Education and Middle-Class Society in Imperial Austria, 1848-1918

4. The Changing Ethnic and Religious Recruitment of Students

The Changing Ethnic and Religious Recruitment of Students t h ve contradictory notions about the recruitment and social tItus ~\ Iducated elites in Central Europe during the late nineteenth {ntury¥ven on the eve of World War I, no more than 3.0 percent of the school-aged population in Germany and Austria attended aca- .demic secondary schools, and only around 1.5 percent of the prime age groups were enrolled in universities and technical colleges. In numerical terms secondary and higher education still served only small segments of the German and Austrian populations, and advanced education brought considerable privileges and prestige. Reporting to the Silesian Provincial School Board in 1880, one Austrian school director summed up popular beliefs about the value of Gymnasium education : "The public holds the view, and indeed with a certain amount of truth, that all· paths for the future stand open to the Gymnasium graduate."1. The Realschule might have less' status than the classical Gymnasium, but after the early 1870s students in Austrian Realschulen could take their own Matura and were also entitled to advantages such as the one-year, volunteer military service, eligibility for certain jobs, and admission to a technical college. Those who went on to universities or technical colleges and eventually passed state examinations or earned degrees carried their diplomas and titles as badges of accomplishment. They expected special respect, regardless of their own social origins or the circumstances of their actual employment. Still, while graduates of academic secondary schools, universities, and technical colleges enjoyed special status, many of them were known to have come from relatively humble social origins. Memoirs and popular fiction that portray the deference to academic and professional titles also frequently celebrate the modest origins of many of the diploma -holders. The educated were characterized by greater diversity of social origins than one might expect for a small, privileged segment of the population. Studies of secondary and higher education in the German states show that throughout the nineteenth century many students came from the families of schoolteachers, clerks, petty government employees, Protestant pastors, small business owners, master craft producers, or peasant farmers. 2 127 128 CHAPTER FOUR To appreciate the actual social experience of the educated elites, one must also recognize that many who studied in universities and technical colleges went on to careers of relatively li~ited income and moderate status in lesser state offices, finance, industry, secondary schools, or churches. When observers of German and Austrian education in the late nineteenth century warned against the dangers of an "academic proletariat," they feared not merely the threat forthe future posed by expanding enrollments but also the present reality of frustrations among those who had expected education to bring them greater social and financial advantages than they actually achieved.3 The primary criteria for measuring the changing recruitment of the. educated elites in the German states during the nineteenth century have been occupation and class, with regional, religious, ethnic, and urban-rural differences also given consideration. For old Austria, though, like the United Kingdom and North America, the ethnic and religious diversity of the population make those factors as important as occupation or class for analyzing the origins of the educated and measuring the social opportunities offered by advanced education. As will be seen, the ethnic and religious composition of students in Austrian secondary and higher education changed strikingly,' as Czechs and Poles, among the larger ethnic groups, and the Jewish and Protestant religious minorities greatly increased their representation while the German-speaking Catholics' fraction of total enrollments gradually declined. This was tangible proof that the expansion of the educational system gave increased access to segments of the population that were more poorly represented before the mid-nineteenth century . In the process, the recruitment of students from the various social classes also changed, but, as will be seen in the following chapter, that transformation was in many respects more subtle and gradual. The Early Modem Heritage During the. eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, access to Austrian secondary and higher education was contingent on students' ability, financial means, language, and, to a diminishing degree, religion . Joseph II's educational reforms envisioned a reduced network in which the students would choose between Lyzeen or Gymnasien leading to the universities and which would produce no more graduates than the state deemed necessary for practical purposes. The old The Changing Ethnic and Religious Recruitment of Students I 29 Jesuit-run...