Lords of Burgenland

The rulers of Burgenland were historical administrative units of the Austrian state of Burgenland . It was a matter of amalgamations of localities and individual farmsteads with their residents ( subjects ) as well as uninhabited land under a mostly aristocratic or ecclesiastical manor . They existed in the feudal historical period from the Middle Ages until the implementation of the basic discharge in Hungary in 1854. The lordships were usually named after the suburb and seat of the landlord where he mostly maintained a castle or a chateau. Three of the former suburbs of today's Burgenland were in Hungary ( St. Gotthard , Pernau and Ungarisch-Altenburg ). The rule suburbs Eisenstadt , Mattersburg and Güssing were after connection of Burgenland in Austria (1921) to district capitals .

history

The area of ​​today's Burgenland has been part of the Kingdom of Hungary since the beginning of the 11th century . The feudal system of the Franconian Empire was taken over and gradually adapted. In the 11th and 12th centuries the central power of the Hungarian kings became weaker and individual noble families gained influence. The kings tried to preserve the favor of these aristocrats by granting them real estate, whereby the power of these aristocrats increased even further and the feudal system became more and more important. The political system was transformed from a tributary toward a more on the basic rule oriented system.

At the beginning of the 13th century, a strong standardization and consolidation of land ownership and a rapidly increasing number of unfree farmers can be seen in the area . By the middle of the 14th century, a relatively uniform social structure with dependent farmers had developed. Exceptions in the area of ​​the rulers of Burgenland were in particular the free peasant Heiducken , who performed military service for the landlords in the early modern period.

The first aristocratic landowners were the Mattersdorf-Forchtenstein family in the north of the country and the Lords of Güns in the south.

Legal relationship between landlords and subjects

The rule represented the interests of its subjects towards the Hungarian king and central authorities in the country. The landlord acted as a representative of the government towards the subjects. The gentlemen kept the land register , had the right to fill a parish and determined by exercising or leasing various special rights ( regalia ) such as B. the licensing, trade or fishing law essential areas of the economy in the domain.

The subjects were serfs of the manorial rule and this was obliged to robot and various taxes such as the tithe . In everyday matters they were subject to the jurisdiction of the landlord. Only special matters such as criminal cases or tithing matters came before the county authority, which oversaw the landlord in these cases. Over time, the landlords gained ever greater power and expanded their control and sanctioning options. For example, in the early 14th century, King Charles I Robert gave the landlords blood jurisdiction .

The submissive peasants had a hereditary right to use their hooves . Until the 16th century, the landlords were mostly content with collecting taxes. From the 16th century, the landlords tried to sell the farmers' products on their own and were given further privileges and de facto economic monopoly status . On the one hand, the farmers had to offer their products to the landowners first (right of first refusal) and, on the other hand, had to buy the products from the landlord (purchase obligation).

At the end of the 16th and in the course of the 17th century the personal dependency of the peasants increased and serfdom developed , which in Hungary was usually referred to as hereditary servitude . The subjects were even more restricted in their rights than in marriage, occupation and property rights. While there have been since 1514 legislation, the maximum of 52 days per Frondienst allowed and the eternal Scholl bond firmly wrote, but these were only gradually and not always consistently. In the second half of the 16th century, the burden of forced labor even increased considerably. In the course of enlightened absolutism , the burdens and duties of the submissive peasants were regulated by the Habsburg kings. Under the Hungarian King Joseph II serfdom was abolished in Hungary in 1785. Like many of Joseph II's reforms, the regulations on basic relief were withdrawn after Joseph's death.

In 1854 the Hungarian Reichstag resolved to abolish serfdom, landlord jurisdiction, many other privileges of the landlords, compulsory labor, etc. The leasehold land cultivated by the farmers was transferred to the former landlords in exchange for a redemption. Unredeemed land remained with the former landlords. The former subjects became citizens , the localities of the rule free communities.

Gentlemen

The largest rule in the north of the country was the rule of Hungarian Altenburg under the Count Poth, one of the oldest German noble families in Hungary. The gentlemen at Lockenhaus in central Burgenland were the Günser , then the Kanizsay and later the Hungarian high nobility Nádasdy . The Kanizsay were also masters of the dominions of Eisenstadt and Hornstein in the north of the country.

The greatest rule in southern Burgenland was the Güssing rule . It was created in the 11th century under the von Güns rulers . Later the rule disintegrated and was divided among various nobles. Under the Hungarian magnates Batthyány , it gradually almost regained its original size from 1540 onwards. Bernstein was ruled by the families Kanizsay , Koenigsberg and Batthyány. Eberau was owned by the Hédervary , Ellerbach and Erdődy . The Erdődy were also under the rule of Rotenturm .

The Lords of Rechnitz , Schlaining , Pinkafeld and Neuhaus were almost exclusively in the possession of the Batthyány or their spouses . Areas with spiritual landlords were the lords of Pernau , Heiligenkreuz, Klostermarienberg and St. Gotthard . In addition to these, there have been various small lordships in today's Burgenland over the centuries.

literature

• August Ernst: History of Burgenland . Verlag für Geschichte u. Politics, Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-7028-0311-4 .
• Josef Karl Homma : On the history of the rulership of southern Burgenland in the series "Burgenländische Forschungen", published by Burgenländisches Landesarchiv, Verlag Verdinand Berger, Horn - Vienna 1947.

Web links

• History of rule on the homepage of the Hungarian Media and Information Center http://www.umiz.at , accessed on October 8, 2010

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} August Ernst: History of Burgenland , Verlag für Geschichte u. Politics, Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-7028-0311-4 , p. 49ff.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Daniel Origin: Serfdom (Hungary) ( Memento of the original from September 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the homepage of the University of Klagenfurt http://www.uni-klu.ac.at , accessed on October 13, 2010. 
3. ↑ The history of the Burgenland Hungarians, Modern Development History ( Memento of the original from October 25, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the homepage of the Hungarian Media and Information Center http://www.umiz.at , accessed on October 8, 2010.  
4. ↑ Helmut Reinalter : Josephinism as Enlightened Absolutism , Böhlau Verlag, Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 2008, ISBN 978-3-205-77777-9 , p. 12.
5. ^ Albert Judeich: The basic discharge in Germany , Brockhaus-Verlag, Leipzig 1863, p. 13ff.
6. ↑ Carl Freiherr von Czoernig : The Austrian Budget for 1862, Volume 2 , Ed. Kk Direction of administrative statistics, Vienna 1862, p. 413ff.