Database, Innsbruck Philosophical Faculty 1848-1918

The thesis investigates the development and mobility patterns of scholars active at the universities in Cisleithania during the period 1848-1918. Applying the analytical tools of cultural geography, it demonstrates how the production of academic space through academic mobility changed over time, establishing language-defined systems with their own rules and hierarchies. From the late eighteenth century, the question of the language of scholarship increasingly influenced academic communities, especially in the Central Europe. In the Habsburg Empire several languages held claims to being developed enough for serving as the mediums of scientific instruction – yet, the privileged role of German language was sustained for political reasons. After 1848, this tension influenced scientific policy, as universities with different languages of instruction were allowed in Galicia and then in Bohemia. Concurrently, academic mobility increasingly extended beyond the boundaries of the Habsburg Monarchy, and non-Habsburg scholars were appointed to chairs from 1848, comprising at times more than a quarter of the lecturers at individual universities. Especially at germanophone academies and in Galicia, the number of foreign scholars rose, illustrating the dominance of language affiliations over state dependence. Galician universities in particular, became centers for education for Polish and Ruthenian speakers from three empires, striving to gather the best polonophone scholars as well. Germanophone universities were partially included in the network of the German Confederation/Empire, but later in the century turned more to their own offspring and developed a hierarchical system with discernible Habsburg-bound career patterns. In the case of Jewish scholars, this pattern was disrupted due to anti-Semitic hostility at the provincial academies; especially in the politicized disciplines, philosophy and history, the ministry also favored the appointments of Catholic scholars. Despite the turn to a fostering of their own culturally defined scholarship, Habsburg universities remained entangled by common frontiers, which proved highly influential on personal and institutional levels.

Conference presentation on the acquisition of the metope depicting Helios in his chariot, found by Henry Schliemann in 1872 at Troy.

The recent revival of Arabic Papyrology notwithstanding, the biography and personality of Adolf Grohmann (1887-1977) has not found due attention. This exceptional personality is distinguished by remarkable disruptions, his continuous scholarly output being matched with heavy personal crises and changes. Although far away of living an ivory-tower life, his legacy can easily be misunderstood as a typical form of idyllic Oriental studies. It is just this constricted occupation with Islamic civilization, however, that makes him held in high esteem not only in the Western world, but especially in Arab countries today, making him one of the few scholars unsuspicious to the dangers of “Orientalism”. The paper highlights biographical details unknown so far before discussing Adolf Grohmann’s contribution to Oriental Studies against the background of the recent debate of Islamic Studies in the 20th century.

Magyar Filozófiai Szemle [Hungarian Philosophical Review; ISSN 0025-0090], 2018

When the young Bernhard Alexander arrived in Vienna in 1868 he was not yet the towering figure of late nineteenth – early twentieth century Hungarian philosophy. The philosophy he encountered in Vienna was, too, not yet the Austrian Philosophy (with a capital ‘P’) which Rudolf Haller believed to have been born few years later in 1874. Based on the combination of unpublished sources from four archives (including Alexander’s Viennese diary entries, co-published in this journal issue by B. Szekér and B. Szabados) and Alexander’s early occasional writings, I reconstruct the historical circumstances of Alexander’s academic peregrination in Vienna (e.g., courses attended, intellectual relationships, and writing projects). There is a considerable discrepancy – both in terms of the dramatis personae, their writings, and the involved philosophical doctrines – between the content of Austrian Philosophy and the snapshot of Austrian philosophy that becomes visible to us through the lens of Alexander’s peregrination. Yet, the latter not only temporally preceded the former, but it also constitutes the conceptual and historical precondition of Haller’s Austrian Philosophy. In particular, the young Alexander could provide us with an unfiltered picture of what Robert Zimmermann, his Viennese philosophical master, could have transmitted to another generation of young Viennese students, including Edmund Husserl, who convened around Franz Brentano one decade later and inaugurated Austrian Philosophy with a capital ‘P.’ POSTSCRIPT: Written on "the sinking boat of Hungarian academia"

Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 2012

Ernst Mach in archival documents - A contribution to the early period of his scientific life. In: Peter Salcher & Ernst Mach. A successful Teamwork. Ed. by Berhard Frankovic & Gerhard Pohl, Book of Proceedings-International Symposium Rijeka - Faculty of Engineering, University Rijeka 2004. Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU), Zagreb 2011, 75-84.

Zusammenfassung: Dieser Report gibt einen Überblick über die österreichweite Befragung zu Forschungsdaten, die im Rahmen des Projekts e-Infrastructures Austria 2015 durchgeführt wurde. Diese richtete sich an das wissenschaftliche und künstlerisch-wissenschaftliche Personal aller 21 öffentlichen Universitäten sowie an drei außeruniversitäre Forschungseinrichtungen in Österreich. Die Teilnehmenden wurden zu folgenden Themenbereichen befragt: Datentypen und Formate; Datenarchivierung, -sicherung und -verlust; ethische und rechtliche Aspekte; Zugänglichkeit und Nachnutzung; Infrastruktur und Services. Die in diesem Kontext erstmals auf nationaler Ebene durchgeführte Befragung diente der Erhebung des praktischen Umgangs mit Forschungsdaten in Österreich und ist somit die Basis für eine konsekutive Optimierung der zweckdienlichen Infrastruktur, für eine Anpassung der Serviceangebote sowie für eine Neuorientierung bei der Ermittlung von Ressourcen in diesem strategischen Bereich entsprechend der geäußerten Bedürfnisse der im Forschungsprozess Tätigen.

Grazer Linguistische Studien, 2016

The edition of the letters of the Istrian Antonio Ive to Hugo Schuchardt casts a new light on this linguistic scholar and adds more details to the knowledge of both Romance philologists at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Ive, who was born in Habsburgian Rovigno in 1851 and who died in 1937 in Austrian Graz, was the first professor for Italian language and literature at the University of Graz. The tension between Ive's italophone origin at the periphery of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German-speaking academic sphere in one of its subcentres might have been one of the factors that led to his marginalization and exclusion. Still, Ive contributed to the folkloristic and dialectological study not only of the then and today endangered Romance idioms in Istria and the Isle of Krk, but also of Italian dialects especially in the Lazio. Furthermore, he participated in Schuchardt's research within the ethnolinguistic Wörter und Sachen approach as a valuable consultant and mediator.

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