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THE INTELLECTUAL RESOURCES OF MODERN GOVERNANCE
structural characteristics of the "Statistical" books, published in considerable
number on the territory of Hungary towards the end of the eighteenth and in
the first half of the nineteenth century, both as they were used in education,
and in broader circulation.
Staatenkunde emerged and became institutionalized in Hungarian academe
through the initiative of the Habsburg government in the framework of the
reforms of the Empress Maria Theresa and Joseph II. The discipline was intro¬
duced in higher education by a government that, to increase its political and
economic efficiency, looked for models of administrative knowledge at the Ger¬
man universities. The educational reforms started to transform a traditional
and confessionally divided schooling system in Hungary. They introduced into
the higher tiers of education the so-called sciences of state: a body of disci¬
plines, which also included Staatenkunde and Politik.
The social heterogeneity of late eighteenth-century Hungary was indeed well
reflected in the structure of its educational system, divided by confessional
separation. Most dynamic were the northern and western areas of historic
Hungary, with the political-administrative seat of the country in Pozsony (pres¬
ently Bratislava, Slovakia, Ger. Pressburg) — to be transferred only later to
Pest-Buda. These areas were known for their legal academies and advanced
Lutheran lycées, which prepared the scholarly career of many scholars, who,
after studies in Austria or Germany, often established themselves in the emerg¬
ing Hungarian cultural capital. Most important centre of higher education was
the University of Pest, originally founded in Nagyszombat (presently Trnava,
Slovakia), that had already moved to Buda in 1777, then Pest in 1784, and its
faculty of law, where Staatenkunde was introduced in the course of educational
reforms.
Although schools in Hungary were run and largely controlled by the
Churches until the mid-nineteenth century, the educational reforms led to
a convergence of the curricula despite the confessional fragmentation. I shall
thus argue that Staatenkunde, with its emphasis on the secular state and on
standardized themes of study, witnessed a quick convergence of methods, inde¬
pendent of the confessional and institutional background of the practitioners.
However, I would like to bracket the tacit presupposition about the superiority
of contemporary Protestant schooling, in contrast to the state-controlled Cath¬
olic system. This bias has been formulated in Hungarian historiography with an
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