Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Learning Vernaculars, Learning in Vernaculars: The Role of Modern Languages in Nicolas Le Gras’s Noble Academy and in Teaching Practices for the Nobility (France, 1640-c.1750)
- Dutch Foreign Language use and Education After 1750: Routines and Innovations
- Practice and Functions of French as a Second Language in a Dutch Patrician Family: The van Hogendorp Family (eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries)
- Multilingualism Versus Proficiency in the German language Among the Administrative Elites of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Eighteenth Century
- Voices in a Country Divided: Linguistic Choices in Early Modern Croatia
- Introducing the Teaching of Foreign Languages in Grammar Schools: A Comparison Between the Holy Roman Empire and the Governorate of Estonia (Estonia)
- Latin in the Education of Nobility in Russia: The History of a Defeat
- Latin as the Language of the Orthodox Clergy in Eighteenth-Century Russia
- Index
- Languages and Culture in History
Multilingualism Versus Proficiency in the German language Among the Administrative Elites of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Eighteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Learning Vernaculars, Learning in Vernaculars: The Role of Modern Languages in Nicolas Le Gras’s Noble Academy and in Teaching Practices for the Nobility (France, 1640-c.1750)
- Dutch Foreign Language use and Education After 1750: Routines and Innovations
- Practice and Functions of French as a Second Language in a Dutch Patrician Family: The van Hogendorp Family (eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries)
- Multilingualism Versus Proficiency in the German language Among the Administrative Elites of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Eighteenth Century
- Voices in a Country Divided: Linguistic Choices in Early Modern Croatia
- Introducing the Teaching of Foreign Languages in Grammar Schools: A Comparison Between the Holy Roman Empire and the Governorate of Estonia (Estonia)
- Latin in the Education of Nobility in Russia: The History of a Defeat
- Latin as the Language of the Orthodox Clergy in Eighteenth-Century Russia
- Index
- Languages and Culture in History
Summary
Abstract
This article deals with a particular issue in the social history of language. It tackles the early attempts of the Vienna court – as early as the 1760s and 1770s – to introduce German as the only language of official correspondence and for the circulation of documents all over the Austrian monarchy, and the reaction it caused among different branches of the executive power in the polyglot Kingdom of Hungary. It raises the question of the self-assertions of royal servants, varying degree of proficiency in the same language for different purposes, and treats some first outcomes at the end of Joseph II's reign.
Keywords: language choice, Austrian Monarchy, Kingdom of Hungary, Latin, German, Maria Theresa, Joseph II, officialdom
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the reform agenda of the Vienna court aimed at a tighter amalgamation of the Habsburg lands. Obviously, this challenged the dominance of the Latin language in Hungary and raised the question of its replacement by German. Robert Evans suggests that after the near collapse of the state in the War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748), the issue was ‘whether the Austrian monarchy could create enough state loyalty and structural coherence to flourish among its increasingly centralised, tightly administrated European rivals’. It raised the problem of linguistic uniformity, and for administrative communities of all levels this pressure meant going beyond the simple ability of communicating orally, with a passive understanding of German. The present study deals with the following three issues. How was the German language imposed on the administrative elites of the Kingdom of Hungary? How did royal officials all over the country evaluate their own linguistic proficiencies in the 1770s? Moreover, what did the collective portrait of a central financial body look like from the linguistic point of view some fifteen years later? In this respect, the article refers to a case study on the problem formulated in 1993 by Peter Burke. He noticed that government control of language use is characteristic of the modern state, but that language policies were formulated long before the French Revolution; for this reason, it might be ‘good to see the governments, which first took an interest in the language of their subjects’.
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- Language Choice in Enlightenment EuropeEducation, Sociability, and Governance, pp. 87 - 110Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018