Victor Karady
The
Social Conversion of the Nobility in Modern
in Kuiper
Y., Bijleveld N., Dronkers J. (eds.), Nobilities
in Europe in the Twentieth Century. Reconversion Strategies, Memory Culture,
and Elite Formation,
The
problem raised in this study, the position occupied by Hungarian noblemen in
the market of higher education of the Dual Monarchy, is both a historically
specific one – since it refers mostly to Hungarian subjects in Viennese
institutions of higher education -, and a very general one – since it concerns
the major historical process of the transformation of the erstwhile feudal
elite into a modern ruling class or – at least – into one of the constituent
clusters of the latter. With the benefit of historical hindsight one can state
that this process assumed a much greater importance in the modernisation of
post-feudal Hungary and its becoming a modern nation state than elsewhere in
Europe (may be outside Poland and Croatia) for a number of reasons, which
should be reminded hereafter as an introduction into our problem area.
The nobility. Historical status, proportions,
stratification and reconversions
Historically, the social standing of
the nobility was rooted in
The Hungarian nobility ere modern
times – the beginning of which can be dated between the 1848 Revolution and the
1867 national Compromise (Ausgleich) with Austria – was among the
largest in Europe in terms of its proportion in the general population, between
4 and 5 % globally, according to various estimates. Following the first
quasi-modern census in this respect (1787) the share of the nobility in the
population was 4,8 % in historic
Had such calculations ever been attempted, the
size of the nobility ought to have been set actually at much higher levels
within the Magyar speaking groups (as well as, probably, among those of Slovak
or German Catholic origin) in this heavily multi-ethnic country - with no
global ethnic or confessional majority at all in the population during most of
the nation building process.[6]
Some of the culturally distinct clusters present in the country (like the
Romanians, the Ruthenians) had indeed hardly participated in the ’Hungarus’
nobility of the kingdom. One estimation of those having middle size estates in
the outgoing 19th century sets the proportion of ethnic Magyars
(nobles and commoners together) at 69 % of the whole cluster.[7]
The distribution in 1900 of the then remaining big landowners still reflects –
though only approximately - this state of affairs, since initially the nobility
represented the absolute bulk of the landowning strata. Self-declared Magyar
speakers made up at that time 51 % of all active men in the country,[8]
but as many as 90 % of male big landowners with over
One of the major ensuing
consequences of the Magyar hegemony in the historic nobility was, among other
things, that the virtual percentage of those with noble descent (unaccounted
for in published statistics) must become significantly higher in the post-1919
Hungarian rump state, since – given the loss of most of the ethnically mixed
territories of the “Empire” at the Trianon Peace Treaty after World War I - the
remaining population of the country was henceforth composed almost exclusively
(over 90 %) by those of Magyar ethnic origin. Thus any proportional data, which
can be cited (as below) on the continuously large share of noblemen in
administrative or political functions during the inter-war years, should
logically be revised on the decrease (in relative terms) in comparisons with
the pre-1919 Dual Monarchy – since the latter had an ethnically still largely
exogenous population.
Besides the dominant Magyar
majority, the Hungarian nobility was strongly distinguished by the significant
over-representation of Western Christians among them.[11]
This fact correlates with the weakness of the representation of non Magyars,
especially Romanians, Ruthenians and Serbs as well as – obviously enough – Jews
(who were granted civic equality in 1867 only). To use a similar post festum
approach as above, in 1900 there were only 2,3 % of Greek Orthodox or Uniates
(Greek Catholics) among owners of more than
As stated above, this feudal and
post-feudal nobility was a highly stratified social bracket. It ranged from the
titled aristocracy – some 600-700 families in the second part of the 19th
century - with often enormous estates, representing globally one fourth of all
ararable land,[15] down to the petty gentry
with small plots or even without any landed property. By the end of the century
one could count 231 estates of more than 10 000 holds as well as 495 of
more than 5000 holds, mostly in the hands of the aristocracy.[16]
The Upper Chamber of 1880 was composed – among members of Church hierarchies
and high standing civil servants – of 17 Princes, 297 counts and 216 barons.
Below the aristocratic landlords one could estimate that some 7000 noble
families had middle sized landed estates in this period.[17]
The nobility was also divided
between noblemen of old stock and those ennobled by the Habsburgs for various –
military and other – services, especially after 1711, end of the anti-imperial
uprising led by prince Rákóczi and also during the 19th century.
Even before their legal emancipation some Jews were knighted by
Still such integration of some
social outsiders, like Jews, in the landed aristocracy marked already the
process of economic decline, indeed the ruination, of large sectors of the
traditional ruling class in the period of post-feudal social and political
modernization epitomized in the nation building process. It is a well attested
historical fact that the traditional landed gentry was rapidly losing its
economic leverage even before the emancipation of the bonded peasantry in 1848,
which could only accelerate this development. Most of the noble estates could
not sustain themselves and develop into modern agricultural enterprises, except
some large latifundia, many of the latter being protected against
bankruptcy by becoming inalienable (fideicommissio) by the maintenance
and even the renovation of a feudal type legislation, especially thanks to
legal facilities granted by the Emperor (1862).[22]
This could not save many other noble estates - in spite of the absence of any
real land reform comprising expropriations till 1945 and the financial
compensations that noble landowners received from the state after 1848 for the
disappearance of free peasant services up to then secured by feudal right. The
large scale ruin of the gentry was characterised by an author cited above as
follows: „Between 1867 and 1895 holdings in the 200- to 1000-acre category, the
type most closely associated with the gentry, declined…from 16,8 to 9,1 percent
of all arable land in the country. In 1809 the general conscription of the
nobility listed 27000 landowners in the middle-income category. In 1875, there
were 13.748 landowners who qualified as such, but in 1890 there were only
9.592, of whom not more than two-thirds were descendants of the original
seigneurial proprietors.”[23]
Now,
this was manifestly the loss of property which obliged many offspring of the
gentry to an often painful conversion from membership in a ruling leisure class
to another, economically more active status. Out of an estimated 130 000-140
000 noble families at the fall of feudalism, only one fifth or one sixth could
continue to live off their landed properties in the early capitalist era.[24]
On the lower edge of the scale, many petty noblemen had to satisfy themselves
with integration in the petty bourgeoisie (especially among craftsmen).
Following an estimation, as many as 40 000 to 50 000 noblemen became members of
the state bureaucracy in the two decades after the 1867 Compromise.[25]
Those with more educational capital and some means to afford secondary or
higher studies would find positions in the civil service or accept office work
in the burgeoning private industrial or banking sector, especially in the local
public or semi-private services (railways, municipal firms, schools,
transportation, communications), which were henceforth accessible only via
educational qualifications. Indeed the 1883 ‘Qualification Law’ prescribing the
levels of schooling necessary for the access of various positions in the civil
service, explicitly required formal education for any given position in the
state bureaucracy. The stipulations of this law were more or less closely followed
in the private economy. Contrary to earlier gentry privileges, access to most
middle class occupations and positions became thus conditioned by certified
schooling, that is by degrees and graduation – starting already with 4
secondary school classes as a minimal level for non manual occupations.
How
comes then that the nobility could, as a virtually distinct body politic in a
capitalist, parliamentary nation state under rapid modernisation and
urbanisation, maintain its social prestige as a traditional elite, serve in
many respects as a model for the life style of most new middle class clusters
(including many Jews) and even keep to a large extent its political influence,
almost up to the very end of the regime change in 1945 ? The reasons for this
persistence of the social standing of the nobility had manifestly to do with
its inherited assets, transformed in the modern era into continued (and
sometimes exclusive and spectacular) endowment with several forms of
promotional ‘capitals’ in Bourdieu’s sense.[26]
Among surviving inherited assets,
the ‘political capacity’ can be regarded as the foremost one. It meant in
feudal times the almost exclusive, indeed overwhelming privilege of suffrage
and eligibility in the Lower Chamber of the Diet for the lower nobility (shared
only very partially with the royal cities), while titled magnates could attend
meetings with voting rights in the Upper Chamber (a privilege shared only with
the princes of the Catholic Church). Now, the electoral entitlements of the
nobility were maintained after the April Laws in 1848, which abolished, by
principle, all noble privileges and extended the suffrage to commoners with
specific educational or property qualifications. The ‘political capacity’ of
the nobility was hence, not eliminated, only somewhat widened to other elite
clusters in the first stages of the political modernization, so as to provide
for the continuity of the very strong leverage if not domination of local and
national politics by noblemen, on both county and country levels. Since the
post-1867 nation state became a parliamentary democracy with limited male
suffrage only, the nobility, by its mere size, kept a large share among the
politically active brackets. In 1848 some 10 % of the population was endowed
with voting rights, in 1874 6,4 % – a proportion which was maintained
approximately up to the end of the Dual Monarchy in 1918, so that men of noble
background must have made up a majority of electors till the inter-war years.[27]
This situation was clearly manifested in the ruling positions in government
maintained by the nobility even well beyond the Liberal regime. As a mere
illustration, let us remind that in 1875-1918 members of the gentry headed
during 77 % of the period (in months) the four key ministries (prime minister,
interior, commerce and finance)[28].
They also held 62 % of seats in Parliament in the years 1887-1910[29].
The very landowning class itself, with still a majority of noblemen among them,
occupied 34 % of seats in parliament during the same period[30].
Their positions did not seem to decline with time, since in 1875 some 11 % of
MPs were titled aristocrats, but these occupied by 1905 more than 14 % of the
seats of the Lower Chamber.
One reason for the continuation of
gentry and aristocratic influence in matters political was due to the historic
success of the liberal nobility, as the leading force in the nation building
process, which lent prestige and authority in the long run for the stratum. Since
the Hungarian Vormärz (1825-1848) their representatives were pushing
ahead the modernization of public institutions with notable results, completed
by the April Laws in 1848, implementing in practical terms the termination of
feudalism. After the failure of the bloody civil war remembered in national
historiography as the War of Independence against direct Habsburg rule in
1848-49 and the ensuing decade of ‘absolutist rule’, it was thanks to the very
representatives of the liberal gentry and aristocracy that the 1867 Compromise
(Ausgleich) could be achieved, securing the internal autonomy of the
nation state within the so-called Dual Empire. In this function the liberal
nobility played the same role as the revolutionary bourgeoisie of the West
since the French Revolution. Hence the identification of the gentry with the
nation building middle class, an interpretation commonly accepted in Hungarian
historiography. Hence too the maintenance of the public image of the nobility
as the dominant element of the emerging new elite, however diversified it
became due to contemporary processes of industrialisation, urbanisation and
political modernisation.[31]
The positions of the gentry in the politically
ruling establishment apparently weakened somewhat, but not decisively, in the
inter-war years under the aegis of the authoritarian parliamentary regime
called (significantly and not innocently – due to its anti-Jewish trends)
‘Christian Course’. They remained even then vastly over-represented in the
domineering administrative and political elites. In 1927 they still made up
more than half (57 %) of well identified staff members of the key ministries[32]
and their share in government positions oscillated between 25 % to 75 % in
various cabinets between 1919 and 1944.[33]
The Nazi type puppet government, seizing power on the 15th of
October 1944 thanks to the German occupying forces, was the first one without
significant aristocratic participation in modern
The persistence of the political
influence and the social prestige of the nobility had obviously to do with its
continued possession of what Bourdieu regards as its ‘symbolic capital’,
independently from economic power,[34]
as well as the public belief of the latter’s importance for the upkeep of
legitimate social hierarchies.[35]
Even after its partial economic demise, membership in the nobility thus
preserved a veritable social charisma, very much like it was analysed in
very different contexts by the founding fathers of sociology like Durkheim,
Mauss or Max Weber.[36]
Due to this magic type of collective aura, the presence of noblemen was
considered till the end of the old regime as an added value, allegedly
convertible into specific benefits and advantages in most (particularly in
conservative) political parties, on directorial boards of big industrial
enterprises (especially when they were grounded on Jewish investments), in many
movements and initiatives of civil society. The very fact that offspring of a
good part of the ruined nobility got converted in the civil service, contributed
to enhance the prestige of the nobility via the authority of the state. The
gentry way of life, however counter-productive it proved to be for career
promotion in the upcoming modern middle classes (among professionals, private
executives or technical experts of the civil service), detained thus its charm
and attractiveness well within the most modernist sectors of the elite, in
spite of the parallel development of modernising elite clusters of mostly
Jewish and German ethnic background.[37]
This could not happen without a
measure of closure of the nobility as a collective body, a corporatio in
a society without corporations.[38]
Self-segregation and self-distinction go always together for an elite cluster
which succeeds in keeping its standing in any given society. Hence the
importance social homogamy on the matrimonial market, preferential options for
some Church schools (those of the Catholic teaching congregations, above all)
and some institutions and branches of higher education, as it will become manifest
below. In such a way gentry networks for mutual assistance and class solidarity
could be strengthened and maintained via personal contacts, friendships,
experiences and all forms of alliances in concrete terms.
The
economic decline of the nobility could thus, for long, be compensated by this
social prestige, which remained commonly acknowledged and even, paradoxically
enough, extended in some ways. Indeed, in spite of its loss of privileges, its
weakening economic positions and its large scale professional conversion into
the state bureaucracy and other specific sectors of the new middle classes,
emerging in the wake of the state building process and the capitalist
development accelerated during the Gründerzeit of the 1860s, the
nobility succeeded globally to maintain – even beyond its political influence -
its social pre-eminence and symbolic elite status. Many members of the upcoming
new middle strata, the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie and the professional
intelligentsia also tended to adopt gentry ways, manners and values, so much
so, that, paradoxically enough, instead of the Verbürgerlichung
(embourgeoisement) of the nobility, expected and sought for by the leaders of
the national reform movement (like Széchenyi and Kossuth) following West European
models, the post-feudal modernisation of the country was marked by the large
scale gentrification of the new middle class of common background. The relative
weakness and the globally alien (Jewish, German, Slave) background of the
‘bourgeois’ middle classes put the offspring of the ‘national’ nobility in a
central position within the new ‘nation building’ middle class. By the way, the
trend of gentrification of the commoners within the latter was even officially
sponsored by the State and the influential sectors of the ruling elites. Thus,
male members of the new middle class – certified by educational credentials (Matura
or/and university degrees) – were gratified with publicly recognised gentry
type distinctions. They were entitled to shorter military service as
‘volunteers’, they could become reserve officers following a brief training
process. They were granted the right – a social privilege reserved formerly for
noblemen only - to carry a sword and fight duels (Satisfaktionsfähigkeit)
or – with some local reservations – getting access to aristocratic or high
bourgeois salons (Salonsfähigkeit). But even the ennoblement of sons of
the bourgeoisie could, paradoxically in this context, only strengthen the
common belief – as Bourdieu puts it – in the special – ‘noble’ – social
standing of the nobility.[39]
The acceptation of the common lot in
markets of middle class employment appeared for many descendants of the
nobility a humiliating social degradation for various reasons. In feudal times
civil service positions were reserved unconditionally for the nobility. The
higher posts in the administration of the imperial state went to the magnates,
who often were often expected to occupy them as a nobile officium,
without remuneration, while lower positions represented salaried employment for
the poor nobility. This system was first modified by law in 1844, when educated
commoners – ‘honoratiors’ - were allowed to carry out in principle any
kind of public functions. But they had to belong at that time to one of the
‘received denominations’, excluding Jews and some other minor religious
clusters. This arrangement was completely transformed by the arrival of
educated newcomers (often of alien cultural stock) as candidates to middle
class positions after the abolition of feudalism (1848), the emancipation of
Jews (progressively accomplished between 1840 and 1867) and the Gründerzeit
of capitalist industrialisation (1860s). In the Dual Monarchy noblemen looking
for public or private middle class employment had to face, at least potentially
(differently in the different sectors of activity), the competition of educated
Jews and other former social outsiders. Sons of the propertied peasantry, those
coming from the ‘assimilated’ German-Lutheran or German-Catholic lower bourgeoisie
or Slovakian petty intellectuals of common origin (teachers, Lutheran
ministers) swarmed to fill openings in the fast increasing civil service sector
of the newly founded nation state after 1867, while the upcoming Jewish middle
class took an ever growing share in the equally growing free professions
(lawyers, medical doctors, engineers, journalists, vets, etc.) as well as among
executives of capital intensive new industries (mostly established thanks to
Jewish entrepreneurship).
Such competition was implemented
henceforth in more or less egalitarian – that is, at least in theory,
meritocratic – conditions. The school market itself was apparently grounded on
purely meritocratic principles, where no prerogatives of birth were expected to
prevail over academic performance. Still, one has to take into account forms of
tacit preferences granted to offspring of ‘good families’, let alone cases of
mild corruption, whereby for example bearers of historic aristocratic titles
could hardly be failed at a crucial exams. But some employment markets of the
elites could be operated according to much less exclusively meritocratic tenets
following - among other things - the actual weight and leverage the nobility
had succeeded to keep in the given sector even after the elimination of its
formal privileges as the feudal ruling class. The effect of such class cohesion
and solidarity could notoriously be identified in the recruitment pattern of
army units (the cavalry), the diplomacy, some branches of the high civil service
(like the ministry of agriculture), local administration (county officials,
government appointed lord lieutenants heading the county administrations), etc.
It is understandable that the educational strategies of the nobility also were
preferentially directed to training agencies preparing for positions in fields
where noble origins or titles could still apply as a form of promotional
capital or at least in fields of limited or less professional resistance, due
to their inaccessibility or difficulty of access for commoners and social
marginals (like Jews). The imprint of such options will be duly detected in the
educational preferences presented below among students from
Before embarking upon this inquiry
in concrete historical terms, based on a data bank collected for the
circumstance, one has to put into historical perspective the actual meaning of
studies abroad, especially in
Though the share of studies abroad
for students from
Within those abroad however, the
absolute numbers cited in table 1. below suggest clearly that the predominance
of
It is probable that these students
from
Anyhow, a closer scrutiny of
students from
The
Share of Noblemen (in % of all) from
|
|
1817-1850 |
1851-1867 |
1868-1890 |
1891-1905 |
1906-1918 |
|
|
10,7% (270) |
15,7% (229) |
11,6% (584) |
10,5 % (884) |
5,9% (991) |
|
Other German universities |
3,8% (583) |
7,1% (854) |
8,9% (1637) |
7,3% (1332) |
6,9 (1713) |
|
Polytechnics in |
4,6% (24) |
11,5 (95) |
8 % (627) |
6 % (620) |
9,4% (554) |
|
Schools of agronomy in |
42 % (50) |
61,4% (88) |
34,3% (137) |
25,8% (93) |
11,5% (156) |
|
|
6,5% (1707) |
10,5% (2016) |
7,3 % (7446) |
9,5% (2059) |
7,3 % (1344) |
|
Polytechnics in |
6,7% (1202) |
6,4% (1534) |
7,6 % (1333) |
7% (1611) |
5,1 % (215) |
The first conclusion to be drawn
from Table 1. is rather unexpected. The nobility was throughout the long 19th
century present among students from
The other rather unexpected global
conclusion concerns the lack of significant development in time of the
proportion of noblemen among students abroad. In a period of general educational
expansion, like the post 1867 era, one could expect a rising tide of students
from the traditional elites, all the more because, as observed above, many sons
of the latter could maintain their elite positions only on the strength of
professional conversion operated via the acquisition of more and more
substantial academic credentials, like the ones obtainable in German language
institutions of higher education. If one compares the yearly averages of
student numbers abroad, as in Table 1, the proportion of noblemen was globally
7,2 % in 1817-1850, 9,8 % in 1851-1867, 8,1 % in 1868-1890, 8,5 % in 1891-1905
and only 7,1 % in 1906-1918. Part of the reason for this relative stagnation
can be found in the accelerated educational mobilisation and mobility of
upcoming new strata in the market of higher studies, above all Jews, but also
some other alien or lower middle class clusters, who would not (or not often)
send their children to universities before the end of noble privileges in civil
service (1844) or before achieving full civil rights (emancipation of Jews,
1867). The ong term stagnation of the share of noblemen among students abroad
from Hungary corresponded indeed among other things to the multiplication of
Jewish students and their investment of (for them historically new) study
tracks, like Law, Philosophy, Agriculture or Polytechnics. Even if Jews were
allowed, in principle (since the ‘toleration decrees’ of the enlightened
Emperor Joseph II. in 1782), to get enrolled in these branches of study much
before legal emancipation, they could have done so without any professional
prospects, since most positions (except for health care) in the respective
intellectual careers remained closed to them.
The Evolution of the Share of Noblemen (in % of
all) among Students from
(1830-1918)
|
|
1830-1848 |
1849-1867 |
1890-1918 |
|
Faculty of medicine |
3,7 % (379) |
4,7 % (676 |
2,9 % (627) |
|
Faculty of Law |
21,6 % (134) |
25,4 % (468) |
21,9 % (689) |
|
Faculty of Arts and Sciences |
13,5 % (96) |
4,8 %
(86) |
7 % (258) |
|
Faculties of Theology |
3 % (370) |
0,9 % (321) |
1,3 % (387) |
|
Faculty of Pharmacy |
1 % (89) |
9,2 % (326) |
4,3 % (93) |
|
Polytechnics |
6,7 % (1202) |
7,3 % (1226) |
5,9 % (775) |
|
|
1,8 % (425) |
3,1 % (226) |
4,9 % (103) |
|
|
60 % (187) |
33,6 % (122) |
21,5 % (414) |
|
|
- |
26,2 %(84) |
? |
|
Theresianum (Military college) |
19,9 % (136) |
? |
23,4 % (1186) |
|
|
100 % (20) |
50 % (4) |
68,2 % (66) |
|
|
2,1 % (189) |
- (253) |
? |
|
Export (Commercial) Academy |
- |
? |
0,9 % (557) |
|
|
100 % (2) |
? |
17,2% (215) |
|
Together |
8,7 % (3542) |
8,7 % (4034) |
13,2 % (5370) |
Table 2. offers a closer view of the
distribution of noblemen in Viennese institutions of advanced learning by the
main study tracks, as pursuable in different faculties, colleges and academies
in the imperial capital city during most of the long 19th century.
Some of the results are simple to
summarise. On the one hand, globally, taken all study tracks together, one can
reach the same conclusion as above that there was only a small growth of the
relative proportion of noblemen among Viennese students from Hungary. On the
other hand, throughout the century the most important study choices of noblemen
differed very significantly from those of the rank and file students of common
background.
Noblemen tended to almost monopolise the
Table 3 gives the picture of the
same educational inequalities and divergences, but in a different view.
Table 3.
The Distribution of Study Choices of Noblemen
and Commoners from
|
|
Noblemen |
Commoners |
|
Arts and Sciences |
2,5 |
5,1 |
|
Theology |
0,7 |
8,1 |
|
Pharmacy |
0,6 |
1,9 |
|
Law |
21,6 |
11,5 |
|
Medicine |
2,5 |
13,1 |
|
Military Engineering |
12,7 |
6,9 |
|
Fine Arts |
0,7 |
2,1 |
|
|
6,4 |
0,4 |
|
Polytechnics |
6,4 |
15,6 |
|
Theresianum (military prep school) |
39,6 |
19,5 |
|
Export (Commercial) Academy |
0,7 |
11,8 |
|
Agricultural Academy |
5,3 |
3,8 |
|
All |
100,0 |
100,0 |
|
N |
699 |
4671 |
Let us stress here the weaknesses of
the noblemen’s options, as opposed to those of
commoners. As for the majority choices of noblemen for military and
diplomatic tracks, they gather only a little more than a quarter of students of
common origin, as against four fifth of noblemen. But some discrepancies
between rare choices of noblemen with much more frequent choices of commoners
are perhaps even more striking. These concern above all theology, the
The case of theology is very
different from the two others. The nobility has apparently almost completely
abandoned this track in the nineteenth century, probably because it was leading
mostly to the rather modest social standing of petty intellectuals, except for
a few power positions in church hierarchies. Though traditional enough, for all
practical purposes, theology became neglected indeed on two scores. Options for
theology were no more regarded as offering high standing public careers in sufficient
numbers and they countered the progressive spread of religious indifference, if
not secularism proper, in gentry milieus. Such withdrawal from theology (both
among Catholics and Protestants) occurred without much competitive pressure
from social outsiders, since there were no Jews but only traditional lower
class elements (mostly sons of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie) among
candidates to the clergy.
Noblemen only exceptionally aspired
for Medicine or the school of international trade (Export Academy), since here,
obviously enough, their professional careers would involve heavy competition
with Jews and other social outsiders as well as – partly as a consequence – the
experience of a social degradation of sorts. Medicine has to do with intellectual
but also manual services offered to people of all social standing. Even if it
provided a position of authority or command in social terms as well, it
consisted in the dispensation of rather bodily services liable to be regarded
as undue to gentlemen (nicht standesgemäss). International trade was at
that time summarily qualified as a Jewish activity proper, so that it could
hardly appeal to status conscious noblemen’s sons.
Discrepancies were less marked but
still quite significant in some other study branches following data in Table 3.
Commoners chose twice as often or more in relative terms the Arts and Sciences
(Philosophical faculty, teacher training), Pharmacy (a paramedical track), the
School of fine arts and Polytechnics (engineering, chemistry, architecture),
that is, the educational branches leading to the most recently professionalised
intellectual careers. The only remaining option commoners made less often than
noblemen (in terms relative to their own student body) concerned agriculture.
It is easily understandable that descendants of an erstwhile exclusively
landowning class (whether they had preserved their properties or not, by that
time) were more inclined than others to study agronomy. This was liable to help
some of them to modernise their remaining estates as knowledgeable experts, or
secure good positions on large latifundia
as land-stewards or estate managers to those without landownership, thanks also
to their social networks in the landed nobility.
The interpretation of the above
mostly very expressive discrepancies hardly can dispense with a recourse to the
survival of the gentry habitus in Bourdieu’s sense. This involved
predominant interest for some traditional occupations (regarded as the only standesgemäss
ones, fit for a born gentleman), since they implied the representation or
exercise of state power (army positions, high civil service, diplomacy). Thus
the continuation of earlier gentry functions over the generations, performed
even before the fall of feudalism, could be secured. Educational tracks leading
to them remained systematically preferred by the gentry to all others, whether
new (international trade, fine arts, engineering) or old (theology, medicine,
pharmacy).
But such traditional choices
responded not only to values, patterns of collective self-perception, images of
the noble cluster and representations of the social dignity of members of a
gentlemanly ruling class. They had a much more pragmatic implication as options
demanding relatively less efforts than other study tracks, considered as more
difficult (Polytechnics), outright longer (like medicine, which required five
years of study - ten semesters - as against four - eight semesters - in all
other university faculties), or based on particular gifts, proclivities or
specialised interests (like fine arts, philosophy, mathematics, literary
studies). Sons of the gentry, a former leisure class, had an obviously less
developed work ethics and perhaps also less in-built stimuli for professional
agency to comply with the requirements of specialised and difficult studies.
Law and military training belonged at that time to study tracks where few if
any bright alumni of secondary education got enrolled. A representative survey
of secondary school graduates in Hungary for the years 1900-1914 proved that
though Law and Medicine attracted students of similar academic achievements
(with average marks of 2,33 on a scale where 1 was the best and 4 the fail
mark), military academies (with an average mark of 2,67) and those of agronomy
(with an average mark of 2,79) were much less demanding, that is, precisely
those which were preferentially chosen by offspring of the gentry.[54]
However it was, options of the gentry for high
civil service professions conditioned by legal, military or diplomatic studies
could be justified not only negatively. A positive motivation for such options
was provided by the nation building process in which the liberal gentry assumed
leadership functions since the Vormärz, across the 1848-49 revolution and
fight for national independence as well as in the post-1867 era. The political
field remained a central domain of gentry activities and activism under the
Dual Monarchy and beyond, as indicated already in the introduction of this
study. This might have, by its own logic, assured the continuity of educational
options for sons of the nobility leading to political, administrative or
judicial occupations connected to the service of the state.
Nevertheless
such options had a negative social condition as well, that is, an endeavour to
avoid the academic competition of and the mixing on the benches of university
institutions with social outsiders, like Jews. This may have been a significant
motivation for some gentry offspring to avoid getting involved in engineering,
veterinary science, medicine and the like, that is in disciplines more and more
invested in time by Jews. This does not necessarily mean that the gentry as a
whole would have represented a particularly anti-Jewish sector of contemporary
Hungarian society. On the contrary, It is well known that the Liberal gentry
and aristocracy acted efficiently since the Vormärz in favour of Jewish
emancipation, the first stages of which were reached in Hungary much earlier
than elsewhere in Central, let alone Eastern Europe (with a semi-liberating law
in 1840 and law of full emancipation passed by the revolutionary parliament in
the last days of its operations, in June 1849, just before its collapse). But
the most recent generations of the gentry shared, possibly, less than their
fathers’ generations those liberal principles, following the rise of
anti-Semitic political movements starting in 1875 and accelerated after the
‘Tiszaeszlár crisis’ (in the months of the infamous blood libel trial of
1882-83).
The fact is that Jewish educational
choices mirrored almost everywhere negatively those of sons of the gentry.
Where too many Jews got enrolled, one finds significantly less noblemen, and vice
versa. The only exception here was Law, almost equally pursued by Jews and the
gentry, except that – as a rule - Jewish legal graduates would join the Bar,
while their noble counterparts would rather take civil service jobs. The same
principle applied to sons of the lower classes in academe who would opt for
study tracks (like theology, arts and sciences) avoided by the gentry.
We
can reach thus the general conclusion that noble students, as demonstrated in
the study choices abroad, would direct their studies towards fields liable to
assure the maintenance of their social standing and positions as a ruling elite
with historic entitlements, even if the latter were not legally guaranteed
since 1848. Such choices operated objectively to the detriment of heavier
investments in intellectual innovations or even modernity. The gentry thus
demonstrated on the whole rather weak motivations and propensities for
educational mobility in
In these apparently purely
intellectual choices a measure of continued social separatism - if not
self-segregation outright – may have played some role. This can be interpreted
as a logical reaction to the competition of upcoming social outsiders in the
various markets of social self-assertion and status seeking where noblemen had
a stake in conditions of a modern parliamentary nation state. Such separateness
in options for some traditional educational tracks could both maximise the
expected social profits of educational investments in fields of activity where
the symbolic capital of the gentry remained an efficient career factor
(diplomacy, army), on the one hand, and contribute to maintain what Bourdieu
would call the ‘symbolic power’ of the nobility in a period when it had lost
since long its formal legal privileges.[55]
Those cluster-specifically distinct study tracks could contribute to the
preservation of the social distinctiveness of the nobility – together with all
its manifestations in terms of high career expectations in the civil service –
almost to the very end of the old regime. This was a complementary scheme for
the naturalisation in the public mind of the otherwise quite arbitrary
attribution to members of the nobility of virtues, qualities and forms of
propriety as collective givens, beyond the necessity of proof.[56]
[1] This study has benefited from the support of the European Research Council (Advanced Team Leadership Grant, 2008).
[2] Ulrika Harmat, Magnaten und Gentry in
Ungarn, in Helmut Rumpler, Peter Urbanitsch (Hrg.), Die Habsburgermonarchie
1848-1918, Band IX., Soziale strukturen, Wien, Verlag der
Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010, 1043-1089, especially
1047-1049.
[3] Ibid. 1049.
[4] Károly Vörös in Magyarország története
1790-1848, ed. By Gyula Mérei, Károly Vörös, Budapest, Akadémiai kiadó,
1980, vol. I. 486.
[5] Mirjana Gross, The position of the nobility in the organisation of the elite in Northern Croatia at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, in Ivo Banac, Paul Bushkovitch (ed.), The Nobility in Russia and Eastern Europe, New Haven, Yale Concilium on International and Area Studies , 1983, 137-176, see 138.
[6] Such estimations could be carried out on the lists of noble
families as published in several relevant prosopographical data banks. See
especially János József Gudenus, A magyarországi főnemesség 20. századi
genealógiája /Geneology of the Hungarian aristocracy in the twentieth
century/, 5 volumes,
[7] Peter Hanák, Ungarn in der
Donaumonarchie. Probleme der bürgerlichen Umgestaltung eines Vielvölkerstaates, Wien – München – Paris, 1984, 366.
[8] Magyar statisztikai közlemények, /Hungarian statistical reports/ nr. 27, 86.
[9] Ibid. 94.
[10] Ibid. 102.
[11] Ulrike Harmat, 1046.
[12] Ibid. 96.
[13] Ibid. 88.
[14] Ibid. 97.
[15] Magyarország története 1848-1890, /history of
[16] Ibid. loc.cit.
[17] Harmat, 1077.
[18] William McCagg, Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern
[19] Magyar zsidó lexikon /Hungarian Jewish encyclopaedia/,
[20] Julianna Puskás, Jewish leaseholders in the course of agricultural
development in Hungary, 1850-
[21] Magyar zsidó lexicon, loc.cit.
[22] Harmat, 1054.
[23] Ibid. 120.
[24]
[25] Harmat, 1086.
[26] Pierre Bourdieu, Postface. Capital social
et capital symbolique, sous la direction de Didier Lancien et Monique de
Saint-Martin, Anciennes et nouvelles aristocraties de
[27] Magyar történelmi fogalomtár, /The collection of Hungarian
historical concepts/, vol 2.
[28] János 111.
[29] Ibid. 137.
[30] Ibid. 136.
[31] Péter Hanák, The Bourgeoisification of Hungarian Nobility – Reality or Utopia in the 19th Century, in Études Historiques Hongroises I, 1985, 403-421;
[32] Ibid. 251.
[33] Ibid, 282.
[34] Bourdieu, op. cit. 388-389.
[35] Ibid. 390-391.
[36] Bourdieu cited Max Weber as
follows : « Ce que j’appelle charisme, c’est ce que Durkheim
appelle mana. » Ibid. 388.
[37] Victor Karady, Une élite dominée. La
bourgeoisie juive et la noblesse en Hongrie, in Anciennes et nouvelles
aristocraties de
[38] Bourdieu, op. Cit.
387-388.
[39] Bourdieu 396. « ...les parvenus
apportent un renfort de croyance, par leur intégration dans la noblesse (c’est
le cas, par exemple, de ces Juifs qui étaient l’antithèse absolue du
noble – le stigmate est un capital symbolique négatif – et qui, par la
reconnaissance qu’impliquait leur entrée, et par leur croyance de convertis,
renforcaient la croyance dans la gentry)... »
[40] For more substantial approach see some of my other relevant studies : „Les migrations
internationales d’étudiants avant et après
[41] A second university was founded in Kolozsvár in 1872 and as late as
1912 two additional universities in Pozsony and
[42] See Gustav Otruba, Die Universitäten in
der Hochschulorganisation der Donau-Monarchie. Nationale Erziehungsstätten im
Vielvölkerreich, 1850 bis
[43] Sánor Konek, A Magyar birodalom statisztikai kézikönyve
folytonos tekintettel Ausztriára, /Statistical handbook of the Hungarian
Empire with continuous reference to
[44] Ibid. loc. cit.
[45] Data from Magyar statisztikai évkönyv /Hungarian statistical yearbook /, 1893, 292-297.
[46] Gyula Janik, Magyar honos hallgatók
külföldi főiskolákon /Students from Hungary in institutions of higher education
abroad/, Magyar statisztikai szemle, 1926/11, 662-664, particularly 664.
[47] On this whole problem area see my study : « Funktionswandel der
österreichischen Hochschulen in der Ausbildung der ungarischen Fachintelligenz
vor und nach dem I. Weltkrieg », in Victor Karady, Wolfgang Mitter (eds.),
Sozialstruktur und Bildungswesen in
Mitteleuropa / Social Structure and Education in Central Europe, Köln,
Wien, Böhlau Verlag, 1990, 177-207.
[48] László Szögi, Magyarországi diákok a Habsburg Birodalom
egyetemein. /Students from
[49] Data from the statistics of students abroad in the yearly issues of Magyar statisztikai évkönyv /Hungarian statistical yearbook /.
[50] The research team in question is directed by László Szögi, head of
the University Library and the University Archives in
[51] Absolute numbers of students from
[52] Absolute numbers of all students from
[53] Source : Gábor Patyi, op. cit.
[54] See details in my book : Zsidóság és társadalmi
egyenlőtlenségek, 1867-1945), /Jewry and social inequalities, 1867-1945/,
[55] Bourdieu 393. “Le pouvoir symbolique,
c’est le pouvoir de transformer des differences arbitraires, historiques,
reposant sur la violence, sur la domination, en differences naturelles,
évidentes, taken for granted”.
[56] Ibid. loc. cit. “La noblesse, c’est la naturalisation de l’arbitraire social.”