ERWIN NEUENSCHWANDER
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Abstract
The Prague Conference is devoted to the three following main themes:
1. Mobility of Scholars between Universities since the Age of the Enlightenment,
2. “The Visiting Professor” Phenomenon,
3. The 100th Anniversary of Einstein’s Stay in Prague.
Our paper will treat all of them. First it is to be noted that Einstein stayed at the University of Zurich (1909–1911) before he moved to Prague (1911), and after his short stay in Prague he returned to the ETH in Zurich (1912–1914). At the chair of theoretical physics at the University in Zurich we have a series of four young later Nobel Prize Winners which followed each other shortly: Albert Einstein (1909–1911), Peter Debye (1911–1912), Max Laue (1912–1914), Erwin Schrödinger (1921–1927).
There existed a similar situation at the ETH after the foundation in 1855 on its several chairs of mathematics which served as a springboard for leading young mathematicians on their way to first-rate positions in Germany. The first chair in higher mathematics at the “Polytechnikum” (the later ETH) was at first for three years occupied by the Austrian-Swiss mathematician Joseph Ludwig Raabe. Later followed in short intervals such famous mathematicians as Richard Dedekind (1858–1862), Elwin Bruno Christoffel (1862–1869), Hermann Amandus Schwarz (1869–1875), Georg Ferdinand Frobenius (1875–1892), Hermann Minkowski (1896–1902) and the German-Swiss Arthur Hirsch (1903–1936) from Königsberg who remained in Zurich. The second chair in higher mathematics started some twenty years later with the Swiss mathematician Carl Friedrich Geiser (1873–1913), who was followed by Hermann Weyl (1913–1930) and Heinz Hopf (1931–1965), the latter became Swiss citizen and remained in Switzerland. On the second chair of calculus we found Friedrich Emil Prym (1865–1869), Heinrich Weber (1870–1875), Friedrich Schottky (1882–1892), Adolf Hurwitz (1892–1919 and the Swiss Michel Plancherel (1920–1954).
Our talk will first review the situation of mathematics and physics at Swiss universities and especially in Zurich. We will then discuss the question what made Swiss chairs so attractive for young leading physicist and mathematicians and afterword try to answer the question why they remained in contrast to later years only for a very short period in Zurich.
For further information see G. Rasche and H. H. Staub, Physik und Physiker an der Universität Zürich 1833–1948, Vierteljahrsschrift der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich 124 (1979), 205–220; Heinrich A. Medicus, Heinrich Zangger und die Berufung Einsteins an die ETH. Sein Einfluss auf die Besetzung weiterer Physik-Lehrstühle in Zürich, Gesnerus 53 (1996), 217–235; G. Frey and U. Stammbach, Mathematicains and Mathematics in Zurich, at the University and the ETH, 2007; E. Neuenschwander, “Mathematik” und “Physik”, Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (also at: www.hls.ch); E. Neuenschwander, 100 Jahre Schweizerische Mathematische Gesellschaft, in: B. Colbois, Ch. Riedtmann, V. Schroeder (eds.), math.ch/100, EMS Publishing House 2010, p. 23–105 (also at: www.math.ch).
CHRISTOF AICHNER – TANJA KRALER
University of Innsbruck, Austria
Abstract
The aim of our paper is to show how the reforms of the Austrian higher education system in the years after 1848 and the staffing policy of the minister of education Leo Thun-Hohenstein caused a new mobility between the Austrian universities and abroad.
The revolution of 1848 was the starting point for a general reform of the Austrian educational system. The professors and students achieved academic freedom and the universities were renewed on the basis of the ‘Humboldtian model’. Especially the reform of the philosophical faculty had an exceptional influence on the further dynamic development of the Austrian universities.
The reforms today are associated with the name of Leo Thun-Hohenstein, minister of education and cultural affairs from 1849–1860. Thun wasn’t one of the principal proponents of the reforms but he defended the revolutionary achievements against reactionary and neoabsolutistic forces. His intention was to use the reform of the educational system for a general restructuring of the monarchy and the Austrian society. This could be accomplished in his view by creating a new conservative intellectual elite. For this reason Thun paid particular attention to the appoint scholars, which had to be both good scientists and of conservative character. With his staffing policy he therefore caused a new mobility of scholars between the Universities of the Habsburg Monarchy and secondly he appointed many scholars from abroad (Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony) to fill all the newly created chairs. Especially with the appointment of professors from abroad he initiated a transfer of knowledge from other countries to the Austrian Monarchy and influenced the development of certain scientific disciplines in Austria.
The findings of this paper base on a research project located at the department of history of the University of Innsbruck financially supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). (http://thun-korrespondenz.uibk.ac.at) We investigate the circumstances and reform results by analyzing the private correspondence of minister Thun-Hohenstein and exploring Thun’s network of advisers.
ÉVA VÁMOS
Hungarian Museum of Science, Technology and Transport Budapest, Hungar
Abstract
Between 1851 and 1860, during the time of neo-absolutism, education had to be in German language throughout the Hapspurg Empire. This kind of regulation was linked to the name of Count Leo von Thun, Minister of Religious and Educational Affairs. Professors teaching in Gernan language were employed at Hungarian universities. They were tools of national oppression, on the one hand, and means of modernizing education, on the other.
This paper wants to show that quite a number of them were outstanding scholars of their respective branches of science, and did their best to modernize universities in Hungary.
A few of them, e. g. Guido Schenzl, founder of the Hungarian Meteorological Institute, stayed in Hungary after the German language had lost its compulsory character in teching, and became highly respected by the Hungarian scientific community.
Some other important professors like the chemist Theodor Wertheim or the agronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Pabst returned to their homelands.
This paper also wants to show how these personalities tried successfully to improve the infrastructure of university education in Hungary.
Although most of them did not succeed in learning the most difficult Hungarian language, they participated in Hungarian scientific life, being members of the Royal Hungarian Society for Natural Sciences.
JAN SURMAN
University of Vienna, Austria
Abstract
The 19th century in Central Europe can be characterised as a time during which national movements contested the Habsburg Empire, causing finally its rupture in 1918. Still, the feeling of belonging to the cultural entity “Deutsche Kultur” was proudly announced among certain national groups. Dual identities – like German-Austrian or Czech-Austrian – seemed both to be a concern and privilege, mostly of the elites. Nevertheless majority of Polish and Czech speaking Professors argued that only a “national” university with “national” language would guarantee proper education for the students. At the same time the German-speaking universities in Austrian core lands stood between German and Austrian identities, balancing autonomy and membership of the German University System. In this context the medical education at universities played the most pronounced role.
The proposed paper analyses the mobility of professors and Privatdozenten universities in the Cisleithanian part of the Habsburg Monarchy (Core-Austria, Galicia, Bohemia, Moravia) during the period 1848–1918 in the context of the national ruptures in the university system in the 1870s and 1880s (the re-establishment of the Polish Language as the tuition language in Cracow and Lvov; the division of Charles University in Prague into k. k. German and k. k. Bohemian universities). Basing on an extensive database (lecturers of all universities in Cisleithania, their positions and transfers in and outside the monarchy) I will visualise the transformation of recruitment areas of scholars as well as changes of scientific mobility among Cisleithanian universities caused by change of language of lectures at the universities.
Here border-crossing activities, like the recruitment of Galician professors from other parts of pre-partitioned Poland or exchange inter-imperial exchanges will be contrasted with the mobility within political boundaries of the Monarchy. It will be argued to which extent the Habsburg schools (Vienna, Prague, Galicia) were interlinked in contrast to national developments in Bohemia and Galicia, where national schools, defined mostly by language, emerged.
Finally, the tension between “internationality” and “nationality” within the Empire and the contrast of cultural and state boundaries. Can we talk about national frontiers within the education within the monarchy itself and how do they relate to the boundaries of the monarchy? Is the concept of ‘frontier’ legitimate to the university system in 19th century Central Europe? How can we apply it reasonably for the Habsburg “scientific community” of the time?
EFTHIMIOS NICOLAIDIS
National Hellenic Research Foundation, Greece
Abstract
Until the Tanzimat reforms period (1839–1876) universities did not exist in the Ottoman Empire and as a consequence, Ottoman subjects and especially Christians, went to Europe to follow high education studies. Since the 16th century the big majority of Greeks went at the University of Padua but around the middle of the 18th century, central European universities became an important destination for these students. The reason was the development of Greek merchant communities in the Austrian Empire together with the development of the scientific life in these universities.
As a first consequence, we can trace the influence of the Central Europe Universities on the manuals of science written for the Greek colleges at the end 18t – beginning 19th centuries and of course on the teaching of science in these colleges. At the same time there was a shift of the printing place of these manuals from Venice to Leipzig or Vienna. This shift strengthened the influence of Central Europe at the beginning of the 19th century on the teaching of science in Greek colleges.
During the 19th century, Central European Universities played a major role in the creation of the State educational structures of the newborn Greek State. Many of the first professors of the University of Athens, founded in 1847, were students of these universities, whereas Greek nationals or Bavarians, who followed the first king of Greece, the Bavarian Otto.
By organizing the new educational structures and defining the teaching program in sciences, these former students of Central European Universities, transferred, spread and adapted a curriculum that they have been taught during their studies.
ATTILA SZILÁRD TAR
Krúdy Gyula Gimnázium Györ, Hungary
Abstract
Germany was always a popular destination among the Hungarian students if they were searching for a place to study abroad. Between 1526 and 1694 we know about ca. 4000 registrations and in the following century from 1694 to 1788 exactly about 3944. Especially the Protestant youth of Hungary chose a German university to fulfill their education.
The Hungarian students preferred the old universities of Jena, Wittenberg and Leipzig but they also frequently visited the new universities of Halle and Göttingen.
Chart, Nr. 1: Hungarian students at German universities 1694–1788 (Top 10)
Place University Number of students Proportion (%)
1 Jena 984 24,95
2 Wittenberg 821 20,81
3 Halle 625 15,85
4 Leipzig 300 7,61
5 Frankfurt/O. 254 6,44
6 Erlangen 163 4,13
7 Göttingen 152 3,85
8 Marburg 137 3,47
9 Altdorf 114 2,89
10 Heidelberg 90 2,28
It was rarely marked in the register-books, whether the students studied on other universities or not. In the matricula of the University of Halle, that of Leipzig and Wittenberg it was usually mentioned where the student came from or where he paid tution fee. The 1847 records of the chart below are results of my own researches. Due to these results it was possible to establish a kind of peregrin-network.
Chart Nr. 2: Students coming to a university from other universities
Place Other visited university Students Proportion (%)
1 Jena 363 19,65
2 Halle 339 18,35
3 Wittenberg 225 12,18
4 Leipzig 186 10,07
5 Erlangen 100 5,41
6 Göttingen 88 4,76
7 Altdorf 64 3,46
8 Tübingen 47 2,54
9 Franeker 43 2,33
10 Helmstedt 39 2,11
After examining of the charts it is not a surprise, that most of the students visited one of the big universities. Jena, Halle, Wittenberg or Leipzig lead the list of the universities, which were visited before or after another university. 9% of the Hungarian students visiting Germany studied in Jena as well. To explain it in an other way: more than 1/3 of the Hungarians in Jena visited an other university as well. These other universities often originated from the Halle–Leipzig–Wittenberg circle.
The same data are valid for Halle. 9.5% of the Hungarian students in Germany studied in Halle, as well, while more than the half of the peregrins in Halle (54%) visited another university, too. In the case of Leipzig, this proportion is even higher: 62% studied anywhere else in Germany and 4.7% of those who studied somewhere else, visited also Leipzig. 27% of the Hungarian students in Wittenberg visited another German university, too, while from other universities 5.7% studied here, as well. Explanation: the four universities mentioned above are in each other’s neighbourhood, so we can assume that several people visited more than one place. These four universities functioned like a network.
The other observation concerns the distance from Hungary. Lots of Hungarian students started their German studies at one of the closest universities, Jena, Leipzig or Wittenberg. They continued then the studies in the western or southern parts of the Holy Roman Empire, or even beyond the western borders. For example the Dutch connections of the Calvinist or Unitarian students are worth mentioning. We know about exactly 100 Hungarian peregrins that they studied in the Netherlands, as well. Among the favourite targets we can find Utrecht, Leiden, Franeker, Harderwijk and Groningen. The Swiss universities were also frequently visited by Hungarians. 74 students from our list studied either before or after the German studies at the university of Basel, Zurich or Geneva or the academy of Bern. What is more, the University of Oxford or other place in England are also mentioned in some cases.
The examined 1847 records mean 36.5% of the total number of Hungarian peregrins at this age. We estimate that one student visited 1.47 universities in average. Those who studied at more than one university give an average of 2.28 universities. The Hungarian youth continued the old traditions and visited more than one German university. Some people even 3–4 or more. Among the targets of the Hungarian students were the members of the Jena–Hella–Wittenberg–Leipzig circle the most preferred ones.
In my presentation I want to analyse the causes of the attractivity of some universities, as well. The most important factors can be: tradition, distance, costs of living, scholarships and the reputation of famous professors, e. g. that of Schlözer in Göttingen.
ANDOR MÉSZÁROS
Faculty of Humanities, Pázmány Péter Catholic University of Hungary
Abstract
The University of Prague as the first university in Central Europe had a great importance in the university peregrination of the students from Hungary already from the 14th century. Later, at the “utraquist” university the number of the students from Hungary decreased from 15 century, but their number increased again after the reorganization of the university in the 17th Century. Although the proportion of students from Hungary was less than 5 percent of all students in Prague from the beginning of the 18th century until the middle of the 19th century, the students from Hungary already formed the largest foreign student group at the Prague universities at the end of the 19th Century. In the peregrination of the students from Hungary to Prague played an important role both the Czech and the German university in Prague and also the Prague Polytechnic and the smaller higher education institutions (the Academy of Fine Arts, the Music Academy). The Prague institutions were particularly important for the Slavonic nationalities of Hungary.
I worked up during the long years of my research at the Prague university archives the archive sources connected with the Prague peregrination of the students from Hungary and I would like to present in my paper the main tendencies the peregrination of the students from Hungary to Prague from the age of the enlightenment until 1918. (What was the social and ethnic distribution of the students from Hungary at the Prague universities and what were the main aspects of the students from Hungary that they chose the university in Prague)
EMÍLIA VAZ GOMES – AUGUSTO FITAS
CEHFCi (Centro de Estudos de História da Ciência), Universidade de Évora, Portugal
Abstract
In Portugal, since the end of the eighteen century, science professors at superior schools made scientific voyages through Europe. In 19th century, the country possessed two Polytechnic Schools, at Lisbon and Oporto, and one University in Coimbra, already centenary (1290). In the firsts decades of 20th century the Portuguese Governments tried to implement reforms at the superior education. In 1907 it ordered the establishment of grants to subsidize visits abroad, hoping to contribute to the development of the country. The superior schools were in charge of all the administrative process and they distributed the grants only among their scholars. Few professors had made those trips. Meanwhile, the republican movement appealed to the improvement of the country through progress and in 1911 they made a big reform on University. The professor’s visits abroad were also here but not many were undertaken. Besides the University or Coimbra there were created two new universities, at Lisbon and Oporto, based on the previous Polytechnical Schools.
It was just after 1929 that we assist to the intensification of visits abroad, due to the work of Junta de Educação Nacional (JEN) [National Education Board]. JEN’s main objectives were to support, manage and promote the scientific research in Portugal. One of its main tasks was to provide grants to foreign countries. This was intended to comprehend all scholar population and not only to the university one. However, later on the majority of grant holders was attached at a superior school as professor or professor assistant. In the period 1929–1938 (roughly JEN’s first decade) the grants to foreign countries were around 32 by year. England, France and Germany were the countries more frequently chosen. Furthermore, there were grant holders going to Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Yugoslavia, Spain and United States. So, Portuguese grant holders were visiting Central Europe, but also equally the western one. Grants to foreign countries covered a great scope of disciplines, from Astronomy to Zoologie and the preferred countries varied accordingly with those disciplines. The scientific activities developed by grant holders varied accordingly with their objectives and the period of time to accomplish them, as agreed with JEN. Those activities could be of different types, as apprenticeships, stages, voyages, or just taking a quick look to surroundings, so the expression “visit” abroad has a vast range of meanings.
At our work we are studying JEN’s activities related with the service of grants abroad. Based on JEN grant’s information, we can take grant holders as professors of superior schools and the expression “visiting” abroad would have a great scope directed to the activities developed during the grant period. Then, JEN’s study would highlight us about the “visit professor” phenomena.
(This work is part of the Project “The Scientific Research in Portugal between two world wars and the organization of a National Board of Education” financed by: FEDER Funds as Operacional Program of competitiveness factors (COMPETE) and by National Funds throught FCT project HC/0077/2009).
MARIA TERESA BORGATO
University of Ferrara, Italy
Abstract
Caspar Sagner (1721–1781), born in Neumarkt (Środa Śląska), Silesia, was a professor of mathematics and experimental physics in Prague and in Madrid, and his work Institutiones Philosophicae (Prague, 1755–1758, 4 vols) was the basic text for the teaching of natural philosophy in the important Jesuit College of Piacenza.
The college of S. Lazzaro in Piacenza, founded by Cardinal Alberoni in 1751, may be considered a college of excellence for the contents of its scientific teaching and the quality of its teachers from the time of its establishment up to the end of the Napoleonic Empire, on a par with the great Jesuit colleges of Rome and Parma and the colleges of excellence of other religious orders in Modena, Siena, Florence and Bologna.
Sagner’s text, belonging to the last phase of Jesuit treatises before the order was suppressed, demonstrated a remarkable effort to bring the subject up to date as was also testified by the Elementa universae matheseos (Rome, 1754, 3 vols) by Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich (1711–1787).
The first volume concerns logic and is essentially inspired by the logic of Christian Wolff (1679–1754). The second volume includes ontology, cosmology, empirical and rational psychology, and natural theology. The third and fourth volumes are devoted to physics inherited from the contents of Aristotle’s natural philosophy, but dealt with on the basis of Newton’s principles. There remains the scholastic division into general physics, regarding the common properties of bodies, and special physics, which studied the peculiarities of some bodies, and which more or less corresponded to experimental physics. The third volume includes Newton’s laws of movement and the study of gravity, sound and light, but not universal gravitation and the movement of the planets. The author waited for permission to treat this topic, and it arrived in 1758 with the publication of the Index by Benedictus XIV who allowed publication of works dealing with the movement of the Earth, and so the fourth volume is devoted to the planetary system and presents the Ptolemaic, Tychonic and Copernican systems, and tends to favour the latter. The movement of the planets around the Sun is described in accordance with Kepler’s laws: the orbits are elliptic, the areas described by the line joining the Sun-Planets are proportional to the times, the squares of the periodic times are proportional to the cubes of the average distances of the planets from the Sun and, therefore, the furthest planets are the slowest. The movements of the planets and comets are deduced from Newton’s universal gravitation. The lunar map reproduced is the one by Giambattista Riccioli (1598–1671); the study of planetary astronomy concludes with the confutation of the influence of the planets on earthly things.
Sagner’s text was essentially qualitative, and, moreover, given the time in which it was written, did not include the remarkable discoveries in the field of heat and electric phenomena, but the lessons held in the college on these topics were integrated into it, with the result that Sagner’s work was reprinted in Piacenza in 1767–1768, in four volumes enhanced with numerous notes written by the college teachers. Concerning mathematics, which was not included in Sagner’s text but which was taught in the college there are documents and manuscripts of the lessons up to differential and integral calculus and its applications to geometry and mechanics.
Bibliography
Institutiones philosophicae in usum scholarum ex probatis veterum, recentiorumque sententiis adornatae a Gasparo Sagner ... Tomus I [–IV]. Editio prima italica mendis innumeris expurgata, plurimis additamentis illustrata, opportunisque indicibus aucta, Placentiae: imprensis Nicolai Orcesi biblipolae ad S. Georgium (excudebat Josephus Tedeschi), 1767–1768.
LÁSZLÓ MOLNÁR
Archives uf Semmelweis University Budapest, Hungary
Abstract
Throughout the history of the Budapest University of Sciences it received guest professors from abroad or from other provinces of the empire. We chose two cases from the history of the Medical Faculty in Budapest, almost a hundred years apart from each other. Czermak, who was of Czech origin, was head of the Physiological Department between 1858 and 1860, Petrovszkij was the director of Surgery Clinic No.3 from 1949 to 1951. Although the two eras differ from each other significantly, we can find certain similarities as well.
In comparison with the other periods, both during the absolutism and after 1945 the Hungarian higher education was under strong political influence. It could be seen first of all in the setup of the teaching stuff but after 1945 the policy also involved the changing of the social composition of the students.
After suppressing the 1848/1849 revolution and war of independence in Hungary, the court in Vienna introduced autocratic governing, it was the newer ‛edition’ of absolutism. Some professors or assistant professors were dismissed from the Medical Faculty in Pest (for example Balassa, Markusovsky, Bugát, etc.). During the absolutism that lasted until 1860, the main criterion in choosing the professors was loyalty to the court, the professional quality was only taken into consideration as socond. It is true however, that there were exceptions, including Semmelweis (professor in Pest 1855–1865) and Czermak (professor in Pest 1858–1860).
Jan Nepomuk Czermak, born in Prague, got invitation to Pest at a young age, when he was 30, but then he had already worked in Prague, Graz and Krakow. What is more, he had worked as assistant to Purkinje in Prague. The Medical Faculty in Pest had a difficult period at this time. They tried to help the packedness with the purchase of a new building. This is where Czermak established the new physiological institute, to which he was given proper space, stuff and allowance. He started scientific research in the modern sense at the physiological department in Pest. From 1860 the language of teaching was Hungarian instead of the former Latin in the training of physicians too. This meant the end of Czermak’s career in Pest. It was his own decision to leave, his fellow professors tried to dissuade him in vain. After his departure, his assistent, Kálmán Balogh carried on his mentality.
The invitation of Borisz V. Petrovszkij to Budapest, soon after the communist takeover in 1949 had definite political resons. Togehter with two of his colleagues he arrived here to ensure the takeover of the soviet model in health care as well. The Ministry of Health and the independent medical universities are thought to have been formed accordingly. The scientific literature of the time also associates the organization of several basic national institutions. (National Blood Supply Service, National Traumatological Institute, etc.) with his name. At the university in Budapest he got the director’s post at Surgery Clinic No.3. As a university professor, he had an important role in taking over some typical methods of the Soviet rule, such as Stakhanovism. He was the adviser of Anna Ratkó, the working woman turned minister of welfare, then soon he controlled the medical treatment of Ratkó. Petrovszkij played his role as the ’great Soviet educator’ successfully. Soon after returning to the Sovietunion, he became minister of health.
There is a significant difference in the afterlife of the two former visiting professors. Czermak is still in the records of Hungarian physiology, his name is regualrly mentioned in historical studies while Petrovszkij has not been mentioned since the 1980s.
FELICITAS SEEBACHER
Alpen-Adria-University of Klagenfurt, Austria
Abstract
In the last third of the 19th century, surgery represented ‘the medical progress par excellence’. The introduction of anaesthesia, asepsis and new scientific experimentation changed the science of surgery and surgical procedures completely. Professors of surgery who performed sensational operations held significant positions in the medical faculty hierarchy and were presented as the ‘high priests of science’ – in their own self-representation as well as from the outside world. The surgical clinic became a sacred space where the professors thrived on the admiration of the students who in turn depended on the acknowledgement of the professors.
The famous German surgeon Theodor Billroth, head of the Second Surgical Clinic at the University of Vienna, built up his surgical school based on an intensive professor–student relationship, elite education and leadership competence. He confirmed this intensive relationship with his ‘disciples’ by calling them ‘sons, fathered with the concubine scientia chirurgica’. Billroth promoted study visits of his assistants to various universities and surgical clinics in Europe to instruct and acquire new knowledge. His ‘disciples’ prepared major operations using research studies and animal experiments and they also carried out the crucial first operations and documented every step of them. Nevertheless, Billroth supported a ‘German’ elite and Jewish assistants who wanted to pursue their career, converted to Catholicism. The surgeons of the Billroth School called themselves a “family in the noblest sense”, or compared themselves with “ripe fruits” from the Billroth family tree. Throughout Europe, there were at least 110 direct successors of Billroth’s School of Surgery (Eiselsberg), making it truly “the most lasting and influential school in most of Europe” (Wayand & Skopec).
This paper looks in detail at the reasons why the Theodor Billroth School of Surgery was successful and its implementation at various medical faculties in Europe. Comparing the different career pathways of the Billroth ‘disciples’, many similarities and differences in terms of closeness and distance to the ‘father figure’ become visible. Another aspect is how far the scientific, social and political environment of the Billroth School was handed down by its surgeons at universities in Europe, and in turn how exposure to a new science culture helped break the national tradition of the Billroth School of Surgery.
JIŘÍ ŠOUŠA
Charles University in Prague
Abstract
The personality of the representative of Czechoslovak agricultural administrative science (or private agricultural economics) Vladislav Brdlík (*1879, Žirovnice; †1964 Akron) was explicitly above standard. He was not only an outstanding university professor and scholar. Between the world wars (between 1920–1921) he held the post of minister of agriculture where he participated in the dissolution of the war-time directed economy and in its transformation to standard market economy. In 1926–1933 he acted as the vice-governor of the central bank of issue (Národní banka československá – National Bank of Czechoslovakia). In this post he was advocate of the gold standard of the valuable Czechoslovak crown.
In the Bohemian Lands he became the founder of modern agricultural administrative science, when he transferred the ideas of the relatively advanced German agricultural administrative science, represented by professor Franz Waterstradt at the Wrocław university, to the Czech situation and developed them later.
Without any doubt, he also was a competent manager of science and the creator of the Agricultural institute of accounting and administrative science (Zemědělský ústav účetnicko-správovědný) in Prague. Students could never forget his appeals like: “Go and do business, a nation that will be the nation of clerks, will die out!” In Czechoslovakia, agricultural administrative science as a branch ceased to exist after his exile in 1948, which was obvious, and in the exile in Akron (Ohio, USA) he worked on analyses of the development of Czechoslovak agriculture for the Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America.
FABIO BEVILACQUA
Department of Physics « A.Volta », University of Pavia, Italy
Abstract
Both universities, today part of the Coimbra Group, were founded by Charles IV, King of the Roman Empire and King of Bohemia: Prague was first in 1348, Pavia followed shortly in 1361.
In 1760 the Jesuit natural philosopher and polymath Ruggero Boscovich (1711–1787), who was to be professor of mathematics at Pavia University from 1764 to 1768, made plans to visit Prague. That could not happen during his long trip of 1761–1762 from Vienna to Constantinople to Warsaw and back to Vienna and Venice, but in the sixties some of his works were printed in Prague and among his correspondents we find the Jesuit Joseph Stepling (1716–1778), founder of the Prague observatory. Later in the sixties Boscovich founded the Brera Observatory in Milan. Today a crater of the moon is dedicated to Boscovich and an asteroid to Stepling. In Pavia we are celebrating the 300th anniversary of Boscovich’s birth with the presentation of the digital edition of his collected papers and correspondence, among these is the diary of his long trip to Constantinople.
In 1784 Alessandro Volta (1745–1827) made a long trip towards Berlin with his colleague Antonio Scarpa (1752–1832), an anatomist. They spent some time in Prague and wrote about the visit. Volta, who had the enviable task of buying scientific apparatus without financial limits (“at my judgement”) ordered in Prague some special glass. Later on, in 1817, while the by now elderly Volta was head of faculty, the Austrian government, in order to reform Pavia University, which had been under French revolutionary rule for almost twenty years, gave as a model the regulations of Prague University.
In 1895 the very young Albert Einstein (1879–1955) spent a year in Pavia, where his father and uncle had built and were running an electro-technical factory. There he became interested in electromagnetism and wrote his first scientific paper. At the time, the professor of Physics in Pavia was Adolfo Bartoli, who gave a thermodynamic derivation of radiation pressure (Maxwell had given an electromagnetic one). As is well known and celebrated in this Conference, in 1911 Einstein got a chair in theoretical physics in Prague. His successor, Philipp Frank, wrote a well-balanced biography about him with some interesting details.
KATALIN SIMON
Budapest City Archives, Hungary
Abstract
The presentation is about to clarify the role of the Faculty of Medicine in Pest in the higher education – and especially the education of surgery – of the Habsburg Empire in the first half of the 19th century.
The Faculty of Medicine was founded in Nagyszombat, 1770. The University was transferred to Buda in 1777, and finally to Pest in 1784. In the same year, Joseph II degraded almost every University in the Habsburg Empire, and left only Vienna, Prague, Lemberg and Pest as universities. Other ex-universities became lycea. (After the Napoleonic wars Padova and Pavia was annected to the Habsburg Empire, and Graz, Olmütz and Innsbruck get back their universities.) Surgeons and midwives could also learn in lycea, but there were no medical students. So, in this time the role of the University in Pest increased. We can see the effects of this regulation, if we analyze the number and provenance of the students and graduating surgeons.
We have more detailed data about the students from the session 1793/1794. The education of the healers, as in the other parts of the Empire, was held in two levels. Doctors of Medicine had to study for five years (between 1788/1789 and 1809/1810 only four years), while the surgeons had only two classes. Similarly to the doctoral studies, lessons for them were held in Latin at first. Easier and more practical vernacular (Hungarian and German) classes were started from 1804/1805. These two courses crowded out quickly the original „ordinary” course, which finally disappeared in 1808/1809. Thanks to the vernacular languages, the new classes became very popular, and the number of students started to increase. In the beginning of the Century, 1800/1801, only 16 persons studied surgery in Pest, while in 1808/1809 this number was 97, and in 1810/1811 was 105. As the Napoleonic wars disturbed and shaked the people of Europe up, students of distant parts of Europe appeared in Pest: not only from the Habsburg Empire and the other German-speaking parts of the continent, but from Sweden and France too. After this period the peregrination was prohibited, wherethrough students had to find their educational institution inside of the Habsburg Empire. Thanks to this, the attendance of universities inside the Empire became more popular and important. Furthermore, the Faculty of Medicine in Pest offered a diplom for its students, which was valid in the whole territory of the Habsburg Empire. In 1822/1823 the number of students became more, than 200, and reached its peak in 1832/1823 with 494 surgeons. In this time, after three of five years the student could get his diplom as Chirurgiae Magister or Chirurgus civilis – the length depended on the former studies of the surgeon. The Faculty had only two classes, in practice, the surgeons reiterated the second class, or both ones. People from other provinces of the Empire attended mostly the German course. Peregrinants in the Hungarian course were solely from Transylvania, who were Hungarians by nationality. The German course was more popular, here came students from the other parts of the Habsburg Empire, especially Jews. More than half part of the German classes consisted of Hebrew persons. They came from Hungary and other parts of the Habsburg Empire. Most of them was born in Bohemia, Moravia or Galicia. 110 of the 160 students from Moravia and 124 of the 178 surgeons from Galicia was Jewish. The Hungarian Israelite families had many connections with the Jews of Moravia or Bohemia. The students from Galicia moved from Lemberg to the western parts of the Empire, so the University of Pest was also a beloved place for them. Although the Faculty of Medicine in Pest was popular mostly for these provinces (Transylvania, Bohemia, Moravia and Galicia), we can find among the students people from Austria (especially from Vienna), Croatia and Styria, too.
After the cholera epidemy, by 1832/1833, and the newly permission of visitation of foreign universities, the number of students in the German course of surgery slowly began to decrease. Our last informations before the Hungarian revolution and freedom fight in 1848/1849 are about the year 1846/1847. In this time, the number of students of surgery was only 127. In the 1840s’ the courses of surgery in Pest and in the entire Empire – due to the obsolete method of education and the continuous attacks against it – lost their popularity.
Examining the number and provenance of the surgeons in Pest in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, we can say, that although the Faculty of Medicine in Pest was not as important as the Universities of Vienna or Prague, but it definitely played a remarkable role in the medical education of the Habsburg Empire this time.
AUDRONĖ JANUŽYTĖ
Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania
Abstract
In this presentation the presupposition that science is and always has been universal will be examined in the case of the formation of University of Lithuania. The main questions such as was the university necessary to form for the needs of the society or for national purposes; should the university be more national or international? What the contribution of foreign professors on the formation of the University was; what kind of model of university was acceptable for Lithuanians at that time; will all be examined.
I will put forward the hypothesis that the newly established University of Lithuania was essentially a national university but a university stretching far beyond the limits of the nation, in which scientific work was carried out and disseminated to Lithuanian students by scholars from both Eastern and Western Europe. The projects and statutes of the university and the policy of the Government of Lithuania were oriented to the formation of a national university. In addition the aspiration also was that its academic level should correspond to those of universities in Western Europe. That is why the foundation of the University of Lithuania depended upon international assistance, i.e. upon foreign scholars who were willing to come and teach Lithuanian students. It was of the utmost importance that the universities in Western Europe (at first, especially in Germany) allowed Lithuanians to enrol in their programmes at different levels, so that they could come back as graduates and work at the University of Lithuania. This was best understood by the intellectuals and politicians who talked about the mobility of scholars and students, i.e. about need to invite foreign professors to the Lithuanian University and to send brightest students to universities in Western Europe.
The hypothesis is that it was, indeed, possible to form a national university or to create academic studies that were essentially international and exceeded the limits of a national university. This hypothesis can be confirmed or denied by analysing the intellectuals' and politicians' viewpoints concerning the formation of a national university and international co-operation by ways such as promoting study tours at European universities, seeking the international patronage of scholarship, mobility of scholars and students, participation in international conferences and the contribution of visiting professors to the Lithuanian University.
JIŘÍ HNILICA
Charles University in Prague
Abstract
The topic of visiting professors is one of the most important topics of scientific development and cultural relations between Czechoslovakia and abroad. This theme is currently considered as an ideal platform to disseminate the knowledge of Czech science abroad, but also as an important point of intellectual cooperation and a good instrument for approaching the Czech environment with modern scientific trends. For this reason, the Ministries were providing them active institutional support; the links were developing between universities, scientific institutions and of course individuals. The studied period is crucial, because at this time this institution of visiting professors begins to be build and consolidate. The period from 1945 to 1948 points to the contrary, the continuity or the novelty in the comparison with the interwar development. Visiting professors are also present in the Czech-French cultural relations. The paper offers to make that issue clear by studying their example.
In 1918 in Czechoslovakia, the France was seen as the main political ally, as a cultural and scientific superpower. On the other hand, the fact that the France considered the scientific and cultural area as one of the principal domains of its activity abroad was very important. This fertile soil, economically speaking, demand and supply, resulted in the live collaboration with the Czechoslovakia. We can make just a mention of the French Institute in Prague that invited regularly the French professors. The French “scholar” community in the Czechoslovakia consisted of a dozen people, the French personalities invited to lecture in Prague, Brno, Bratislava, possibly in Příbram, however, was ten times more. An important criterion of selection was the quality of speaker. On the edge, let us mention names like L. de Broglie, E. Denis, L. Febvre, F. Joliot-Curie, J. Perrin, A. Meillet, A. Siegfried and other. At first, the paper will draw a comparison between Czech and French contemporary point of view of the importance, the content and the breadth of the topic of visiting professors. The second point to be studied will be the area where the cooperation is most actively developed. It was the area of social sciences, or vice versa of exact sciences? What place occupied medicine? What lectures aroused the greatest interest? The third point what we will study is the organization and the running of the stay. How did it realize? Where the professors lived? How do they perceive their stay? Finally, the last point will post the links and the contacts. What links generate between lecturers and students how they were encouraged and developed?