The occupation of reform-era academics, with special reference to priests and teachers

The fact that the Hungarian Society of Scientists began its activities at the dawn of bourgeois civilisation is also of decisive importance for research into the history of professionalisation in Hungary. This development, which is hardly overestimated in Hungarian cultural and scientific life, also makes it possible to study an early stage in the development of the vocations and professions of the time. This is mainly due to the peculiar circumstance that the later Academy drew its membership from the layer of contemporary intellectuals in a very permissive way in the first decades of its existence.

On the one hand, in contrast to earlier early modern (Italian institutions, London, Paris, etc.) or Enlightenment academy foundations (e.g. Innsbruck, Olmütz, Passau, Salzburg), the Hungarian Society of Scientists was not founded by a single church or some other clearly defined organisation, scholarly circle or even directly by the ruler (e.g. München.). On the contrary, as a flagship of national development, it made a strong effort to represent the intellectual currents of the whole country and to unite them in one organisation.

On the other hand, it was not a gathering of scientific, but of intellectual currents, since, in addition to the representatives of the emerging sciences, it also welcomed artists, writers, publicists, journalists and key players in various public cultural initiatives. The study of the first era of the Academy can therefore focus not only on the narrow circle of scientists, but also on the characteristics of a much broader intellectual-cultural elite. With the fading away of the tasks of fostering the arts and national culture, and the institutionalisation of scientific research in later periods, the same study of the Academy is more likely to provide 'only' historical, sociological and political contexts of science than a general picture of the intellectual elite.