ABSTRACT
The development of science and scholarship under imperial circumstances has attracted the growing attention of historians of science. Because of the nature of language and political, cultural entanglements, 'an empire' as opposed to 'a nation' offers a privileged field of inquiry as to how power, be it cultural or political, influences scientific production and communication. The most serious changes in scientific infrastructure took place between 1860-1890 so that the period called the belle époque was characterized by more or less stable boundaries as defined by citizenship and language. The introduction in Central Europe of systematic publications in foreign languages in the 1890s points to an important transformation in the public role science was considered to play. An innovation towards the end the nineteenth century was that institutions in Central Europe devoted initially to national scholarship now undertook a new function for another public.
