Das Fremde im "deutschen Tempel" der Wissenschaften

With the stock market collapse of 1873, the euphoric progressive optimism of the liberal era reached its limits. The following economic crisis also confronted the famous Viennese Medical School with severe cost savings and increasing pressure on its performance. In order to retain its scientific level, it focused entirely on a 'German' elite, which was preferred to the other ethnic groups of the Habsburg Monarchy in medical studies and appointments. Interculturalism was not considered intellectual capital anymore. The ‘foreign’ and ‘unknown’ became negatively encoded. The over-representation of Eastern Jewish students at the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna was instrumentalized politically and the first anti-Semitic excesses were taking place. Especially the ´Jewish` General Policlinic became the projection screen of competition- and existential fears. As women began to claim their right to study medicine, they were rejected by the Viennese Medical Faculty with biologistic rhetoric. The “temple of sciences” was strengthened by strict hierarchies and patriarchal structures. But the attempt of a scientific categorization of genders and ethnicities failed. In the Fin de Siècle, science and art unmasked a conservative position towards Jews and women as a false world. In the Jewry, a new ethnic consciousness was arising. The beginning of the social, intellectual and sexual emancipation of women resulted in the legalization of medical studies for women in 1900. This book poses the questions: which goals the educational and science policy follows in economic crises and how these processes of change can steer the culture of science.