The first aspect of this narrative which merits examination and clarification is the history and functions of the Chair of Aesthetics at the Hungarian Uni-versity during the period in question. A Chair of Aesthetics was founded by Maria Theresia in 1774 at the Hungarian University in Nagyszombat (now Trnava, Slovakia).2 Before then, the main disciplines at faculty of humanities were physica, logica, ethica, mathesis, historia et eloquentia profana, and scien-tia politico-cameralis, i.e. physics, logics, ethics, mathematics, history, rhetoric,
* The research on which this essay is based was funded by the Hungarian Scientific Re-search Fund (NKFIH).
1 Tomáš Hlobil: Geschmacksbildung im Nationalinteresse. Die Anfänge der Prager Univer-sitätsästhetik im mitteleuropäischen Kulturraum 1763–1805. Transl. Jürgen Ostmeyer, Michael Wögerbauer. Hannover 2012.
2 For a short history of Hungarian university chair of aesthetics see: Imre Szentpétery:
A bölcsészettudományi kar története 1635–1935 [History of Faculty of Humanities 1635–1935]. Budapest 1935, 280–286. For his monograph, Imre Szentpétery used the sources stored in the Archives of Eötvös Loránd University. Unfortunately, the sources regarding the Faculty of Humanities were destroyed by fire during the Second World War, so Szentpétery’s work preserves very important but unverifiable data.
and cameralistics.3 Obviously the history and theory of the arts were located out of the structure of university disciplines: the introduction of aesthetics into this system signified a new pedagogical concept with stronger emphasis on the humanities. The new chair had the title and function »eloquentia profana et aesthetica«, afterwards »aesthetica cum literis et artibus amoenioribus«, or »se- cular rhetoric and aesthetics« and, later, »aesthetics and fine arts and literature«.4 Professors holding this chair therefore had to teach not only theoretical aes-thetics, but also the history of literature and the fine arts. As I will show, theo-retical aesthetics remained in the centre of the professors’ educational practice.
The history of literature and the fine arts was compressed into the footnotes of their textbooks and monographs much as it was into the second semesters of their university lectures. Although the chair of aesthetics was integrated into the faculty of humanities, the subject of aesthetics was available to students from all the faculties at the university. This is important, because at the time most Hungarian poets and intellectuals studied law, theology, or medicine, but this did not prevent them from studying aesthetics as well, which they did, as the statistics make clear.5 The position of aesthetics became more stronger in 1784, fortified by van Swieten’s university reforms.6 In 1817, professor of aesthetics Johann Ludwig Schedius participated in the elaboration of the new system for the teaching of philosophy.7 His proposals introduced new disciplines to the program: aesthetica, philologia Graeca, archeologia, psychologia, and scientia edu- cationis, or aesthetics, Greek philology (Schedius was a professor of ancient Greek too), archeology, psychology, and pedagogy. The model on which his
in-3 We can read a summary from 1774 about the disciplines, the professors, and the text-books in an official manuscript, see: Hungarian National Archive, Central Archive, C 67, 1774. Acta Studiorum F. 5. No. 38.
4 Szentpétery: A bölcsészettudományi (= note 2), 280.
5 Records about the students survived only in random fragments. For example, we can see Schedius’ own records about his students attached to one of his official applications (Hungarian National Archive, Central Archive, C 67, 1810. Fons 8. Num. 135.). Pál Szemere and Mihály Vörösmarty were his students, along with several other famous Hungarian writers.
6 On the reforms see Ernst Wangermann: Aufklärung und staatsbürgerliche Erziehung.
Gottfried van Swieten als Reformator des österreichischen Unterrichtswesens 1781–1791.
München 1978, 19–30.
7 Szentpétery: A bölcsészettudományi (= note 2), 158–160. On Schedius’ project see Hun-garian National Archive, Central Archive, C 67, Fons 8. Pos. 217. On the context and standards of Schedius’ project: Piroska Balogh: Ars scientiae. Közelítések Schedius Lajos János tudományos pályájának dokumentumaihoz [Ars scientiae. Approaches to doc-uments of Johann Ludwig Schedius’ scholarly career]. Debrecen 2007, 159–164.
novative proposals were based was clearly the educational system of Göttingen University, from which he had graduated from.8
Finally, I should on the question of language. In the Hungarian Kingdom, until 1844 the language of university studies and textbooks was Latin.9 This si-tuation had innumerable consequences. On the one hand, the Latin textbooks written by professors became popular abroad as well, and were they received as recent monographs within the European republic of letters. The Hungarian stu-dents were acquainted with modern aesthetics in the Latin and often German and Greek terminology, and this helped them read the most important works of European aesthetics. On the other hand, the use of Latin made aesthetics the exclusive privilege, as it were, of the comparatively narrow circles of learned and accomplished society. Professor Schedius realized the dangers this posed for the discipline, and he began to use journals to popularize aesthetics. But around 1800, he found the German language more suitable for this purpose10, and only in the 1820s did he begin to publish papers on aesthetics in Hungarian for the wider public.11 Although by the 1830s Schedius was eager to teach aesthetics in Hungarian12, at the university Latin remained the official language until 1844.
Academic aesthetics therefore was separated from popular aesthetics by langu-age in Hungary, and this situation was softened but not resolved by tenders offered by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.13 Thus, it is hardly surprising
8 On Schedius’ contacts to the Göttingen Academy and University see Balogh: Ars scien-tiae (= note 7), 69–65 and 263–272.
9 On the special role of Latin in the culture and politics of the Hungarian Kingdom see Latin at the Crossroads of Identity. The Evolution of Linguistic Nationalism in the Kingdom of Hungary. Eds. Gábor Almási, Lav Šubarić. Leiden–Boston 2015.
10 Schedius published German-language journals in Pest to popularize aesthetics and cri-tics: Literärischer Anzeiger für Ungern (1798–1799) and Zeitschrift von und für Ungern, zur Beförderung der vaterländischen Geschichte, Erdkunde und Literatur (1802–1804).
See Andrea Seidler and Wolfram Seidler: Das Zeitschriftenwesen im Donauraum zwischen 1740 und 1809. Kommentierte Bibliographie der deutsch- und ungarischsprachigen Zeit-schriften in Wien, Preßburg und Pest–Buda. Wien 1988, 220, 276.
11 Among others, an essay for women: Johann Ludwig Schedius: »A’ Szépség’ tudománya«
[The Science of Beauty]. In: Aurora. Hazai Almanach 1 (1822), 313–320.
12 On Schedius’ proposal to teach aesthetics in Hungarian see Balogh: Ars scientiae (= note 7), 163–164.
13 On the tenders on aesthetics announced by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences see Gergely Fórizs: »Határponton: A Magyar Tudós Társaság esztétikai pályázata 1840-ben«
[On the border. Tender on aesthetics by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1840].
In: Régiók, határok, identitások. (Kelet-)Közép–Európa a (magyar) filozófiatörténetben [Regions, borders, identities: (East-)Central-Europe and the Hungarian history of phi-losophy]. Ed. Béla Mester. Budapest 2016, 169–189.
that the discipline of aesthetics was only barely able to integrate itself into the national narratives of the human sciences in Hungary14, and by the second half of the 19th century it had essentially lost its popularity.