This post is about a subproject addressed during our grant and barely begun: a prosopographical study of mathematics students in 18th century Prague. Lack of time and need to reorient our effort towards goals in line with the original proposal suggested to put a halt to what looked (and still does) like an enticing research.
Between 1773 and 1802, Stanislas Vydra, professor of elementary mathematics at the university of Prague, published with regularity records of Tentamina publica, namely public demonstrations of students’ knowledge held by his most talented pupils in front of the school authorities, such as the faculty director and the dean.
These booklets were printed with regularity at the frequency of two or three per year until 1785, and resumed from 1789 till Vydra’s death, although less frequently. From 1785 onwards, Vydra taught his classes and held his exams in German, according to the education reform of Joseph II:
Im Jahre 1785 ist ein neuer Studienplan vom kaiser Joseph II eingeführt worden, die philosophische Wissenschaften wurden vermehrt, alle mussten deutsch durch drey aufeinander folgende Jahre vorgetragen werden. Der Gebrauch öffentliche Prüfungen im Karolinsaal zu halten hörte auf (Vydra, here).
In 1785 a new study plan was introduced by Emperor Joseph II, the philosophical studies were expanded, all had to be presented in German through three consecutive years. The use of public examinations in the Karolinum ceased.
Vydra’s Tentamina and their German analogues, the Gegenstaende... are a veritable treasure trove to acquire a rather unique perspective on the history of education during the second half of the 18th century. Besides containing occasional summaries of the programmes and lists of questions, they also record information on the students’ provenance and, in many cases, their future professions.
An overview of Vydra's Tentamina, both German and Latin, can be found in Georg Schuppener and Karel Mačák's volume. Based on this study, we tried to visualize the provenance of Vydra's students. Unfortunately the printed texts mention only Vydra's best students, hence the list is irremediably partial. However, we obtained the following map using the software Palladio. The map is based on the information contained in Vydra, 1802.
As we noticed above, this distribution is partial since the available data come from a small selection of students who could take part into the Tentamina and whose provenance was recorded in print. So far, nothing much can be said about academic mobility. Nevertheless, we notice something of interest, apart from the clustering of local students (Prague and Bohemia), such that occasional students from the Eastern peripheries of the Habsburg empire (Ternopil), or from German lands.
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