Germanistik in Wien: Das Seminar für Deutsche Philologie und seine Privatdozentinnen (1897–1933) by Elisabeth Grabenweger (review)

Germanistik in Wienis one of those seemingly modest books that can transform received accounts in fundamental ways. Originating in a 2014 dissertation (Vienna), Elisabeth Grabenweger's study provides us with new visions about the early history of females teaching at the University of Vienna and about how that university exercised its political wishes in the era. Her case studies are three exemplary careers that are carefully contextualized within the history of German philology at the time and within turbulent historical times, culminating in the institution's 1920s history, which was generally elided after the Nazi era. She also documents clearly how a history of female participation in this university found no resonance in the institution's post-war history.

The first section's four parts trace the field's configurations at the University from 1848 through 1933, the evolution and constitution of Germanistikfor the moment that it emerged into the university curriculum. The section is incredibly well documented, tracing the various chair holders and their projects and providing valuable keys to who these people were and what they represented—some names, such as Wilhelm Scherer (who was there 1868–1872), Paul Kluckhohn, and Josef Nadler, still resonate. Grabenweger also uses documents from university history to track how appointments were made, who was on short lists, and who fought for which candidates—a primer in how academics were run at the time. After 1912, with the death of Jakob Minor, the 1848 first chair was split into two, one each for older and newer literature.

In this institution-based history, Grabenweger also clarifies what, in practice, differentiated what we know today as philology and Geistesgeschichte. For instance, Nadler was not willing, on empirical grounds, to separate Austrian from German literature in his great (and, eventually, problematic) Literaturgeschichte(55), but he did insist on maintaining the presence of the two nations, giving Austria pride of place; in consequence, firing Nadler was not the equivalent of purging anti-Semitism from the university.

The second large section of the book presents as independent case studies three women who taught in the humanities at the University of Vienna, each with their biographies and bibliographies, and contextualizes them in university history and recounts their struggles for credentials and positions. They are linked here through their status as the first in their categories and as women who persisted to become important in their respective specializations.

Christine Touaillon (1878–1928) was, in the 1897/98 winter semester, one of the first women admitted to the University. After retroactively completing her Reifeprüfung, she completed her Promotionin 1905 with a study on Zacharias Werner's Attila, König der Hunnen. After her marriage, she became an activist in the women's movement, editing a women's journal until 1920 and publishing in the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung; she also declined a nomination as a candidate for the Landtagin Steiermark. In 1919, she tried for her Habilitation. The University of Graz, where she studied for a year, had turned down her application for the venia legendiin 1919, after she presented Der deutsche Frauenroman des 18. Jahrhunderts, a volume establishing an early version of a female literary canon. After a long series of discussions in Vienna among the professoriate, she was allowed to proceed to the interview stage< ?> and her qualification lectures, finally leading to her Habilitationin 1921 and to her employment, also setting a precedent for how women could be afforded the status of docents in the Austro-Hungarian educational system.

Grabenweger's second case study, Marianne Thalmann (1888–1975), remembered even today for her work on Romanticism and popular literature, spans Vienna and the US. She completed her Promotionin 1918 on Tieck but resisted classical philology in favor of a more formal aestheticism and Geistesgeschichte. She taught in secondary schools while completing her Habilitationsschrift, which was published in 1923...