Constantin Tomaszczuk

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Constantin Tomaszczuk

Constantin Tomaszczuk (born March 13, 1840 in Chernivtsi , † December 19, 1889 in Vienna ) was an Austrian legal scholar and politician . He became famous as the founding rector of the Franz Joseph University in Chernivtsi .

Live and act

Tomaszczuk, son of a Ruthenian father and a Romanian mother, grew up in a secure family in his hometown. His father was the Greek-Oriental church official Partenin Tomaszczuk. Constantin Tomaszczuk graduated from high school in 1857 and studied law at the then still German-speaking Lviv University . After successfully completing his studies in the summer of 1864, he practiced at the financial procurators' offices in Lemberg and Hermannstadt . He married in 1868. In 1870 he was appointed district judge in Chernivtsi.

During this time he already attracted public attention not only as a talented lawyer, but also as a committed speaker. Tomaszczuk became one of the leading personalities of the pro-Austrian, Romanian-liberal (“constitutional”) party of the “centralists” under Eudoxius von Hormuzaki , who in contrast to the likewise Romanian-liberal and pro-Austrian “federalists / autonomists” advocated a strong central Austrian state and moderate autonomy for the crown lands. The "Centralists" cooperated closely with the German Liberal Party (later also "Old Liberals" or "United Left"), the Tomaszczuk, who saw himself as a Romanian but politically an Austrian and was an opponent of political nationalisms and their anti-Semitic and racist excesses Wiener Reichsrat also belonged. He became a member of the municipal council of Chernivtsi, the Bukovinian parliament and the Vienna Imperial Council . He retained all three functions until the end of his life.

He took up the old idea of ​​founding a university in Chernivtsi and devoted all his energy to it for several years. In a budget debate in the House of Representatives of the Reichsrat on March 7, 1872, he took a detailed position on the question of educational opportunities in Bukowina and asked the Viennese government (Prime Minister Adolf von Auersperg , Education Minister Karl von Stremayr ) to consider founding a university in Chernivtsi. In the same contribution to the debate, he asked the Imperial and Royal Government to introduce secondary schools for women teaching .

On November 28, 1872, he submitted the application for the Chernivtsi University to the state parliament, which was unanimously accepted and which he again represented in the Imperial Council the following year. A year later, on December 7th, 1874, the establishment was decided by the Reichsrat and finally, on October 4th, 1875, it was carried out with a ceremony in Czernowitz ( Franz-Josephs-Universität ). Tomaszczuk, only 35 years old and for seven weeks full professor for the code of civil procedure , commercial law (Austria) and law of exchange as well as for legal philosophy , became the first rector . Most lectures at the university were in German.

On April 29, 1887, Tomaszczuk spoke in the House of Representatives of the Reichsrat in a budget debate about general problems in Austria . The next day the Neue Freie Presse , a leading daily newspaper in Vienna, wrote of a parliamentary event of the very highest order and specifically mentioned Tomaszczuk's opposition to the German national deputies under their leader Georg von Schönerer .

In 1888 Tomaszczuk was discovered to have lung cancer . Therefore, at the end of 1889, he was supposed to undergo an operation in Vienna. However, he died a few days before and was buried in a grave of honor in Vienna's central cemetery. In October 1897 the city of Chernivtsi erected a monument to him in the Volksgarten.

Even though he was only 49 years old, Tomaszczuk is still one of the outstanding Bukovinian personalities. He was brilliant as a speaker and as a political thinker free from any national narrow-mindedness. He resisted the anti-Semitism of the Schönerer movement with extreme vehemence. In order to secure the international status of "his" university, he established German as the language of instruction, which required lengthy work to convince his Romanian and Ukrainian compatriots. In the local council he advocated trilingual street signs. He was opposed to the plans for the occupation campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina .

Honors

Restored Tomaszczuk monument

His monument in the Chernivtsi Volksgarten almost completely disappeared during the Soviet era. His honor grave in Vienna was also leveled in 1978 for reasons that were no longer comprehensible; but a cast of the tombstone has been in the hall of the Chernivtsi University since 1995. In the same year , a memorial plaque was unveiled on the house where he died in Vienna's clinic district, 9th , Pelikangasse 10. His memorial was rebuilt in 2015 in the Chernivtsi Volksgarten on the old square and unveiled on October 3, 2015 in the presence of Prime Minister Arseny Yazeniuk from Chernivtsi .

See also

literature

  • Constantin von Wurzbach : Tomaszczuk, Constantin . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 46th part. Imperial-Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1882, p. 77 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Monument Committee, commemorative publication on the occasion of the unveiling of the monument to Dr. Constantin Tomaszczuk on October 17, 1897
  • Rudolf Wagner: Alma Mater Francisco Josephina . Munich 1975
  • Emanuel Turczynski: Chernivtsi as an example of an integrative university in: The division of the Prague University in 1882 and the intellectual disintegration in the Bohemian countries . Oldenbourg, Munich 1984, ISBN 3486518917 , page 190, digitized
  • Raimund Lang : The life's work of Constantin Tomaszczuk , in: Czernowitzer Kleine Schriften, Heft 3, Innsbruck 1996
  • Raimund Lang: Chernivtsi heads - short biographies of important Bukovinians , in: Czernowitzer Kleine Schriften, issue 18, Innsbruck 2006
  • Harald Lönnecker : "... harmonious and tolerant cooperation"? The Chernivtsi Student Association 1875–1914 , in: Yearbook of the Federal Institute for Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe 21 (2013), pp. 269–317.
  • Peter Wörster (Hrsg.): Universities in Eastern Central Europe. Between church, state and nation - socio-historical and political developments . Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 3486584944 , p. 214, digitized

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ s. Turczynski
  2. ↑ Mihai-Ștefan Ceaușu: The historical development of the Romanian political parties in Bukovina and their most important representatives in the Imperial Council and State Parliament (1861-1914). in: Codrul Cosminului XII (Bucharest 2011), pp. 93-108; especially pp. 98-99.
  3. ↑ Gerald Stourzh : The Franz Joseph University in Chernivtsi (1875-1918). In: Richard Georg Plaschka, Karlheinz Mack: Science centers and intellectual interrelationships between Central and Southeastern Europe from the end of the 18th century to the First World War. Vienna 1983, pp. 54–59, describes him in accordance with his own perception and contemporary perception as an “Austrian Romanian, partly of Ruthenian origin” and quotes Tomaszczuk, who acknowledged the “political nationality of Austrians”, that “... don't need one Language to be based ". At that time, parties were not yet a mass party that was closed by a party book, so Tomaszczuk could belong to the old liberals and centralists alike.
  4. ↑ Stenographic Protocol. 22nd session of the 7th session on March 7, 1872, p. 377
  5. ↑ Michael Dippelreiter: Constantin Tomaszczuk and the founding of the University of Czernowitz , in: Wiener Geschichtsblätter , 72nd year, issue 4/2017 , p. 337 ff.
  6. ↑ s. Deer
  7. ^ Neue Freie Presse , Vienna, No. 8144, April 30, 1887, p. 2, Oesterreichischer Reichsrat
  8. ↑ Published by Moritz Perles Verlag, Vienna 1887; Reprinted by the traditional association of Catholic Czernowitz Pennäler, Innsbruck 2007
  9. ↑ Five languages ​​were spoken in the Chernivtsi city parliament; But you didn't need an interpreter.
personal data
SURNAME Tomaszczuk, Constantin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian lawyer and politician, founding rector of the University of Chernivtsi
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Chernivtsi
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1889
Place of death Vienna