650 Jahre Universität Wien—Aufbruch ins neue Jahrhundert ed. by Friedrich Stadler (review)

This sprawling, encyclopedic study of the University of Vienna during the "long twentieth century"—between 1848 and the present—offers an impressive account of the university and its development. Drawing on a trove of recent research, the editors have presented a multifaceted picture of the institution, both within its walls and in its interactions with the broader world. With over a hundred contributors and two thousand pages, the work will serve as the primary reference text on the subject for some time.

Divided into four major parts, 650 Jahre examines the university as a site of research and instruction and as a locus of academic politics inflected by social, cultural, and political trends. The first volume, "Universität, Forschung und Lehre," traces the evolution of the university as an institution of higher education, using Kant's Streit der Fakultäten and Bourdieu's Homo Academicus to explore themes of autonomy and academic freedom. A meditation as much on contemporary university politics as on history, the volume offers insights for debates about the role of the university in today's knowledge society. The second volume, "Universität—Politik—Gesellschaft," situates the university in a dynamic relationship with its social, political, and economic contexts. The first half of the volume places the university within the turbulent political events of the twentieth century, especially between 1914 and 1945. A collection of twenty-seven biographical portraits offers case studies of university figures in their myriad academic and political involvements. The second half connects the university with social and economic developments through quantitative researches into questions of inclusion and social mobility. The third volume, "Reichweiten und Außensichten," offers images of the university from national, transnational, and international perspectives. Moving beyond traditional, internalist descriptions of the university, it provides an innovative interpretation by deploying cultural and social lenses that raise questions about the university's supposed political neutrality and its promotion of social mobility. The final volume, "Reflexive Innensichten," consists of a collection of disciplinary histories, told by academics active within those departments, faculties, and institutes.

Given the length of this work, a series of more general observations and selective analyses must suffice. The biographical sketches of Volume 2 and the disciplinary studies of Volume 4 will receive little attention. Although the former evince the invaluable archival research done in recent years, they contribute little to the work's argument. Likewise the disciplinary histories will primarily interest practitioners and aficionados of those fields.

While the multivolume set contains a diverse array of contributions, its structure, ordering, and coherence leave something to be desired. The first volume presents significant new information about the university's intellectual and organizational development. Thematically, however, the volume divides into two complementary, yet not fully integrated parts—one that focuses on theoretical and philosophical questions about the meaning of the university, one that delves into the historical particularities of the University of Vienna itself. The lead essay by Nemeth and Stadler, which examines the concepts of education and instruction, autonomy and state intervention, and pure and applied research stands as a powerful example of the first direction. The subsequent essay of Dahms and Stadler, which tracks the internal transformations of the philosophical faculty, represents the second tendency. While the theoretical essays orient the discussion, the historical essays do not always take up those themes. Feichtinger's essay engages in a compelling historical treatment of the "verletzte Autonomie" of science at the university before 1938, yet Svatek's chapter on Raumforschung maintains an internalist focus that is probably best suited to another volume.

The second volume contains some of 650 Jahre's richest material, yet its imposing size and unusual structure make it less efficacious. Given the short length of the third volume and its eclecticism, reorganization may have helped. Ash's virtuoso exploration of the university at moments of political upheaval is really a book unto itself, dwarfing all other contributions in the second volume. After the oddly placed biographical...