It would be an understatement to say that studies about the politics of linguistic unification and about the motives, inculcation, and surveillance of German-language education in the late-eighteenth-century Habsburg monarchy are eagerly awaited. The base for this research is uneven, notwithstanding a diverse, exceedingly arcane, and specialized literature in a number of languages. There is a cornucopia of older polyglot research on the educational system (see C. D'Elvert, G. Wolf, H. Wolf, G. Strakosch-Grassmann, A. Weiß), but recent studies are still colored by a disproportionate emphasis on German-language sources and institutions.

It is not surprising that much of the relevant literature on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century language politics was written at the fin de siècle. The topic gained prominence in the context of increased interest in retrieving and ascertaining what came to be known as the respective “national” and linguistic early-nineteenth-century “revivals” (see H. Lemberg, W. Schamschula, J. Pogačnik). The research on the eighteenth-century revision of style and on the evolution of a German literary language (Schriftsprache) by Karl Wotke and Peter Wiesinger is indispensable. (Wiesinger stresses the role of the aristocratic academies, the Theresianum, and the Savoyardische Ritterakademie as parade grounds for the proliferation of rectified German.) Daniel Rapant's magisterial two-volume work on Magyarization, K počiatkom mad'arizácie (Bratislava, 1927 and 1931), is instructive on the Josephine incentives for linguistic standardization and unification and incisive on their strategies of implementation. R. J. W. Evans's admirably perspicacious and succinct Kann Memorial lecture, “Language and State-Building,” appeared in the thirty-fifth volume of the Austrian History Yearbook (2004, 1–24).

The most recent contribution to this literature, Ulrike Eder's Auf die mehrere Ausbreitung der teutschen Sprache soll fürgedacht werden, promises to cover the whole monarchy. However, the book's focus on Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, and Bukovina betrays the subtitle. Eder concentrates on the role of German as a secondary language (Fremd- und Zweitsprache). A slightly peripatetic introduction discusses the state of the art in Eder's field and reviews the existing compilations of sources. She discusses Felbiger's Methodenbuch (1775) and the prescribed acquisition of German-language skills by a system of locating terminological equivalents in German to the respective mother tongues of the subjects. Eder judiciously describes the enlightened-absolutist precept as promoting satisfactory knowledge of the respective mother tongue as prerequisite for a thorough, exhaustive command of German.

The increasing ascendancy of German in the educational system is seen under the auspices of Gaspari's Instructio pro Scholis humanioribus, which replaced the Jesuit Ratio studiorum in 1764. Subjects' proper acquisition of their mother tongue remained one of the primary objectives of Trivialschul education, where the language of instruction was adapted to local requirements and functioned as a catalyst and springboard for comprehensive education conducted in German. It should be noted that the acquisition of German remained an ancillary and subsidiary subject subordinate to Latin in the Gymnasien until 1848, the introduction of German in general language education with Gratian Marx's new curriculum of 1775 notwithstanding.

Eder's chapters on these developments are a recapitulation of the relevant paragraphs in Fischel's Das österreichische Sprachenrecht (Brünn, 1901), Gerald Grimm's Die Schulreform Maria Theresias 1747–1775 (Frankfurt, 1987), and Karl Wotke's work. Eder provides a convenient digest that describes Joseph II's determination to make German the lingua franca of his empire (“wahre Landes- und Muttersprache” in 1782, “Nazionalsprache” in 1786), the introduction of German as the language of teaching at the universities, and the delayed and diluted implementation of this decree for different courses of study. (In Lemberg, for example, the perpetuation of Latin had to be conceded due to the unsatisfactory diffusion of German in Galicia on the whole.)

Among the lucid sections of the book is a discussion of those Josephine reforms that impinged on the language of higher education, for example, those reforms regarding the attempts to make legislation accessible in the vernaculars, on the teaching of pastoral theology, and on the regulations for the Generalseminarien. Eder also meticulously reconstructs the local filibustering against Joseph's attempts to make German the official language of education and a requirement for admission to the Gymnasien in Bohemia. There are also sections on the introduction of compulsory German education for Jewish communities and on the attempt to reduce the status of Yiddish. There is, however, no mention of Louise Hecht's fine studies on Peter Beer and Herz Homberg, Roman Rosdolsky's book on Galicia, or Horst Glassl's work on the Einrichtungswerk.

The reliance on seminal, if rather negligible, older research is symptomatic, as Eder's study overtly rests on secondary literature whose material and conclusions it scarcely scrutinizes or transcends. The book's evident strengths lie in the point-by-point documentation of how teachers were trained in Bohemia and Galicia and of the regulations for pupils' instruction there. It also provides a detailed account of the schoolbooks used in these regions and of their production. This research into schoolbook production is adjuvant and mostly results in a gargantuan potpourri of scarcely digested sources.

The lacunae left by the older literature briefly described above are not filled by Eder's book. The syncretistic and polyglot culture of the regions discussed is mentioned in passing, but there is no explication of the possible specific complications and intricacies this condition yielded. Also, the book remains rather pointillist on the concrete role of German in shaping a docile and enlightened populace as well as an efficient and loyal officialdom attached to the Gesamtstaat. Eder's fair conclusion is that as “time should show … the very measures of educational policy enacted in the 70s and 80s consolidated the situation of linguistic heterogeneity instead of promoting linguistic standardization” (27–28).

Notwithstanding the above-mentioned reservations, Eder's study is valuable as a précis of educational politics pertinent to German-language education. The book is carefully produced, though there are some minor punctuation and spelling mistakes—Czáky instead of Csáky, throughout and in the register (263)—and omissions. For example “Hafner 1999”, “Klingenstein 1983” and “Ammon 2001b” are quoted in abbreviation but not listed with full title in the register.