Education Reform in Austria under Count Leo Thun-Hohenstein

The reforms under Count Leo Thun-Hohenstein, Minister for Religious Affairs and Education from 1849 to 1860, significantly changed and modernized the Austrian system of higher education. These reforms aimed at a reorientation of this system along the principle of the freedom of teaching and learning under catholic premises. The universities should be opened up to scientific progress while at the same they should be re-modeled into institutions with a positive attitude towards the state under catholic premises. At the base of the reforms is the vision of Count Thun that faith and science could be united despite, or because of, the necessary demands for a modern critical science, and his belief that the forces of the "people" and the "intellectual elite" could be reconciled despite, or because of, their seemingly insoluble lines of conflict. The reforms laid the ground for the modern university and the system of higher education, but they were also fundamentally rooted within the dogmas and values of the Catholic Church. Even though this attempt to reconcile science and faith failed, the reform work of Count Thun was of fundamental importance for Austrian education and academia far into the era of the mass universities of the late 20th century. Central research questions are the relationship between state, church and academia, and the connection between the academic discourse and the policy of appointments, since Count Leo Thun was not only responsible for the educational reforms, but also for the Concordat of 1855, which gave the Catholic Church far-reaching influence especially in the field of primary education. The primary archival source for the project is the correspondence of Count Leo Thun as it is preserved in his papers in the Czech state archive in Decin/Tetschen and in various other archives in Austria and abroad. The European dimension of these sources and the central questions of the project should yield crucial results for the history of Austrian education in the 19th century and its connection to the international development and therefore close central research gaps. The project has the following precise goals: - A monographic study of Count Leo Thun`s personality and work as Minister of Education and his education reform. This will be based on the primary sources, and be evaluated and integrated into the national and international research on education and university reform in the 19th century. - An edition of selected correspondence from Count Thun`s years as Minister in printed form. This edition will exemplarily explain and answer the central questions raised in this proposal. - A complete edition of Count Thun`s preserved correspondence from his years as minister in electronic form. In the long run, after the end of this project, it is planned to continue and expand the research on Count Leo Thun- Hohenstein beyond his years as minister of education.

The projects primary objective was the digital as well as paper edition of Leo Thun Hohensteins correspondence from the years 1849 to 1860. Besides Leo Thuns bequest, which mainly comprises letters addressed to the minister, for the first time also letters authored by Leo Thun himself were systematically searched for and edited. Leo Thun-Hohenstein was Minister of Education and Religious Affairs in the Habsburg Monarchy between 1849 and 1860. The reforms that bear his name mark a watershed in the history of the Austrian educational landscape. Especially the universities faced fundamental reform, bringing about a significant scientific upturn in the following decades. Although Thun-Hohensteins influence on the development of the Austrian university system has been basically acknowledged, his ministership has been differently assessed by both contemporaries and historians. One reason lies in Leo Thunss conservative and traditional catholic attitude and his authoritarian policy in personnel issues, respectively. The latter enabling him to regularly circumvent the right to self-government granted to the universities in the course of the reform. Already in the 1960s Hans Lentze, who has presented the most significant research on the reforms so far, encouraged the edition of Thuns correspondence, in order to facilitate a revaluation of Thuns policy on a wide basis of sources. The recently finalized project is able to provide this basis. The digital edition allows a comprehensive view of Thuns university and ecclesiastical politics as well as on his general political opinions. Thus providing a more differentiated perspective on the neoabsolutist era. Moreover, the edition illustrates the wide network that Thun used for his personnel policy, which served as a central tool for the implementation of his reforms. The digital edition enables the letters to be researched according to various search criteria (persons, locations, institutions, addressor) and thus allows differing approaches to around 800 documents (ca. 8.200 handwritten pages).