Technikatörténeti szemle 23. (1997-98)

TANULMÁNYOK - Efmertová, Marcela: Major Anniversaries of Prague’s Czech Technical University and its Support from the Secondary School System in the Past

business and trade. Maria Theresa's reform work was carried on by Emperor Joseph II who introduced religious tolerance (1781) and abolished statute labour (1781). This paved the way for lively economic development which called for the training of technically educated workers, even though economic and social progress was somewhat slowed down by the Napoleonic wars. The Austrian Empire was proclaimed in 1804 while the Czech lands, made up of the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Margraviate of Moravia, formally independent countries, were responsible to their respective land governments in Vienna, which were, however, both accountable and subordinated to the authorities in Vienna. In the first half of the 19th century the Austrian Empire constituted a mixture of countries and nations of different historic traditions and varying cultural and economic standards. This eventually resulted in the revolution in 1848-1849 and, following the period of Bach's absolutism and the lost Prussian-Austrian war for dominance within the German Union, to the subsequent Austro-Hungahan settlement in December 1867. When tracing the development of Czech technical and industrial education, the last third of the 18th century and the early 19th century stand out as a major landmark era when the needs of the manufacturing industries, trade and agriculture were given considerable support. During that period, iron-making, textile, glassmaking, ceramic and porcelain manufactories in the Czech lands flourished, with ore and coal mining expanding. Breweries, distilleries, oil-producing plants, malt plants and sugar works were built for the country's food industry. Other industrial branches, such as the engineering, building, chemical and coal mining industries as well as electrical engineering, were also developed in the course of the 19th century. Industrial centres were established in Prague, in the Moravian town of Brno, in Liberec in North Bohemia, in the North Moravian Ostrava-Karvinâ region, in the coal basin at the foothills of the North Bohemian Krusné hory (Erzgebirge or Ore Mountains) and around the Central Bohemian town of Kladno and Plzeh (Pilsen) in West Bohemia. It was primarily for the benefit of those newly industrialized regions in the Czech lands and their industrial activities that technical education at secondary and university level was reformed and redesigned throughout the monarchy. The First Three Professors at the Estates' Engineering School The bulk of the burden of promoting general technical education not only in the Czech lands had to be borne by the Estates' Civilian and Military Engineering School in Prague, as the network of secondary technical schools was not yet completed, failing fully to meet the needs of the technical univer-