The Austrian authorities considered student
associations first and foremost a threat to public order. As early as the
1830s, the police constantly monitored students of Lviv University, exposing
and arresting participants in unauthorized gatherings. Students often
established links with the democratic movement (in the days of the still
absolutist Austrian Empire), opposing, on the one hand, the government
bureaucracy and, on the other, the people, while associating themselves with
burghers and artisans. In 1848, during the Spring of Nations, the students of
the Franz
I University and the Technical Academy in Lviv were among active
revolutionaries: they took up arms and formed the so-called Academic Legion.
The army suppressed the uprising, bombarding the city, and it was the buildings
of the University and the Academy that were destroyed in the first place.
However, it was not only in Lviv that the students took part in fighting: some
of them were imprisoned or sentenced to death for participating in the
Hungarian Revolution.
In 1861, when several students gathered informally in
one of the Academy's drawing rooms after classes, Director Alexander Reisinger
stopped them to not let the police do it instead of him. Even 30 years later,
in the 1890s, when the situation eased considerably, students had to notify the
police in advance about any their meeting, even one held in the building of the
Higher Technical School with the rector’s knowledge and approval; in their
opinion, it was a violation of their rights as citizens and as representatives
of the academic community. However, it should be noted that these rules applied
to all societies and public organizations in Austria-Hungary, moreover, no
meeting could be held without a police representative, so students were equal
to other citizens and were not treated in some special way.
Officially, the first student attempts to unite
pursued the intention to provide mutual help and to support poor colleagues. In
1897, writing its own history, the Society incorporated into its prehistory the
informal "Bone Gnawers Society" from the 1840s, which allowed several
students to have meals with the help of their colleagues. In general, this
story emphasizes in every way the plight of most students, who always needed
some extra earnings, or the fact that the first meetings were held in a room that
was "small, low, almost never heated and poorly lit, the home of several
poor colleagues" (Sprawozdanie, 1897, 23). It was activities of a purely
humanitarian nature that were allowed in 1862 by the governor of Galicia, General
Alexander von Mensdorff-Pouilly, known for his participation in the
Austro-Italian war and in the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in
1848-1849. It was in this way that the Fraternal Aid Society of the Technical
Academy Students was formed. Their first charter was approved by the Ministry
of Religion and Education and then by the governorate in Lviv in late 1866.
Formally, each student, regardless of his ethnic or
religious background, could be a member; the society was led by a committee of
seven representatives from different years and a head who was elected by the
members; curators from among the Academy professors were also appointed. The
society ran a cheap student canteen and provided loans to needy students,
collected a library of technical literature, published textbooks based on
lectures by their professors (handwritten and lithographed). Some circles were
formed within it — scientific, literary, and others, where reports and
discussions were arranged. The members also engaged in leisure activities,
including holding balls, which were a source of income for other activities.
According to the press, these balls, held mostly in the City Casino
on ul. Akademicka, were quite popular.
The Society existed due to membership fees but sought
all opportunities for additional funding: it applied to the authorities for
subventions, arranged amateur theater productions and concerts as well as
balls. In 1895, the Fraternal Aid helped open the first dormitory in Lviv — the
House of
Technicians, where those members of the Society, who so desired, could
settle for a small fee.
In addition, the Fraternal Aid defended the needs of
students before the authorities like the management of the School and the
Ministry of Education. Their delegates took part in congresses of students of
Austrian polytechnics, which resulted in petitions and personal audiences with
ministers to legitimize the common demands of all Austrian technical students,
concerning such things as examinations, graduate titles and things that
affected future employment. These issues were mostly common to all students,
graduates, and professors of higher technical education, a field that was at
that time just gaining public recognition compared to the status of humanities
education in universities, as evidenced by the Dźwignia and the Czasopismo
techniczne, periodicals published by the Galician technicians. Instead,
historian Kazimierz Rędziński emphasizes the students’ cooperation with radical and socialist
circles as the main reason for defending their rights, which was particularly
evident in the student council of 1889 (Rędziński, 2014, 442).
Throughout the period from 1844 to 1918, the main
requirement of the students was to equalize the status of higher technical
schools with that of universities. This included the reorganization of
examinations so that graduates would receive a doctorate in engineering and,
along with it, the corresponding political and social rights and privileges.
Besides, it was about the change of the assessment system to a three-level
(excellent, good, bad) one as in the university in contrast to the five-level
one as in the polytechnic, since the current situation caused misunderstandings
in communication with potential employers. In addition, one of the demands was
the introduction of humanities and social sciences that were not studied (for
example, sociology, which had just appeared at that time) as well as the
equalization of scientific programs in different schools of the Austrian Empire
to facilitate transfer from one institution to another. Students sought
liberalization, the recognition of their civil liberties and the reduction of
police control; they wanted to simplify the complicated process of obtaining a
discount on tuition or exemption from payment and demanded the state to finance
obligatory study trips, in particular, that rail travel during these journeys
be free.
Nevertheless, the Society was increasingly involved in
politics beginning from the 1880s. According to its members, the period of the
1850s-1860s, after the revolutionary 1840s, was a time of "quiet
work." In 1872, the students held the usual ball without any reservation,
while local Polish conservative circles considered it unacceptable given the
"national mourning" because of the centenary of the first division of
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, so they planned an attack. As the
information reached the police, the leaders, including Karol Groman and Jan
Dobrzański, editors
of the newspapers Dziennik Lwowski
and Dziennik Narodowy, were arrested.
Instead, in the 1880s, after the Higher Technical School was allowed to accept
foreign applicants, a new expanded charter of the Society was adopted in 1881,
and a large number of Poles from Congress (Russian) Poland moved to Lviv,
including students who brought "a
whole bunch of concepts and beliefs that amazed the Galician youth, buried in
the sciences that were purely part of their profession." So the Galicians, who "had
no idea what [Herbert] Spencer, [Auguste] Comte, [Karl] Marx, [Ferdinand] Lasalle,
and others had written," got new interests, the fact first of all
causing the reform of the Fraternal Aid's library collections. During the
1880s, students made reports on positivism, Darwinism, women's emancipation,
economics, and an increasingly marked bias toward social democratic policies
eventually led to tensions with another group of students who were conservative
and religious in spirit. Finally, in 1906, the Mutual Aid Society of the
Polytechnical School Students (pol. Towarzystwo wzajemnej pomocy słuchaczów Szkoły
Politechnicznej), informally Wzajemniak, whose members had rather
national-democratic preferences, separated.
Various circles were formed within the Society, one of
the most notable being the Circle of Scientific Encouragement (pol. Kółko zachęty naukowej) where reports and
discussions were actually held. In 1898, a separate Society of Ukrainian
Students Osnova was formed; in 1908,
the Society of Mutual Aid of Jewish Students emerged.
At first, the Society held its meetings in the rented
apartments of its members, until the construction of the Polytechnic building
was completed in 1877, where they received a room on the third floor.
In general, during the period before the First World
War, the activities of the Society were important and significant for students,
so it included more than half of all students, comprising different ethnic
groups, political preferences, etc.; however, in the early 20th century there
were more and more conflicts and tensions, both among the students and with the
professors and administration of the institution, as well as the authorities,
including the Galician governors.
