyzes the careers of several thousandscholars from the faculties of philosophy and medicine of a number of Habsburguniversities, thus covering various moments in the history of the Empire forthe widest view. Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918 focuses on the tension between the political and linguistic spaces scholars occupied and shows that this tension did not lead to a gradual dissolution of the monarchy’s academia, but rather to an ongoing development of new strategies to cope with the cultural and linguistic multitude.

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9781557538376

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Reviews

Jan Surman's book is required reading for anyone interested in the ideal of multiculturalism in the history of education. It grapples with one of the core paradoxes of modern science: the expectation that science is an inherently universal enterprise, and yet also a fledgling nation's best hope for development. His archival research is unprecedented in its scope and analytical nuance. Altogether a tour de force.

Jan Surman's book is required reading for anyone interested in the ideal of multiculturalism in the history of education. It grapples with one of the core paradoxes of modern science: the expectation that science is an inherently universal enterprise, and yet also a fledgling nation's best hope for development. His archival research is unprecedented in its scope and analytical nuance. Altogether a tour de force.--Deborah R. Coen, Yale University

Jan Surman's book is required reading for anyone interested in the ideal of multiculturalism in the history of education. It grapples with one of the core paradoxes of modern science: the expectation that science is an inherently universal enterprise, and yet also a fledgling nation's best hope for development. His archival research is unprecedented in its scope and analytical nuance. Altogether a tour de force.--Deborah R. Coen, Yale University In a major contribution to the new literature on science and empire in the nineteenth century, Jan Surman demonstrates persuasively how Imperial Austria's universities created critical common spaces of empire, and how intimately empire and nation became intertwined with each other in Austria's research institutions. From Innsbruck to Cernivtsi, Kiev to L'viv, G ttingen to Prague, Surman's social analysis of the mobile careers of Austrian academics reveals the multilingual empire as an extraordinarily productive site for scientific research, even as those Habsburg universities he studies also became centers of nationalist scholarship and politics. --Pieter M. Judson, Professor for 19th and 20th Century History: European University Institute

Author Information

Jan Surman is a historian of science and scholarship, focusing on Central and Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Surman holds a PhD in history from the University of Vienna and has most recently been working at the Herder-Insitut, Marburg; IFK, Vienna; and the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow. His research focuses on scientific transfer, academic mobility, and scientific internationalism, and he is currently preparing a book on the history of Ukrainian science in the interwar period.

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