Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 51-53. (Budapest, 1969)

TANULMÁNYOK - Antall József: A modern felsőoktatási rendszer kialakulása Magyarországon (1848—1890) (angol nyelven)

the results, that the portfolio of education was again given to József Eötvös, the only member in the new government who was inherited from the 1848 cabinet. HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF ABSOLUTISM, 1849-67 The defeat of the war of independence meant the end of independent Hungary and, together with it, the end of the cause of independent Hungarian public education. The initiatives and plans of Eötvös for a self-governing, modernly organized higher educational system remained in the form of plans and ideas. But the complexity of history is shown by the paradox that the task of determining the organizational foundations of Hungarian higher education (and of the whole public education) fell mostly to the new absolutism following the defeat. It is this duality which lead on the one hand to onesided judgement: that of overall depression negating any results, and on the other hand to the claim that this period became the epoch of the modernization of Hungarian education. It must be clearly seen that the intellectual groundbreaking for the revival of higher education, the prevalence of scientific pretensions goes back to the Age of Reforms. Its true result could be only the introduction of Hungarian as the language of tuition. The first great attempt to realize the abstract ideas came in 1848, as a part of the comprehensive program of national independence and bourgeois transformation. Although the defeat and even the starting of armed fighting put an end to all that, the program of educational reform on internal development always regarded Article XIX of 1848 at the spiritual and constitutional source of its higher educational policy. The age of neo-absolutism is marked by attaching the greatest importance to the suppression of all national aspirations, to retribution. Teachers who were active during the struggle were removed and rigid inquiries were conducted. Those removed in 1848 were reinstated and German once more became the language of tuition. The retaliatory policies and police measures of the Haynau and Bach administration were unquestionably reactionary, but the decrees issued in the field of education contained progressive elements, too. The explanation is obvious: in the former case the aim was punishment for the war of independence and to keep Hungary under control, in the latter the interests of the Gesammtmonarchie, of the whole empire, (based on Austrian development) prevailed. In Austria—owing to the advanced state of industry and trade—the importance of the bourgeoisie was greater than in Hungary. The two revolutions in Vienna and the crisis of the whole empire (especially the Hungarian war of independence) had tought the Court to consent to certain progressive demands in certain fields and even to push back the extremely reactionary forces. The Court, which suppressed the revolutions, was compelled—at least in Austria — to realize some of their demands and it had to eliminate some of their easy "targets". It was in the very years of defeat and retribution that an important