Peasant uprisings in Upper Austria

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Peasant revolts in Upper Austria took place between the High Middle Ages and the 19th century.

In the area of ​​what is today the federal state of Upper Austria , there were numerous peasant revolts from the High Middle Ages until the 19th century . Since the first known survey in 1356, 62 peasant revolts have been historically documented. This makes Upper Austria one of the regions in which riots and violence between farmers and their landlords most frequently occurred. In addition to the social component, these uprisings from the time of the Reformation also had partly religious reasons, as the peasants no longer only defended themselves against high tax burdens, forced recruitment and work obligations ( robots ), but also against free religious practice and in particular the election of the pastor by the community used. In addition, churches and monasteries themselves were often the landlords of the peasants until the Josephine era . The climax of the peasant revolts in the region was the Upper Austrian Peasants 'War of 1625/26 during the Thirty Years' War . At the end of the 18th century the peasant uprisings subsided due to the reform policy of Empress Maria Theresa and her son and successor Joseph II. During the restoration during Metternich's reign , however, the rebellious mood among the peasants increased again. The violent peasant revolts finally came to a standstill with the abolition of basic subservience in the Habsburg hereditary lands in 1848.

Time series

  • In 1356 violent clashes between Kremsmünster Abbey and its subjects
  • 1392 Peasant uprising in Ischlerland
  • In 1493 violent clashes between the pastor of Spital am Pyhrn and his subjects
  • In 1496 violent clashes between the abbot of Wilhering Abbey and his Waxenberg subjects
  • 1497 Rebellion in the manor of Schlägl Abbey against the introduction of the Bohemian death, that is, the confiscation of the property of the deceased by the landlord instead of inheritance to the descendants. A comparison was only made in Schlägl in 1525/29.
  • In 1525, in the course of the Peasants 'War in Salzburg and Styria ( German Peasants' War ), farmers riot in the state above the Enns in the Attergau , in the Freistadt area, in the Ennstal and in the inner Salzkammergut, but this does not lead to any major fighting. Nevertheless, there is a wave of arrests of ringleaders by an execution army moving from parish to parish.
  • 1567–1582 Reichensteiner Robot Uprising , between the "peasant smuggler" and landlord of Reichenstein Castle Christoph Haym and the leader of the peasants Siegmund Gaisrucker
  • 1588 Sierningen trade , which becomes the prelude to the following peasant war
  • 1594–1597 Second Upper Austrian Peasants' War , the largest fighting is the defeat of 400 soldiers under Weikhard von Polheim against a 3,500-strong peasant army on November 13, 1595 near Neumarkt am Hausruck . This was followed by a campaign of revenge under Gotthard von Starhemberg . The uprising then spread to Lower Austria.
  • In 1610, in the course of the Habsburg fraternal dispute, a 12,600-strong mercenary army from the Passau bishopric fought rebellious peasants and those of the Enns estates on the side of Emperor Rudolf II . After the army could not be paid by either the emperor or the bishop of Passau, it marched through the country.
  • 1619–1620 Uprising of the Ob der Enns'ischen state estates under Georg Erasmus von Tschernembl against the new sovereign Emperor Friedrich II. , In which numerous farmers are also involved. Open support of the Bohemian rebels against the emperor until the defeat by Bavarian troops of Duke Maximilian I under Johann t'Serclaes von Tilly . Pledging of the land to Bavaria and appointment of Count Adam von Herberstorff as governor.
  • 1625–1626 Upper Austrian Peasants' War , against the harshness of the Bavarian occupying power and the counter-reformation of the Protestant population commissioned by the Habsburg emperor . After the Frankenburg dice game of 1625, Pentecost 1626 led to the great peasants' war between the peasant leaders Stefan Fadinger and Christoph Zeller , which claimed a total of around 12,000 deaths.
  • 1627 another uprising in the Ennstal
  • 1632 Peasant uprising in the Eferding area under Johann Jakob Greimbl
  • 1632–1636 Laim farmers uprising under Martin Aichinger in the Machland
  • 1661/62 the Wildenegg peasant riots in Mondseeland are violently suppressed by Count Bartholomäus von Starhemberg
  • 1704–1706 in the course of the Bavarian peasant uprising and under the influence of the Braunau parliament , Upper Austria is also on the verge of a peasant uprising. Ringleaders are arrested in Enns, Steyregg and other places and deported for forced labor to Vienna and Hungary, where many perish.
  • 1716–1721 several hunting riots in Upper Austria, including 1717 in Molln
  • In 1720 in Linz, governor Christoph Wilhelm von Thürheim sentenced farmers to prison terms, forced labor in Hungary and fines in 1613
  • 1734 first transmigration of farmers and miners who openly profess Protestantism from the Salzkammergut to Transylvania
  • 1752–1757 second wave of transmigration of secret Protestants tracked down from the areas around Gmunden, Vöcklabruck, Laakirchen and Lambach

Peasant rebels in the 19th century

After the Napoleonic Wars, during which large parts of Upper Austria were temporarily occupied by the French army, an attempt to restore the legal and social conditions before ( restoration ) caused renewed resentment among the peasant population in the early 19th century . Due to the changed military technology, however, armed uprisings against the authorities can no longer be recorded from this time on. In contrast, there are numerous peasant rebels who fight from the underground for the cause of the peasants. Well-known personalities of this kind were in Upper Austria:

  • Simandl Hollensteiner, farmer from Perlesreut near Oepping in the upper Mühlviertel. Through his education, he tried to help the peasants to recognize their demands through the legal process and was imprisoned several times as a "corner lawyer".
  • Michael Burglehner (1784–1837), farmer from the Reischlgut in Gstaltenhof near Hartkirchen, leader of a group of Hartkirchen insurgents, was at times a judge for the community of Schaumberg and feared by the authorities because of his legal knowledge, and was imprisoned several times.
  • Andreas Resch, farmer from Zwettl , who died in custody in Linz in 1833
  • Michael Huemer vulgo Kalchgruber , from Elmberg (today a district of Linz), wrote numerous letters of complaint and traveled several times to the Kaiser in Vienna to present the concerns of the farmers. After his arrest he went into hiding in 1820 after a “harvest holiday” and then lived underground in various places in the Mühlviertel until his death in 1849, despite an intensive search by the authorities. Around 90 to 100 of his letters of complaint have survived.

literature

  • Georg Grüll : farmer, lord and sovereign. Social revolutionary efforts of the Upper Austrian farmers from 1650 to 1848 . Böhlau, Graz a. a. 1963, ( Research on the History of Upper Austria 8).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Georg Krüll: farmer, lord and sovereign. Volume 8 of Upper Austria. Provincial archive: Research on the history of Upper Austria , Linz 1963, pp. 462–491.
    Josef Hörmandinger: The pastors of Hartkirchen in Upper Austria from the Middle Ages to the present. Edited by Rudolf Zinnhobler (= New Archive for the History of the Diocese of Linz, 12th year, Issue 2, 1989/99 or Supplement 5), Linz 1998, section Wolfgang Thaddäus Giester (1819–1843) , especially p 192 resp. 92 f ( Issue 2, pp. 189–210 (PDF) in the OoeGeschichte.at forum or Supplement 5, pp. 89–111 (PDF) in the OoeGeschichte.at forum).