Oldal 187 [187]
OCR
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 introduced in higher education by a government that, to increase its political and economic efficiency, looked for models of administrative knowledge at the German 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 disciplines, 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 (presently 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 emerging 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, independent 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 Catholic system. This bias has been formulated in Hungarian historiography with an * 185 ¢
