The History of Austrian Students Between Academic Status and Socio-Political Activity 1848-1938

Abstract

The development of a scholarly and objective historiography of students in the Habsburg monarchy and the First Austrian Republic only began at the end of the twentieth century. Several factors explain why it was only after gaining a certain temporal and emotional distance that historians were able to write a more scientifically objective history of universities and students. It was not until the middle of the 19th century that students, who were strictly controlled by the state and the Catholic Church until 1859, were able to emerge as an independent group of actors. The multitude of associations founded according to the ideal model of the German fraternities were subject to a highly ideological polarisation process. This also extends to the professoriate of the university, which was belatedly established as an autonomous institution. Therefore, the history and humanities departments in particular became the forerunners of a nationalist antisemitic ideology rather than rationally scientific critical instances. The politics of exclusion continued uninterruptedly into the First Republic and ultimately led to the loss of university autonomy and the students’ right of free association after Austria became part of the National Socialist German Reich in 1938.