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

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

victory was won in Vienna in the fight for university self-government and the renewal of higher education by the adherents of reform, including the renowned professors in medicine, Rokitansky and Skoda. The Viennese educational administration—looked at from an Austrian pointreally made the years of neo-absolutism an "age of reforms", even if not lacking in contradictions. The educational initiatives of the Habsburg Empire could contain progressive elements even for the Hungarians (the first example being the Ratio Educationis of 1777), because they were forced to consider the demands of the socially more advanced hereditary lands. (The situations was similar to the question of the emancipation of the serfs when it was not in the interest of Vienna to return to the pre1848 state and consequently acquiesced in the results of 1848 and left them essentially unchanged.) So the approach to the higher educational policy of the age of neo-absolutism must start from its duality. The policy was based on the organizational statute of the universities approved on 27th September, 1849 and onthedecreex of the imperial and royal minister of religion and public education (30th Sept. of the same year). The Austrian universities were granted their autonomy, but that was suspended in the case of the university of Pest. The ordinance of the minister dated 15th Febr., 1850 declared the Pest university being under his direct authority in questions concerning education. By that it was ranged among the Austrian universities (without their rights) and consequently the educational and organizational reform of the 1850s made by Leo Thun on the model of the Prussian universities concerned it. There were indisputable scientific and educational results, and some excellent professors were appointed (like János Czermák, professor of medicine, the maker of the first laryngoscope)—most of whom later had to leave the university as they spoke no Hungarian. It was an important organizational change that the preparatory character of the arts faculty was terminated (i.e. its separation from the secondary school organization was accomplished) and it was reinforced with the addition of new departments. Actually the medical faculty had proposed the transfer of the departments of zoology, mineralogy, botany and chemistry to the arts faculty already in 1848. Stern measures were introduced in the academies of law, which were regarded —not without reason—the hotbeds of the revolutionary movements. On the whole the emergence of Hungarian capitalism, the consequences of economic and technical progress had their impact on education, even if to a limited degree. In 1850 the engineering institute of the arts faculty (established in 1782) was united with the secondary József Industrial School (set up in 1846) and in 1856 it was reorganized into a Polytechnic, the higher school of engineering sciences. The three departments of the former Industrial School (economic, enginnering, commercial) show that here can be found the roots of higher education in economics as well. Finally mention should be made of the Academy of Commerce which came into being in 1857 and was to play an important role in the years to come. Following the defeat in the war against the Italians and the French in 1859, A ustria became much weaker. The issue of the October Diploma, the convening of the Hungarian Parliament in 1861, the ensuing political fightings and the