Middle classes and nobility

in historical Hungary:

a troubled relationship

“Nobility and post-feudal legacy in Central and Eastern Europe”

Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN)

Warsaw, October 13th, 2015

Staszic Palace

FERENC HÖRCHER

The problem

• Specific circumstances of historical Hungary:

1. Legal-political dimension

• Long survival of feudal historical constitution and customary law

• Central issue: sovereignty – constitutional debate with the Habsburg king

2. Economic dimension:

• Late industrialisation

• underdevelopped urbanisation

3. Social dimension

• Rigidity and hierarchy in the social structure

• A weak urban middle class(es)

Constitutional-historical

schism

of nobility and non-nobles

• Nobility – separated as a privileged estate by Werbőczy’s

Tripartitum

• „The nobility as a whole (including the barons), the

populus, which Werbőczy contrasted with the non-nobles,

the plebs, enjoyed the same basic privileges…”

L. Péter, 46.

The agenda of

modernisation

• How to create the modern nation?

• by uniting the populus and the plebs

• How to overcome the schism?

• Logical solution: to build a bridge between

the lower classes of the nobility and the non-

noble middle class(es)

• Historical experiment: the „movement” of

creating the concept of the „dzsentri” (gentry)

The aim of this paper

and its order of

presentation

1. A descriptive, general account: a history of the

relationship of the nobility and the middle classes

(László Péter, constitutional historian, in 1992)

2. A normative, particular issue: the ideal and social

„function” of

the gentry

(Győző Concha, constitutional lawywer, in 1910)

Timeline

1. The designation „gentry” became common at the end of the

1870s and in the early 1880s

2. By the 1890s, the term acquired derogatory connotations. The

people who used to refer to themselves as gentry now began

to call themselves the „historical middle class”

3. By the time of World War I (1914-18) the problem of the

gentry seemed to have abated

Kövér - Gyáni: Middle class mentality, in Social History

László Péter

on the nobility

and the middle classes

Aristocracy

and the landed gentry

• From the Middle Ages until recently the aristocracy and the gentry landowners preserved their ascendancy in Hungarian society. These two groups, • the Catholic and Habsburgtreu titled aristocracy, and

• the partly Protestant well-to-do provincial gentry, the ‚backbone of the nation’, formed the landowning élite.

• The political institutions at their disposal

L. Péter, 305.

• For decades after 1867 parliament was, by and large, a ‚one class’ assembly of landowners and their descendants: the upper chamber was as securely dominated by the aristocracy as the elected chamber was by the gentry.

L. Péter, 319.

The longstanding conflict

of nobility and towns

• Nor could the towns match the power of the landowning élite. Urban society was not strong enough to challenge the paramount influence and political domination of landowners.

L. Péter, 305.

• All in all, nobility and landownership enjoyed preponderance in Hungarian politics in contrast to the urban isnterests, which could secure hardly any separate representation.

L. Péter, 319.

Why were the towns

handicapped?

• Towns in Hungary appeared late, they were few and

small, economically weak and, since they were led by

German burghers, socially isolated. Politically they

depended on the crown and wielded little influence in the

diet. Most were also set apart by their Lutheran

confession.

L. Péter, 305.

Nobles and Burghers in numbers

Hungary Croatia Transylvani

a

Poland Bohemia

individuals

with a

noble

status

(1780s)

4,8 % 4,4 % 3 %

In 1848

4,6 %

Burghers

(1780s)

Less then 2% Less then

2%

Over 5 %

• Kálmán Benda: in Magyarország története, 4, Budapest, 1980, 435-6.

Aristocracy and landed interest

in the House Change of proportion

in the Lower House

1861 1914

aristocracy 13,3 16,9

Landed gentry 64 41

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

1861 1914

Tenge

lycím

Change of proportion in the House

aristocracy

Landed gyentry

Data taken

from László Péter

The bourgeoisie

of Budapest

• Modern Budapest, the country’s capital, essentially the

outgrowth of the nineteenth-century empire of Austria-

Hungary, was an exception. Its ‚American type’ of rapid

growth and splendid dynamism created independent

middle classes which, after the turn of the century, at least

in culture, challenged the dominance of the landowning

élite.

L. Péter, 306.

5

The aliens

• The business classes, the overwhelming majority being assimilant Germans and Jews, remained, however, even in the twentieth cenutry politically aimless, and possessed an outsider mentality.

L. Péter, 306.

• The wealthy merchants, bankers and industrialists of the towns… largely lacked a „bourgeois” character. Most of them, with a German, ‚Greek’ or immigrant Jewish background, displayed an outsider mentality, they bought land, bankered after patents of nobility, titles, and, when they could, became assimilant gentry.

L. Péter, 319.

L. Péter tracing the origins

of the English gentry

• „whosoever studieth the lawes of the realme, who

studieth in the universities, who professeth liberall

sciences, and to be shorte, who can live idly and

without manuall labour, and will beare the port,

charge and countenaunce of a gentleman, he shall

be called master, for that is the title which men

give to esquires and other gentlemen, and shall

be taken for a gentleman”

• Sir Thomas Smith:

DE REPVBLICA ANGLORVM,The maner of

governement or policie of the Realme of Englande

The gentry

and

communal

service in

Blackstone

• „Esquires and gentlemen are

confounded together by sir Edward

Coke, who observes, that every esquire

is a gentleman, and a gentleman is

defined to be one qui arma gerit, who

bears coat armour, the grant of which

adds gentility to a man’s family: in like

manner as civil nobility, among the

Romans, was founded in the jus

imaginum, or having the image of one

acestor at least, who had borne some

curule office.

• Blackstone’s Commentaries, 1803…

Book 1. Chapter XIII., 405-406.

István Széchenyi comparing the Hungarian

county’s function táblabíró with the Esquire

• The Hungarian táblabíró (lat. Assessor) – a function at

the county – „mit dem englischen Esquire vielleicht am

nächsten zu aquipapiren ware.”

• was elected (by the lord lieutenant or the county estates)

from the best of the nobility, and he took the obligation,

although implicitly, that for the nation he will serve the

land and the authorities without wage, only „ex nobili

officio”.

Blick, 47, Széchenyi Válogatott művei, 2. kötet, 589-590.

The ideal of the gentry

in Győző Concha

The birth of the

movement

• The nobility stands in our society aimless and at a loss.

Concha, 157.

• The nobility, which has lost much of its privileges, got weakened as far as its economic power is concerned, partly changed its noble title, partly simply got rid of it… after the great transformation of ’48 begins to call itself middle class, and in the last 30 years its more elegant part takes on a wholly foreign, English name, and likes to be called gentry.

Concha, The Gentry, Part One., 155.

The ideal of the gentry

in Győző Concha

• The gentry is the unification of the well-offf, higher income elements of society, for unselfish, public service.

• Every gentleman is an esquire, who has more than 300 pounds yearly income.

• The English gentry in reality is a kind of spiritual aristocracy, which is indicated by the collective term intelligentia, the intellectuals who can make sense of the nation’s moral, rational and economic life-conditions, and who are ready to work for that in an unselfish way

Concha, 164-166.

The composition of the

gentry

• …that ambiguous movement, which in the ’70s naturalized a foreign, English word in our language, the gentry, in order to indicate the connection of

– the old nobility,

– and the new middle class, the more cultivated and wealthy landowners

– and the well-off members of the intellectual professions.

(advocate, physician, technician, writer, scholar, civil servant)

Concha, 159-60.

• Earlier, if they were not nobles, they were called „honoratiors”, later… „lateiners”, and our own time, very inadequately, calls them the cultivated class.

• Concha, 160.

The gentry and

the middle class

• That element, which represents the essence of the middle class in other societies, remained foreign from the group called gentry in our newer society,.

• This layer was in our pre-1848 society rather thin, wholly outside of the governing noble order

• Our industry, commerce, money was concentrated in the hands of the Jewry, but also in our spriritual culture the Jewry became an important component, without the religious difference being levelled by the equality of common economic interest, habit of mind, taste, moral values.

• The offsprings of the old German patriciate and the higher economic and spiritual elements of the Jewry stayed out from this movement…

Concha, 160.

Gyáni denies

the social contract of assimilation

• According to mainstream historical writing (Viktor Karády, 1997, 84) there was a tacit agreement that the Jews take the business sector as well as the free intellectual professions, and in exchange left the political positions and state bureaucracy for the nobles, and the Christian historical middle class

• Gyáni denies the validity of this historical description of the existence of a dual society.

Gábor Gyáni: Values and Regional Varieties of the Hungarian Bourgeois Elites, 10.

Gyáni on mutual impact,

the feudalisation-thesis

• The so called gentry, or the political elite with its

aristocratic composition (at least in the age of dualism,

1867-1914) administered market economy in a

satisfactory manner

• Representatives of business life, modern professional

intelligentsia, Jewish capitalists… even the lower Jewish

population – wanted to acquire landed property

Gyáni, 2010, 10.

The bourgeoisie

and the liberals

• The bourgeoisie flourished ‚under the benevolent

rule’ of the Liberals; ‚the new wealth and political

power were largely distinct’ but they cooperated; the

bankers secured foreign loans for state projects and

financed electoral campaigns. ‚In exchange, the

bourgeoisie enjoyed the patronage of the

government’

L. Péter quoting: Deák: The Economy and Polity in

Early Twentieth Century Hungary, New York, 1990.,

108-109., 156-162.

The gentry and

the urban middle class in England

• Landowners’, knights’ and scholars’ longstanding equal cooperation with the industrial and commercial element in the parliament, where this latter had a numerical majority, and in the counties, which were not cut away from the industrial element by closed urban organisations, as with us in the past, and even in the present.

Concha, 163.

The composition of

the gentry in England

• those, who have a coat of arms,

• those, who were accepted into the wholy orders,

• the scholars in the universities,

• Those accepted into the bar,

• accepted as masters in their profession

• received a diploma

Concha, 163.

A comparison of

the English and the Hungarian gentry

• the English gentry

• county esquires,

• national, parliamentary statesmen,

• vacational officials,

• army officers and

• travellers who travelled around in 2-3

continents,

• priests with university degrees,

• elegant advocates,

• pensioned bankers,

• business men, who took part in long distance

global commerce or took charge of

companies,

(homogeneous propriety, aesthetic and moral

standards)

Concha, 168.

• the type of our gentry

• is without varieties,

• simple, and …

• it remained partly primitive

(and partly harsh, as far as propriety,

aesthetic and moral level is

concerned)

The knightly and

the civilian order

• There were no such deep-rooted differences between the English knightly and civilian order, as the one which made the nobleman and the civilian each other’s enemies by us.

• Instead of this by us the civilian order was only member of the diet with one single vote, as cindarella, and it was totally excluded from the county, not only because of the difference in legal status, but also because of a difference in feeling and nation.

• … the reform of ’48 united the county and civilian elements into the house of representatives… but in the everyday life at the county diets and in the towns it leaves them apart, and public opinion has no views on the imperfections of this separation of the estates.

Concha, 168.

Politics + culture

= political culture

• Our parliament is only interested in public law and high

politics, and what would serve as a basis for that,

economic and spiritual culture, the natural, interior order

of the whole society, is taken as of rather secondary

importance.

Concha, 168.

The decline of the gentry

• The destruction of the gentry’s wealth, the uncertainty of

its social, political role

• The economic conditions of the gentry are not good

Concha 2/12

The gentry the Jewry

• The welthy Jewry is excluded from the gentry (which is framed by, and based on the old fortune, old virtues, as desired by Aristotle already) because of its racial difference, religion, manners, perception of life, social standing, the novelty of its merits.

• The many attacks would have not been charged against it (the gentry), if the two groups of our society were not so hostile against each other.

• Will there be a levelling off (kiegyenlítés) between them? This is just as important for our nation, as the fusion of the saxon and norman elements for the English.

Concha 2/12

Concha’s final word

• The gentry-movement is right, natural…

• The gentry is the modern figure of the knightly institution

Concha 2/12

• However, he returned to the topic of the deadlock of the

middle classes later