Research Project

Regional disparities of educational expansion and literacy attainment in 19th century imperial Austria

The project reconstructs and analyses regional disparities in the decline of illiteracy and the growth of schooling in imperial Austria during the second half of the nineteenth century. While compulsory schooling showed effects in some western parts of the monarchy soon after its introduction in 1774, it took more than 150 years for the population of eastern and southern Austria to become fully literate. The project examines this process of educational expansion on different scales and looks at geographical, economic, social and political factors influencing spatial differences in the process of modernisation. The diffusion of literacy and its demographic and socio-economic determinants are studied with the help of published census data and related to the development of educational infrastructure and educational attainment. A micro-scale analysis reconstructs social and spatial disparities of illiteracy in the city of Graz in 1880 from census manuscripts.

Publications

• Hoyler, Michael / Meusburger, Peter (1997): Regionale Unterschiede bei der Verwirklichung der allgemeinen Schulpflicht und der Alphabetisierung der Bevölkerung in der österreichischen Monarchie in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Arbeitsbericht über das DFG-Projekt ME 807/10-1. Heidelberg.
• Hoyler, Michael / Meusburger, Peter (1999): Regionale Unterschiede bei der Verwirklichung der allgemeinen Schulpflicht und der Alphabetisierung der Bevölkerung in der österreichischen Monarchie in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Abschlußbericht über die DFG-Projekte ME 807/10-1 und ME 807/10-2. Heidelberg.