University Reform 1850 & Scholarship on Roman Law in Galicia

The European vision of an integrated community of diverse states and nations entails the establishment and continuous development of a common legal system while largely preserving national, cultural and regional differences. With this aim in mind, the question arises as to whether examples in the history of individual European countries can inform this process. One example that presents itself, particularly from an Austrian perspective, is the multinational Habsburg monarchy of the second half of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. The planned research project will therefore centre on the question of how a common legal system was maintained under the Habsburgs. The focus is on the thought, development and level of engagement of scholars with a legal order that governed a multitude of different peoples and ethnic groups. The primary aim is to examine how a common set of teachings and a doctrine were maintained: how did academics working at the time engage with the common jurisdiction in which the various countries and peoples of the Habsburg monarchy were united? The project will explore this question taking the crownland of Galicia as an example: how did scholars in this Polish part of the Austrian state perceive and discuss the specifically German phenomenon of Pandectism, as developed by leading German Romanists during the first half of the 19th century? It is important to note that at the time academic legal discourse in Galicia was already largely being conducted in Polish; and this, of course, included scholarship in Roman law at the Galician universities of Krakw and Lviv. Following internal political reforms in Cisleithanian Austria from about the beginning of the 1870s, nearly all areas of life were polonised. By 1871, in the crownland of Galicia legal questions and problems were being discussed in Polish, including in academic debate. But by this point, the object of the prevailing academic discourse par excellence came from German ius commune scholarship, namely German 19th century Pandectism. The research project presented here will therefore begin by attempting to reconstruct the Polish-language legal discourse regarding ius commune and ius commune scholarship in order to identify and detail the major differences and commonalities with the main strand of Pandectist legal discourse in Germany. This discourse is closely linked to Thun-Hohensteins university reforms, which led to a radical overhaul of legal studies at Austrian universities. A further focus of the project is the implementation of this reform in Galicia. On the one hand, the project will consider the perspective of the "Vienna headquarters", i.e. primarily the Ministry of Education, and on the other, it will explore the repercussions of the Vienna reform discussions in a Slavic crownland, namely Galicia. How were these discussions received and addressed in the Slavic "province"?

University Reform 1850 and Scholarship on Roman Law in Galicia The research project focussed on the teaching of Roman law in the Crown Land of Galicia after 1848. Using the example of Roman law and its teaching at universities of Galicia after 1848, the project examines how the Thun-Hohenstein reform of the legal study regulations was implemented in the Austrian Empire. This is done on the one hand from the perspective of the "Viennese centre", i.e. above all the Ministry of Culture, but on the other hand the echo of the Viennese reform discussions in a Slavic crown land, namely Galicia, is also examined. In particular, the question of how these discussions were actually received and processed in the Slavic "province" was investigated. The results of the project can be summarised as follows: a) In the period after 1848, the importance of Roman law as a subject also increased significantly at the two Galician universities of Lviv and Krakow. The development of Galician Romance studies can therefore be seen as the successful realisation of central principles of Thun-Hohenstein's reform ideas. b) Galician Legal Romance studies after 1848 appeared in a German-speaking and Polish-speaking part. A specific characteristic of Galician Romance studies can be recognised above all in the Polish-speaking authors, in terms of teaching materials and didactics, as well as in terms of method and research focus. In contrast, the German-speaking representatives of Romance studies in Galicia largely fit in with the general development in Austria as a whole. c) The process of complete Polonisation of the entire university system, which began in the early 1860s and proved to be irreversible in retrospect, had a formative influence on the development of Galician Romance studies. This corresponded with the domestic political developments in the monarchy at the time, but also corresponded with the phenomenon discussed in more recent research into the history of science of an internationalisation of science with a simultaneous nationalisation of teaching within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. monarchy.