The Vienna School of Art History: Empire and the Politics of Scholarship, 1847–1918

Chapter 3: Beyond Vienna: The Growth of Art History Across the Habsburg Monarchy

beyond Vienna 53 universities in austria-Hungary The University of Vienna, situated in the capital of the Empire, was the most prestigious and influential institution of higher learning and research in central Europe. Founded in 1365, it benefited from its proximity to the centers of political and social power, and its professors were frequently employed as official and unofficial advisors in government and royal circles. During the 1850s and 1860s the university underwent substantial change, driven by Thun’s reforms. Although dominant in the city, the university was not the only institution of higher education in the capital; in 1815 an imperial-royal Polytechnic Institute (k.k. Polytechnisches Institut) had been set up. Its initial aim was to ensure that the demands for practical and utilitarian skills and knowledge created by the processes of rapid modernization would be met. Its focus was thus distinct from that of the university, which embraced a tradition of humanistic, legal, and philosophical education. However, because it trained architects, the polytechnic also taught courses in architectural history; in 1867 Karl Lützow was appointed to the position of associate professor there, having founded the Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst the year before. Although histories of the Vienna School focus on the authors associated with the University of Vienna and the Museum for Art and Industry, the polytechnic was also an important institution , and a number of influential writers and thinkers were based there. These included the architectural historian Josef Neuwirth (1855–1934), the urban theorist Camillo Sitte (1843–1903), and, considerably later, in 1933, Hans Sedlmayr, who completed his Habilitation there (by then renamed the Technische Hochschule, or Technical Academy), where he was briefly employed until taking up a position at the university in 1936. Despite its prestige, the University of Vienna was not the oldest such institution in the Empire. That distinction was held by the University of Prague, founded in 1347 by the Holy Roman emperor Charles IV. Until the 1880s it was a German-language institution , in keeping with the fact that Prague was, until the mid–nineteenth century, a predominantly German city. Located in a political “periphery” of the Empire, the University of Prague lacked the status of its counterpart in Vienna, but as an ancient establishment in a city that had played a central part in the earlier history of the Holy Roman Empire, it was still an important historical institution where many ambitious academics would start their careers. Franz Exner, mentioned earlier, was professor of philosophy at Prague from 1831 until his death, in 1853; other prominent academics there included the philosopher Bernard Bolzano, who was chair of philosophy for a year, in 1818, before being removed for subversion, and August Schleicher (1821–1868), one of the founders of comparative historical linguistics, who was professor of classical philology from 1850 to 1857. Later, Ernst Mach would be chair of physics from 1867 to 1895, and Albert Einstein, professor of physics from 1911 until he took up an appointment in Berlin in 1914. It is indicative of the relative status of Vienna and Prague Universities, however, that the trajectory of most scholars’ careers led from Prague to Vienna and not the reverse. This pattern continued until the dissolution of the Empire and beyond; when Max Dvořák was invited to take up the chair of art history in Prague after 1918, he turned the offer down, 54 The Vienna School of arT hiSTory preferring to remain in Vienna, despite the many difficulties he had encountered as a Czech in the capital. Alongside its university, Prague also boasted the polytechnic, established in 1806 as part of the university but autonomous from 1815. In the first half of the nineteenth century the fact that the university and the polytechnic in Prague were German-language institutions was not questioned. However, the changing demographic situation in the Bohemian capital, in which the Germans became a dwindling minority, coupled with the rise of a Czech bourgeoisie conscious of its linguistic and cultural difference and lacking any specifically “Czech” institutions of higher education , meant that both the university and the polytechnic became the focus of increasingly acrimonious exchanges over their “national,” that is, linguistic, affiliation.1 It was the polytechnic that first gave in to the pressures that resulted from such conflict, and in 1869 it was divided into separate German and Czech sections, the latter moving to separate premises in 1874.2 The...