UNIVERSITY OF THESSALY
2nd International Conference on Economic and Social History
"Markets" and Politics
Private interests and public authority (18th-20th centuries)
Volos, 10-12 February 2012
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Abstracts
- Kostas Raptis Between market and politics: noble large landowners in Central Europe from the mid-19th century to the interwar period
This paper examines the development of the relations and interdependence between the private interests of the great landowners and politics in the Habsburg Empire and its successor states under the consideration of political power and influence of the landed aristoctacy. The paper focuses οn the question of maintaining and defending the institution of fideicommissum (entailed property) and the great estates (Grossgrundbesitz) from 1848 (abolition of feudalism) until World War II. It draws on literature related to the topic as well as on parliamentary documents of Austrian Herren- and Abgeordnetenhaus and the family archive of the Counts Harrach.
The Austrian aristocrats (not only the Germans) managed to retain the greatest part of their estates after the revolutions of 1848. Some of them took advantage of the compensation sums and invested in the modernization and productive reconstruction of their estates, in light industry, railway and banks. I argue that the fideicommissum (entailed and held in trust property), introduced in the Habsburg lands in the 16th century, was the main means of preserving an estate or the largest part of aristocratic property intact over generations. Τhe political power and influence of the nobility, which enjoyed also the support of the emperor, guaranteed the maintenance of such an anti-liberal institution as the fideicommissum at least till the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918. Through its privileged political participation, especially its over-representation in the Lower as well as in the Upper houses of Austrian and Hungarian parliaments and in most regional parliaments, or in the high-ranking positions in the administration till 1918, the nobility was able to shape as well as influence politics according to its interests.
The dissolution of the Dual Monarchy, the Fall of the Habsburgs and the beginning of democratization in the successor states, mainly in interwar Austria and Czechoslovakia, accelerated the political weakening of the nobility and consequently enabled the the great land reforms in Czechoslovakia in the early 1920s, which led to the loss of about half of the property of the landowners. Losses existed in Austria as well but not to this extent. However the great landowners, depraved of their titles since 1919, tried to take advantage of any means of in-official influence in order to achieve a better treatment of their interests in land. Concluding we can argue that by keeping a part of the land outside the real estate agency, the market in the countryside was partially dominated by anti-liberal politics in Central Europe, at least till the abolition of the fideicommissum 1924 in Czechoslovakia and 1938 in Austria.
