This discussion addresses the three papers in this Forum that deal directly with the dissemination and reception of the Enlightenment in the Habsburg monarchy: those by Ivo Cerman, Olga Khavanova, and Marija Petrović. Scholarship on the European Enlightenment continues to be vital and fertile, despite tendencies within some analytical schools to denigrate it for fostering “cultural hegemony,” violence, and exclusion. While the consensus that the Enlightenment shaped modernity remains largely uncontested, the outstanding feature of recent work on the subject is to stress the degree to which it should be seen as a broad spectrum of regional and ideological variants, which interacted fruitfully with one another.Footnote ¹ In his recent magisterial trilogy on the European Enlightenment, for example, Jonathan Israel has emphasized both the importance of the different Enlightenment intellectual camps and the “dialectic of ideas and social reality,”Footnote ² while David Sorkin has placed eighteenth-century religious movements of revival and reform within the Enlightenment context.Footnote ³ Ian Hunter has posited the existence of “rival Enlightenments” in the German context,Footnote ⁴ while John Robertson and others have brought new focus to Enlightenment manifestations on the peripheries of Europe.Footnote ⁵ Despite such important new contributions to the subject from various perspectives, a comprehensive view of the “Austrian” Enlightenment remains elusive.Footnote ⁶ To begin with, the very use of the term “Austrian” creates a whole series of analytical complexities, since “Austria” and “Austrian” had a broad range of meanings in the eighteenth century that were very different from their current usages.Footnote ⁷ While “Austria” was frequently used as shorthand, it generally referred to the geo-political state complex ruled by the House of Habsburg and reflected the dynasty's preference for the name “House of Austria” over “Habsburg.” Further, since some of the dynasty's patrimony lay within the bounds of the Holy Roman Empire (of which the Habsburgs remained titular heads) and were part of the larger German cultural sphere, at least some of the developments would have to be considered part of the German Enlightenment. Yet in the growing literature on the German Enlightenment discussion of the Enlightenment in the Habsburg lands remains very much on the periphery. There is also a great deal we still do not know about the Enlightenment in the Habsburg monarchy, partly because it is so difficult for any single author to draw together the many languages and cultures of the monarchy and the variety of experiences that grew out of the intellectual changes of the eighteenth century.

In light of the new emphasis on the pluralism of enlightenments, the promulgation of Enlightenment ideals and dissemination of Enlightenment ideas in the Habsburg monarchy during the reigns of Maria Theresa (1740–80), Joseph II (1780–90), and Leopold II (1790–92) assume a whole new significance. While the reception of ideas from abroad remains a significant component of our understanding of the Habsburg Enlightenment, it is clear that the local adaptation and implementation of them have to be seen in their regional contexts and on their own terms.Footnote ⁸ There has already been a long tradition of this within the field of literary studies of the period,Footnote ⁹ and the significance of the popular brochure literature, with its specific local flavor, to the development of political consciousness among the broader public in the Habsburg monarchy has also been recognized.Footnote ¹⁰ Similarly, the intellectual roots of the radical ecclesiastical policies of Habsburg enlightened absolutism were first charted in discussions stimulated by Fritz Valjavec and Eduard Winter over seventy years ago, prompting the famous response by the Jesuit scholar, Ferdinand Maaß, and leading to a large and fruitful literature on what has since become known as “Josephinism.” Scholars who define the term in its broadest sense tend to see it as the Austrian version of the Enlightenment, while others see it more narrowly as a form of Reform Catholicism or Erastianism (Staatskirchentum). Though there is still little consensus on the subject and major questions about how it should be defined remain, “Josephinism” was clearly a local adaptation in response to very specific issues facing the Habsburg monarchy.Footnote ¹¹

We see an example of aspects of Josephinst adaptation and transmission in the article by Marija Petrović, who analyzes the transmission of the Enlightenment to the monarchy's Serbs by examining the production of the state-sponsored Cyrillic printing shop of the Viennese publisher Joseph Kurzböck. It seems clear from Petrović’s analysis that the motivation for granting Kurzböck the status of privileged imperial Cyrillic printer was an awareness of the need to adapt consumption of Cyrillic materials to specific Habsburg monarchy conditions. As she notes, up to that point Habsburg Serbs had relied mainly on books imported from Russia, and the new printing shop helped focus Orthodox loyalties to Vienna. If we keep in mind that the monarchy's Serbs were largely concentrated in the lands of the Hungarian crown, cementing those loyalties also played a significant role in the crown's Hungarian policies, and might be seen in the light of Maria Theresa's short-lived Illyrian Court Deputation (Illyrische Hofdeputation) and Leopold II's equally short-lived Illyrian Court Chancellery (Illyrische Hofkanzlei).Footnote ¹² In addition to supplying the demand for Orthodox school- and church books, Kurzböck published imperial regulations and instructions, pamphlets, as well as literature of various genres. This included translations of Jean François Marmontel's influential novel, Bélisaire, and Joseph Valentin von Eybel's controversial pamphlet, Was ist der Papst? In the latter case, the Habsburg contest with papal authority was of secondary concern to Orthodox populations, but it certainly made clear that the pamphlet's Erastian message applied equally to the monarchy's Orthodox hierarchy. Finally, as Petrović points out, Kurzböck's shop also gave voice to “enlightened” individuals among the Serbs by providing publication opportunities for such Serbian men of letters as Antonije Vezilić, Jovan Muškatirović, and Zaharije Orfelin.

The themes of adaptation and transmission also figure prominently in the two articles by Ivo Cerman and Olga Khavanova. Cerman has already made a significant contribution to the growing literature on the role of aristocracies in Central Europe in the dissemination of Enlightenment ideas.Footnote ¹³ He challenged the widely held assumption that Enlightenment educational desiderata and the traditional aristocratic ethos were inherently mutually exclusive, and showed that social position in itself had no particular influence on the reception of Enlightenment ideas in the Habsburg monarchy. If the nobility rejected the materialist radical Enlightenment, it was less because of their “feudal” social prejudices and more because they retained a commitment to Christianity, primarily in its Reform Catholic form. In the present article he argues that “representatives of the Enlightenment were recruited from many social groups, including the aristocracy and Catholic clergy,” and shows that many nobles were not only patrons and collectors of Enlightenment works, but active producers of a significant Enlightenment literature—both public and private.Footnote ¹⁴ Cerman makes an important contribution to our understanding of the dissemination of Enlightenment ideas by demonstrating that this also occurred through the circulation of manuscripts. Though perhaps only one such writer, Joseph Nikolaus Windischgrätz, could be ranked as a formal philosopher, fully engaged in the philosophical debates of his times, in Cerman's view the work of these writers was nevertheless a significant achievement and represented what he calls the “missing link” between Bohemian and European literary culture. By showing the extent to which the highest reaches of the Habsburg court aristocracy were carriers and transmitters of Enlightenment ideas Cerman broadens the scope of our understanding of the Enlightenment in the Habsburg monarchy and demonstrates that the reformist regime was by no means alone in fostering the transformative process that eighteenth-century philosophes called “progress.”

Olga Khavanova concentrates more on top-down transmission with her article on the Austrian political economist, Joseph von Sonnenfels. Sonnenfels was perhaps the most distinctive voice of the Enlightenment within the Habsburg monarchy, and his thought, writings, and activities have drawn repeated attention over the past few decades.Footnote ¹⁵ Khavanova focuses on him in his capacity as a professor and writer, and in particular on his textbooks and courses in political science (Polizey- und Cameralwissenschaften) for aspiring bureaucrats. These, as she points out, covered all aspects of the administrative system of the Habsburg monarchy and aimed “to create a cadre of competent and loyal officials for different branches and levels of the administrative apparatus,” with the highest standards of professionalism. Expanding on the seminal work by Waltraud Heindl, she shows how these courses became the standard prerequisite for positions in public service.Footnote ¹⁶ They involved not only the mastering of a new, simpler, and clearer linguistic style, but also a level of indoctrination of many Enlightenment ideals. What is significant about Khavanova's article is that it highlights the important acceleration and expansionist dynamics of the reform process in the Habsburg monarchy: pragmatic ad hoc responses to specific issues soon brought other problems to light which then both hastened and enlarged the process of change.Footnote ¹⁷ In the case of Sonnenfels's courses, graduates in due course taught the same course in other post-secondary institutions so that it was soon widely taught all over the monarchy. The emphasis on creating a meritocracy is clear from the fact that the government established an extensive scholarship program for talented but needy students. But as Khavanova shows in detail in connection with the application of this programme in the Kingdom of Hungary, it also proved to be a successful caste-inclusion strategy. The result was that the basic reform values of the administration were successfully transmitted to “new generations of professional and loyal officials.”Footnote ¹⁸

Because throughout most of the Enlightenment and the reform era, intellectual life in the Habsburg empire was closely tied to the interests of the state, there has been a tendency to view developments from the center rather than the peripheries. The three articles under discussion have given some indication of the scope and potential for further research on the reception and dissemination of the Enlightenment in the Habsburg monarchy. However, there remain significant areas of the Enlightenment, particularly in connection with the “dialectic of ideas and social reality,” that remain unexplored. As Carl Schorske has pointed out, the culture of Habsburg Central Europe was not moral, philosophical, or scientific, but primarily aesthetic. Its greatest achievements were in the applied and performing arts: architecture, theater, and music. Its chief manifestation was a culture of the senses—in Schorske's phrase, “a culture of grace” rather than of the “word”—and it is therefore not surprising that its highest expression of Enlightenment ideals came in the realm of the arts, particularly music. It is not an exaggeration to say that what Hume was to Britain and Voltaire to France, Mozart and Haydn were to Austria. Some recent studies have highlighted the important nonliterary dimensions of the “Austrian Enlightenment,” and it remains a challenge to integrate this research with traditional literary and historical scholarship.Footnote ¹⁹ As Brian Vick has demonstrated in his recent nuanced study of cultural aspects of the Congress of Vienna, this avenue of research has the potential to transform the field entirely.Footnote ²⁰ In any case, such a multidisciplinary approach should certainly go a long way in helping us understand what was distinctive about the Enlightenment in the Habsburg monarchy.