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

by Cohen, Gary B.

• ISBN13: 9781557530875
• ISBN10: 1557530874
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-10-01
• Publisher: Purdue Univ Pr

Summary

The development of Austrian society in the nineteenth century was beset by enormous difficulties, including sharp social-class differences, an economic base that was developing all too slowly, and, distinct from most of Western and Central Europe, a multiplicity of competing ethnic and religious groups. Against this backdrop, Cohen examines Austria's educational system, which he characterizes as one of the major accomplishments of government and civil society under the Habsburg Monarchy in its last decades. By 1910 Austria's secondary schools, technical colleges, and universities, pushed by a growing popular demand and pressures from local governments and interest groups, enrolled percentages of the school-aged population that roughly equaled, and sometimes exceeded, those in Germany. The rising social and political competition of Austria's ethnic and religious groups encouraged the expansion of education, and Czech and Polish national groups and the Jewish and Protestant religious minorities benefited particularly from the growing enrollments. These widening opportunities enabled lower-middle-class and even some working-class youth to join the modern educated middle classes. Only in fight of the developments examined here can one understand the recruitment and formation of the bureaucrats and professionals who led the Austrian Republic and the neighboring states of East-Central Europe in the decades after 1918. This study, the first English-language book on advanced education in the Austrian lands during the nineteenth century, is recommended for scholars and students in the history of education, modern social history, and the history of the Habsburg Monarchy.

Author Biography

Gary B. Cohen is a professor of history and director of international academic programs at the University of Oklahoma, Norman.

Table of Contents

Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
A Note on Place Names
Abbreviations
Maps
Introduction: Social Development and Austria's Modern Educated Elites	p. 1
Education and the Modernization of Austria in the Mid-nineteenth Century	p. 11
Opening the Gates: Expansion of the Educational Network	p. 55
Guarding the Gates: The Social Politics of Education after 1880	p. 95
The Changing Ethnic and Religious Recruitment of Students	p. 127
The Limits of Opportunity: Students' Occupational and Class Origins	p. 170
The Social Experience of Students: The Many Paths of Academic Education	p. 212
Conclusion: Education, Society, and the State in the Late Nineteenth Century	p. 249
Supplementary Tables	p. 271
Statistical Methods	p. 293
Notes	p. 301
Sources	p. 347
Index	p. 379
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