The Prochaska Affair Revisited: Towards a Revaluation of Austria-Hungary’s Balkan Consuls

Sven Mörsdorf
European University Institute, Florence
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 11 Issue 2  (2022):305-328 DOI 10.38145/2022.2.305

Consuls and consular diplomacy in the long nineteenth century are enjoying a growing interest across various historiographies. This article explores the prominent case of the Austro-Hungarian consul Oskar Prochaska in an effort to offer insight into consular officials as actors of diplomacy and empire in a Habsburg setting. Prochaska, who famously got caught up in a major diplomatic crisis during the First Balkan War in 1912, has never been studied as a protagonist in the events that came to be known as the Prochaska Affair. This calls for an analysis of Prochaska’s diplomatic activity as consul, understood here as his social interaction with his counterparts and adversaries on the ground in Prizren, Kosovo. Adopting a local perspective on a crisis of European and global importance, the article argues for a revaluation of consuls and their bureaucracy as a promising subject for cultural and social histories of the Habsburg Empire and its foreign policy, both in the Balkans and around the world.

Keywords: diplomacy, consuls, Balkan Wars 1912–13, Serbia, Austria-Hungary

Story

It began with a mistake. When Oskar Prochaska, the Habsburg representative in Prizren, heard of the approaching horrors of the battlefield, he should have known better than to write any letters home. In the early days of the First Balkan War, the consul should have realized that his courier could be intercepted and his correspondence seized. This is indeed what happened on October 24, 1912 on the road between Prizren and the post office at Ferizovik (Ferizaj, Ferizović/Uroševac).1 That afternoon in Kosovo, the finer points of diplomatic custom did not impress a Serbian cavalry patrol. Nor did civilian concerns have much bearing on the soldiers’ superiors. They broke the seals and read the letters. Any resistance, any information that could aid the enemy, had to be suppressed.2 With his own written words, the consul, too, had revealed himself to be an enemy.

A week later, when Serbian forces finally reached Prizren, Prochaska may have anticipated what was coming. Unlike his Russian colleague, the only other foreign consul who had stayed behind, Prochaska did not greet the new rulers at the gates, nor did he show up at their celebrations of victory, waiting instead for instructions from Vienna to arrive. As time went by, none would. The Serbian military now controlled all lines of communication between the war zone and the world. Or rather, all means except for word of mouth. Rumors spread through town and country: Had the Austrian consul organized resistance, handed out weapons to the locals? Had shots been fired from the attic of his consulate, had the consul even fired at the Serbian soldiers himself? In Prizren, there were people willing to attest to this, and Prochaska’s silence seemed to confirm his guilt. So did his hiding behind the consulate’s high walls and his refusal to visit with the new commanding general, Božidar Janković, or any Serb official.3 With his own lack of action, the stranded diplomat had isolated himself even more.

Meanwhile, the consul’s lost letters traveled up their captors’ chain of command, from desk to desk and from Kosovo to Belgrade, and briefly even to Saint Petersburg.4 The many officers, government officials, and diplomats who saw them never publicly acknowledged their existence. What precisely it was that Prochaska wrote to his mother in Vienna and his brother in Brno (Brünn) is not known, but a Serbian internal report summarizes what irritated the letters’ unintended audience so much: “Mr. Prohaska [...] says that our army bombed and set fire to Priština and massacred its inhabitants, that Serbs and Montenegrins are die Wilden, and many other untruths.”5 This says it all. Frank in expression and careless in delivery, Prochaska’s words betrayed his private feelings to a very partial public in the Serbian military and government, convincing “the savages” as he called them that the rumors of his scheming must be true.

But the consul Prochaska is not remembered only for having penned these outrageous letters. He is remembered as the man who caused the Prochaska Affair, a major diplomatic crisis on the European stage.6 Much like the precise contents of his letters, the details of his activity on the ground have remained elusive, and the local roots of the conflict remain unexplained. Cut off as he was from the world beyond Prizren, Prochaska found himself on his own and, as we will see, unable to cope. The world, in turn, began to wonder what had happened to Prochaska. Once again, rumors arose, but this time in Austria-Hungary and in the press, and now it was the consul who was portrayed as the victim. Had Prochaska been detained, insulted, injured, even executed? Had he—the most sensational claim of all—been castrated by the Serbs?7

For several weeks in the winter of 1912, war over the consul’s sad fate seemed imminent and necessary to many in the Dual Monarchy. The passions stirred across the Habsburg Empire, and across Serbia in defiant reply, had turned a matter of diplomatic discretion into a raging public spectacle.8 While the two governments’ internal investigations were conducted behind closed doors, Europe looked on in sympathy with one side or the other. By the time it transpired that Prochaska was well and unharmed, just as the Serbs had always maintained, the public agitation so long in the making would not simply go away. It turned against the Habsburg elites, especially the foreign minister and his top officials, who appeared as warmongers and bullies against their tiny, innocent neighbor. Indeed, the pressure that Vienna had put on its adversaries in Belgrade forced them to back down. The Serbian government issued a public apology for its share in the escalation and quietly abandoned its most coveted aim, which was to gain a harbor on the Adriatic.9 In effect, however, this momentary victory cost the Habsburgs dearly. It antagonized the Serbs even further and deepened the impression already prevalent, both among European diplomats and in the public eye, that the Dual Monarchy always tried to cheat and manipulate its smaller Balkan rivals.10

Context

The Prochaska Affair shaped the political outcome of the Balkan War of 1912 for Austria-Hungary and Serbia and thus brought both one step closer to the Great War of 1914. Accordingly, Prochaska’s name is found in many histories of Austro-Hungarian foreign policy, Habsburg-Serbian relations, and the build-up to World War I, though it is usually mentioned only in passing.11 Apart from scattered references, very little original and in-depth work on the Prochaska Affair was published over the course of the past century. Moreover, there has hardly been any interest in Oskar Prochaska (1876–1945), the man and diplomat, so much so that he does not appear as a historical actor in the scholarship, or even just as an active participant in his own story.

Most traditional histories of Austro-Hungarian foreign relations and the power politics of empire, even if they consider seemingly remote and unimportant places such as Prizren at all,12 would still not pay much attention to people like Prochaska because he was merely a consul.13 The reasons for this neglect seem to lie in the late-Habsburg period itself. Even though, by the turn of the twentieth century, consular activity had long since become essential to the conduct of diplomacy, with hundreds of imperial-and-royal consulates dotting the globe,14 consular officials generally could not hope to be perceived as fully competent diplomats. As members of a predominantly bourgeois institution, most consuls were separated from their blue-blooded superiors by a wide social gulf in a division that reflected Habsburg society at large.15 Later observers, frequently drawing on anecdotal evidence, were led to believe that the rigid social hierarchies that pervaded the Habsburg foreign service precluded most consuls not only from socializing with their aristocratic “betters” (which is accurate)16 but also from engaging in actual diplomatic work.

Today, as actor-centric and socially-informed biographic approaches to diplomacy are gaining traction, historians are finally ready to perceive consuls as diplomats and actors of empire.17 Social practices and micro-level interactions come into focus, raising large-scale questions about the relations between “society,” “state,” and “empire” beyond the outdated national paradigm.18 Further inspiration can be found in new histories of the state administration. Here, too, scholars increasingly study state officials as actors, both individually and collectively.19 All three branches of the Habsburg foreign service (the central ministry; the diplomatic service; and the consular service) were part of the same bureaucratic organization and, as such, must be studied together. The hundreds of foreign-service officials employed in Vienna; at embassies and diplomatic missions; and at consulates answered to a common hierarchical structure and worked towards shared objectives, at least ideally.20 That said, the foreign service was anything but lifeless and monolithic.21 Consuls, whose numbers grew rapidly from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, added to the diversity of this bureaucracy and the Habsburg civil service at large with their varied backgrounds, skills, and career trajectories.22

There is now a growing interest in consuls across different historiographies.23 Notably, in the context of the Balkans in the long nineteenth century, Holly Case’s argument that the activity of foreign consuls in the Ottoman Empire led to a “quiet revolution” of the international order deserves wide discussion.24 When it comes to Austria-Hungary, however, studies focused specifically on consular diplomacy, the consular bureaucracy, and consuls as agents of formal and informal empire are still few and far between. A quick review of important exceptions (Nicole Phelps writing on transatlantic migration and international law, Alison Frank Johnson on emotions and honor codes, Barbara Haider-Wilson on transnational entanglements, and Ellinor Forster on intermediaries and knowledge production) serves to underscore the potential of the field.25

Given that the primary direction of Austria-Hungary’s imperial ambitions faced to the southeast, any exploration of Habsburg consuls as political actors should take into account the Balkan-Mediterranean region in which Prochaska and his colleagues were engaged.26 So far, the great importance of this region to the k.u.k. imperial project contrasts with a dearth of in-depth studies on Habsburg consuls, whose names are usually limited to the footnotes (where their reports are cited) or who are portrayed as the featureless chess pieces of their distant masters. Once again, there are important exceptions: among them, Tamara Scheer’s book on the Habsburg “presence” in and around Taşlıca (Plevla, Pljevlja) just north of Kosovo sheds much light on everyday life and local diplomacy at an Austro-Hungarian consulate;27 an article by Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics traces in detail how consuls built local networks of informants and political clients in central Albania;28 and Dušan Fundić’s recent monograph on Austria-Hungary and the creation of the Albanian state offers a complex view on consular activity.29 It is no coincidence that these three works investigate the same part of the world and that two of them tackle the same context, specifically, the Habsburgs’ cultivation of relations with Albanians. Indeed, by 1900, this had become the primary political task for Prochaska and his colleagues in the central Balkans. Nevertheless, it bears repeating that consuls’ political roles were varied and not limited to this region alone.

The final academic work that needs to be discussed here is also the most important contribution on the Prochaska Affair. In the 1970s, the renowned Habsburg historian Robert Kann explored the topic in a lecture that was later published as a booklet.30 This, in itself, was already fortunate. Without the help of Kann’s erudite and stylish account, the Prochaska Affair might have faded from the memory of Habsburgists altogether. But Kann’s short text also has its limitations. It remains firmly centered on Vienna and pays exclusive attention to elite actors at or near the foreign ministry. With much of the given space devoted to a discussion of the press coverage and public opinion, Kann’s account offers little information on Prochaska in Prizren. On the contrary, Kann uses every opportunity to belittle the consul, depicting him as more of a curiosity than a serious subject of inquiry.31 While Kann’s study offers considerable insight into the political events of the day and manages to place the Prochaska Affair in its diplomatic context on the highest level, it falls short in its overall failure to take a local dimension into consideration as well. To date, Kann’s essay remains the only dedicated study of the Prochaska Affair, and while it continues to be highly useful and relevant, it should by no means be seen as definite.

It seems unsatisfactory, then, that we know nearly nothing about the situation in Prizren, where everything began. Let me therefore pose the simple question: What did Prochaska do during the Prochaska Affair?

A Local Affair

Events unfolded rapidly in Kosovo during the first weeks of the war. On October 17, 1912, Serbia joined its allies and declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Soon thereafter, Prochaska’s letters were seized en route to the post office (as mentioned above) and the first detachments of the Serbian forces reached Prizren and captured it without a fight. Well before the end of the month, telegraphic contact between Vienna and its three consulates in Kosovo had been lost.32 On November 5, General Janković arrived in Prizren and established his administration. On November 8, the Serbian envoy in Vienna demanded that Prochaska be immediately recalled, leading the Ballhausplatz to push for an investigation that would allow an Austro-Hungarian consul to travel to Kosovo.33 It took several weeks to agree on the particulars, during which time the Serbs began to gather information for their own purposes. Vienna spoke of deliberate delaying tactics, while the Pašić government blamed an uncooperative military.34 In the end, both procedures ran parallel and separate from each other in another sign of the two governments’ mutual distrust.

As part of the Serbian investigation, General Janković filed a first report on Prochaska’s alleged activity on November 20.35 This preliminary report mostly consisted of a long list of unlikely rumors and unfavorable interpretations of the consul’s daily work with political clients, but it also included several points that seem more plausible. Four of them involve Nikolai Alekseevič Emelianov, the Russian consul, who had probably raised these allegations himself. According to the first one, Prochaska had stopped an Ottoman officer in the street shortly before Prizren was captured and berated him in public for his intention to seek Emelianov’s protection. Prochaska had then led the officer (and the 6,000 lira he had intended to take to the Russian consul) to his own consulate. Another allegation notes how Prochaska had publicly exclaimed on two occasions (once in the presence of an unnamed foreign consul, who must have been Emelianov) that he was opposed to the offensive alliance of Montenegro and Serbia and that “Austria will never allow it!,” meaning its success.36 Finally, the third and fourth allegations contrast the two consuls’ reactions to the arrival of the Serbian administration: Emelianov had established personal and official relations by visiting the general two times within 24 hours and had also taken part in a celebratory church service, whereas Prochaska had refused any contact whatsoever.37

Complaints about Prochaska’s discourteous behavior also set the tone in the general’s second and longer report, dated December 19, with which the Serbian investigation came to a close.38 After several pages which mostly repeated the previous allegations against Prochaska and added supporting testimony by townspeople, Janković’s account took a sudden turn to the personal: “Apart from the above,” wrote the general, “I consider it necessary that, for a more accurate assessment of the incorrect actions of Mr. Prohaska, I present his attitude towards me, as the commander of the army and the occupied area, and my relationship with him.”39 The remainder of the report suggests that Janković felt truly offended by Prochaska’s every action: that the consul had not introduced himself, neither in an official capacity nor in private; that he had treated one of Janković’s officers, whom the general had sent with what amounted to a formal invitation to meet, rudely; and overall, that Prochaska had refused to recognize the Serbian administration but at the same time had pestered Janković with all kinds of petitions in writing and by sending his consular messenger-interpreter (dragoman).40 The general, in turn, took a corresponding stance and refused to deal with Prochaska’s complaints. Instead, Janković informed his adversary through the dragoman that he was simply not acquainted with Prochaska on a personal level and that there was also no legal procedure in force that could compel him to acknowledge the consul’s presence in an official capacity. He then let Prochaska know that this would not change until the consul visited with him directly.41

Faced with the general’s ultimatum, Prochaska announced himself for November 17. This is how Janković described their meeting:

That same day, at 11.30 am, finally, after a whole thirteen days of demonstrations, Mr. Prohaska presented himself—a short, chubby, squinting, unsympathetic figure. As soon as my adjutant reported him, I let him in. When he entered the room, he introduced himself to me; I received him politely and seriously, greeted him with a handshake, building on the power of a benevolent God, as far as this was possible with this type. However, the following was characteristic of the man’s upbringing and arrogance: as soon as I shook his hand and while I had not yet offered him a seat or sat down, he immediately sat down on the first chair closest to him, while I remained standing, looking at him from above with a questioning regard, which he fully understood and, embarrassed, he stood up [again]. Only after this fiasco of his, I offered him to sit down and did so as well, and then our conversation began.42

The rest of the meeting, according to Janković, brought only further embarrassment to Prochaska, since the general had the upper hand on all questions. (This impression is reinforced by Prochaska’s own reportage, which only devoted a few inconclusive lines to their conversation.43) Janković, it is obvious, had many reasons to mistrust Prochaska and found his suspicions confirmed in the consul’s antagonistic behavior and rudeness in personal relations. There is a strong element of contempt in Janković’s descriptions of Prochaska’s person throughout his report. To give another example, when Prochaska decided to leave Prizren, Janković withdrew one of his higher-ranking officers from the military escort after he learned that the consul would be traveling with his “mistress.” He also reported with visible satisfaction that Prochaska had been chased out of Prizren by an angry mob on the day he left town.44

In sum, relations between the two officials were strained from the outset and only deteriorated when they met face to face. Prochaska made the worst possible impression on Janković by fumbling the rules of both official procedure and social courtesy. While Janković might have been biased against Prochaska, the representative of a hostile power, it seems that the consul, at least during this encounter, did not display the polished manners that were expected of a gentleman and diplomat. With that being said, Prochaska was also the victim of unfavorable circumstances. When the fog of war had cleared, the Serbian government acknowledged that its military had acted inappropriately when it hindered the consul’s work and barred him from communicating with his colleagues and superiors.45 There is also reason to believe that Prochaska’s Russian counterpart, Emelianov, was in fact a bitter rival and in cahoots with Janković. In Prochaska’s subsequent reportage, we read the following about the first days of the Serbian occupation:

Local Russian representative Emelianov did not return my three consecutive visits, by now completely ignores this consulate and apparently regards himself not as a Russian representative but as a Serbian agent.46

Prochaska felt humiliated and enraged by what he perceived as unjustified slander and chicanery against his person by Emelianov and especially the Serbs.47 He was convinced that it had been the general and his officers who had arranged for the group of people who had harassed him in the street.48 Even a decade later, writing in retrospect, Prochaska still felt very much aggrieved:

I was abused, threatened, marauding soldiery and komitadjis rioted in front of the consulate and threatened to put it on fire, I was blockaded inside, savaged soldiers were quartered (as guards!) in the consulate, who threatened to shoot if I left the house, my horses were stolen, every night those arrested during the day were massacred behind my garden, in short, those were three upsetting weeks, and I was cut off from the outside world and, due to the constant agitation in newspapers and pamphlets, in growing danger of life. At my departure, I was led like a prisoner right through a lane of soldiers and wild rabble, who kept screaming, among the worst abuse against the Monarchy and myself, that I should be killed, hurling large pebbles, petrol tankards and such against my carriage, so that it is a miracle that I got out alive. I can say without exaggeration that—at least before the World War—no consul has ever been treated like this.49

Placed side by side, both the consul’s and the general’s comments about their mutual relationship express remarkably similar emotions.50 What, then, are we to make of the two men and their grudge against each other? Recent works on diplomatic representation and interpersonal communication as well as “face-to-face diplomacy” suggest some analytical themes for further study.51 More attention should also be paid to the third main protagonist, the Russian consul Emelianov, among many other local actors in the shared urban setting of Prizren.52 All this requires adding a decidedly local view to Prochaska’s story and its diplomatic significance, which I have tried to sketch in brief and in only one of the many possible ways.53 After all, if Prochaska and Janković had been ministers meeting in a palace or gilded drawing room, we would already have many volumes of analysis and portraiture.

This does not mean that only sources locally produced in Prizren are relevant. For example, historians have sometimes interpreted Prochaska’s antagonistic behavior as a deliberate, officially sanctioned tactic to spark a diplomatic conflict.54 Judging by the Habsburg foreign ministry’s internal files, however, this ran counter to its intentions. In response to the Serbian complaints about Prochaska that had reached Vienna in early November, the ministry had immediately issued new instructions to its consuls in the occupation zone: “The situation brought about by the war,” they began, “is merely de facto and lacks recognition under international law.” Although the consuls were never to fail to observe this, they were also instructed to act in their own interest and “get in touch with the factual rulers and strive to maintain the best possible relations.” The only line not to cross was to commit “acts that could be interpreted as the direct recognition of the sovereignty of any of the Balkan states or the annexation.” Moreover, while all “contractual and customary rights” that consuls enjoyed under the Ottomans continued to be in force, exceptions might be tolerated on account of the ongoing war. In case of problems, consulates were to turn to the foreign ministry and their supervising embassy in Constantinople.55 In other words, these were extremely flexible, practical guidelines. They insisted in principle on upholding the status quo ante but also acknowledged the demands of the evolving situation, encouraging consuls to interact with the new authorities in an amicable way.

Unfortunately for Prochaska (and Janković), this good advice never reached Prizren. Does this mean that Prochaska’s poor performance can be excused because he simply did not get the circular? In order to answer this question, we have to take a brief look at his colleagues in neighboring consulates and how they portrayed their own actions at the time. This is because Consul Heimroth in Üsküp (Shkup, Skopje, Skoplje) as well as Vice-consul Tahy and his Chancellery Secretary Umlauf in Mitrovica were cut off from communications in much the same way and faced similar difficulties, but seem to have managed much better.

One advantage that Consul Heimroth had was the benefit of collegial company in Üsküp, the provincial capital. After the Ottomans had lost the Battle of Kumanovo on October 23–24 and retreated in chaos, the remaining foreign consuls formed a provisional government council to try to maintain order and organize humanitarian relief. The consuls also ventured outside the city to meet the advancing Serbian army in the field and offer to surrender without bloodshed.56 In their various ad-hoc measures, the consuls exceeded their mandate as neutral observers, choosing instead to rely on their combined authority to avert even greater disaster. There were also some tricky situations that Heimroth had to tackle on his own. Early on, a deputation of local notables asked the consul to hoist the flag of Austria-Hungary over the city, hoping that this would spare it from being shelled, but Heimroth refused on the grounds of international law. He also opened the doors of the consulate to refugees. When a group of Ottoman officers begged him for shelter, he allowed them in, too, but felt relieved when they changed their minds and left, since their presence might have compromised his own position. After the arrival of the Serbian army, Heimroth consented to the placement of a military guard inside his consulate, knowing that a refusal would put him in danger.57 Overall, Heimroth’s various choices seem quite appropriate and may have prevented further escalation.

In Mitrovica, a small town bordering Serbian territory, Ladislaus von Tahy (Tahvári és Tarkeői Tahy László) found himself in an isolated position that is quite comparable to Prochaska’s situation farther south. Tahy also experienced similar difficulties with the new Serbian administration. Unlike Prochaska, however, Tahy paid a visit to the Serbian military commander as soon as the latter had arrived on October 27.58 During this meeting, Tahy argued that, as a diplomat accredited to the Ottoman authorities, he was not permitted to establish any official relations with the Serbian military but that he intended to carry on with his duties until new instructions would arrive. Unfortunately for Tahy, however, his initiative was not crowned with success. In the days that followed, his Serbian counterpart did not return the visit, which humiliated Tahy and caused him lasting emotional distress.59 The Serbian authorities began to prevent the consul and his personnel as well as their clients from entering and leaving the consulate. Tensions rose to the point that Tahy decided to leave and return home on November 7.60 In doing so, he probably chose wisely, since his regular activity had become impossible and his attempt to reach a compromise had obviously fallen on deaf ears.

Tahy left behind a caretaker, Chancellery Secretary Umlauf, who would rise to the occasion and display remarkable diplomatic capabilities.61 Umlauf’s daily chronicle from that time gives the impression that he was aware that any argument or other small occurrence might cause trouble and create another diplomatic incident. Far from remaining passive, though, Umlauf acted on his newfound role as the sole representative of the Dual Monarchy in Mitrovica. As such, he entered into a protracted conflict with the local Catholic priest, who tried to shift away from Habsburg protection to a pro-Serbian course. Umlauf’s quiet struggle with Don Nikola Mazarek culminated one Sunday towards the end of November. The consul went to attend mass and noticed that the Austria-Hungarian flag had been removed from its usual place near the altar. In response, Umlauf stood still in the middle of the church and did not take his seat until the priest had the flag brought back in. Other examples could be added, such as the skillful way in which Umlauf used procedural arguments during a meeting with the Serbian consul Milan Milojević to assert his position as a serious consular representative in all but official rank.62 In sum, Umlauf, the experienced chancellery official, used his understanding of a consul’s ceremonial role and his technical knowledge to stand his ground successfully in an unprecedented situation.

This quick comparison of Prochaska’s actions with those of his colleagues indicates that there were indeed different paths that the isolated consuls could take. Success required active communication and an ability to judge when proper procedure should be followed and when flexibility was preferable, which is exactly what the instructions from Vienna that never reached Kosovo had tried to suggest early on in the conflict. When the Ballhausplatz’s internal investigation concluded in mid-December 1912, it did so with a mixed picture: clearly, Prochaska had been wronged on multiple occasions by the Serbian military, but he had also added to the tensions himself, and in some cases the picture remained quite murky.63 In Belgrade, Minister Stephan von Ugron (Ábránfalvi Ugron István) thought that “calm cold-bloodedness and a tactful demeanour” on part of Prochaska and Tahy might have prevented the worst, and cited Heimroth’s much more favorable example.64 Likewise, Consul Heinrich Wildner, also in Belgrade, believed that his two colleagues should have met their adversaries with “tact and adaptability” to “repair” their strained relations with them. According to both Wildner and Ugron, the special privileges that foreign consuls enjoyed under Ottoman rule had given them an inflated sense of status and made them inflexible; indeed, perhaps it would be wise to recall the old guard and send fresh faces to the Balkans.65

Conclusions

In this article, I have used the case of a single individual to try to make a larger point about Habsburg consuls as important but understudied actors of diplomacy and empire. In retrospect, Prochaska’s lack of caution, social courtesy, and, altogether, diplomatic skill in the high-stakes setting of a town under military occupation created a cascade whose magnitude the consul himself could not even begin to comprehend while the communication blockade lasted. Prochaska cannot be held responsible for what others outside Kosovo—soldiers, diplomats, politicians, journalists—made of his predicament in pursuit of their own varied motives. The consul was, however, very much responsible for how it all had started, and he could have taken steps to defuse the situation later on. Therein lies his agency as a diplomat and his appeal as a subject of history-writing.

The unusual prominence of Prochaska’s case and its relevance to multiple historiographies make clear why consuls deserve our full attention. In my own work, I follow an actor-centric and practice-based approach, but the true strength of the contemporary scholarship on the Habsburg Empire lies in its polyphony and openness to experimentation.66 Other methods and perspectives, and less obviously striking cases than the Prochaska Affair, should also be explored to allow us to gain a deeper and more varied understanding of Habsburg consuls as part of the foreign service and the imperial bureaucracy as a whole. If the same scrutiny and erudition that the best traditional diplomatic scholarship has produced were also to be applied to the study of consuls and extended to the broad variety of contexts beyond courts and capitals in which they were active we would glean many new insights into the local (or regional or “provincial”) life-worlds of diplomacy and empire.67 In the Balkans, Austria-Hungary’s ambitions depended on its ever-widening network of consuls, and much the same can be suspected of its growing engagement across the world as an “empire without overseas colonies.”68 Prochaska, for instance, concluded his tarnished career at the consulate-general in Rio de Janeiro,69 out of harm’s way but still as a member of an imperial bureaucracy with a global presence and outlook.

There is a rich source tradition on which a cultural and social history of consuls and consular diplomacy in the Habsburg Empire could be founded. This includes both consular reports, which are already a principal source in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Balkan history,70 and administrative papers, such as the consuls’ personnel files. These often very messy boxes are rarely examined and always full of surprises. Prochaska knew this, too. Near the top of his personnel file, we find a request from 1922 in which the former consul asked if “possibly existing ‘evrak i muzire’—harmful papers” stemming from the Prizren incident could be removed from “this mysterious folder.” As a native of Moravia, Prochaska had become a Czechoslovak citizen (although he later opted for Austria), and he feared that his old file, when handed over to Prague, might get him in trouble again.71 The bulk of the paperwork that the Prochaska Affair had generated in the foreign ministry had, however, already been collected separately.72 It is quite possible that previously unknown documents could still be found, especially in the administrative collections, which diplomatic historians have usually not taken into account. Although archived separately from each other, political and administrative papers were produced by the same group of people in a shared bureaucratic setting.73 When analyzed together, the two types sometimes complement and sometimes subvert each other, bringing diplomacy to life.

Over the course of the past century, generations of historians who took note of the Prochaska Affair never cared to portray the consul at its center as a complex protagonist and veritable (albeit catastrophic) diplomatic actor. I have attempted to offer a different perspective. In doing so, I have also tried to tell a good story.74 Thanks to a thriving community of scholars, the stories we tell of the Habsburg Empire are transforming: studies on consuls and diplomacy can add to this common project.75 My sincere hope, therefore, is that the curious case of Oskar Prochaska, dusted off a little, will inspire historians of the Habsburg Monarchy from various backgrounds and with varying interests to consider giving consuls a try in their work as well.

“For many years, we have lived without knowing that a certain Mr. Prochaska represented us,” wrote Pesti Napló on its front-page on November 27, 1912, at the height of the crisis. “One day, we reach for the newspaper and find that we have a new hero named Prochaska, whose shed blood calls for vengeance.”76 Today, a diplomatic history freed from narratives of pride and pain can contribute essential insight into empires and nation states by recognizing the many and diverse people who inhabited and built them. It can dissolve strict dichotomies of thought, endeavoring to overcome rather than perpetuate divisive political and academic traditions. For many years, we have lived without knowing what a certain Mr. Prochaska could represent to us, and I hope that one day, we may reach for a new kind of Habsburg diplomatic history and find out so much more.

Archival Sources

Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna (HHStA), Ministerium des Äußern (MdÄ)

Politisches Archiv (PA)

XII Türkei 385, 386, 415

Administrative Registratur (AR), Fach 4

Personalia 272

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Austro-Hungarian Colonial Ventures: The Case of Albania

Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics
Research Centre for the Humanities
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 11 Issue 2  (2022):267-304 DOI 10.38145/2022.2.267

In his unpublished 1955 doctoral dissertation, Johann Wagner persuasively argued that certain members of the leading political, economic, and military circles in Austria-Hungary were very interested in the possibility of global colonization.1 Furthermore, as the data gathered by Evelyn Kolm clearly shows, in the last decades of the nineteenth century, joint Ministers of Foreign Affairs Gusztáv Kálnoky and Agenor Gołuchowski and joint Minister of Finance Benjámin Kállay promoted the idea of creating a competitive military fleet, and they were ready to offer political support for the economic interest groups that insisted on the necessity of colonialism.2 Two out of these three people initiated and played a crucial role in the 1896 Vienna Conference, where they decided to adopt and implement a new Albanian policy.
This Austro-Hungarian Albanian policy was shaped in part by new colonial ambitions and was not merely the result of a one-time decision made in response to singular circumstances. The new Albanian policy harmonized with the general aspirations of the 1890s: Gustav Kálnoky and Agenor Gołuchowski, as heads of Ballhausplatz, made political and institutional attempts to include, in some form or another, the practice of global colonization as part of the foreign policy profile of Austria-Hungary. One of their allies in these efforts was Benjámin Kállay, who, as the governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina, was well-versed in both the theoretical and the practical issues of colonization.
This study presents the context and consequences of the 1896 conference from a transnational perspective. It also draws attention to two things. First, historical research on the question of colonization should be extended to the Balkan peninsula in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Second, Austria-Hungary’s new Albanian policy was based not only on international models but also on its own experiences in Africa.

Keywords: Albania, Austria-Hungary, colonialism, Balkan Peninsula

Introduction

Historians have paid little attention to the fact that in the 1890s, the ministers of common affairs of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy made a concrete attempt formally to include colonialism in the Austro-Hungarian foreign policy portfolio.

The unusual constitutional structure of Austria-Hungary made this a challenging task. According to the laws on which the Compromise of 1867 rested, Emperor and King Franz Joseph’s realm was divided into two large public entities, the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, each of which had its own government and parliament. The joint ministers of foreign affairs, finance, and war in Vienna were only allowed to deal with common matters as defined in precise terms by the representatives of the two halves of the new empire in 1867. Formally, they did not form a government for the whole empire. The two parliaments could only deal with the joint ministers separately, through delegations of their own envoys. The acceptance of an open portfolio for colonial endeavors was a major political and social challenge for the joint ministers because any kinds of ambitions in this direction could easily have undermined the stability of the dualist system, which had been achieved at no small cost. Colonial policy, after all, raised a number of questions that touched on public law. Who would be responsible for colonization, the empire as a whole or a separate Austria and a separate Hungary? Who would finance the costs of colonial ventures, and who would benefit from these investments? Would colonial issues come to constitute a new, fourth common affair?

Since the study of Austria-Hungary’s colonial past has so far been mainly limited to case studies and the study sites have for the most part been found in eastern and southeastern Europe, as far as I know, no conceptual context has emerged that has marked the place of the Dual Monarchy in Europe’s colonial past in the global context. This study therefore undertakes to examine, in the order and logic of the unpublished archival sources in the National Archive of Vienna, the global strands of history that can be connected to the Albanian policy of the joint ministry of foreign affairs, also known as Ballhausplatz. The study connects a number of issues and facts which have been part of hitherto unrelated, parallel historical narratives (including consuls, cult protectorate, competition with other powers, the Sudan policy of Ballhausplatz, and imperial pressure groups).

In this inquiry, I focus on a joint ministerial conference held in Vienna in 1896 at which the decision was reached to launch a new Austro-Hungarian Albanian policy. I also consider the consequences of this conference. Going beyond the historical publications on the conference, including the views of Teodora Toleva,3 I claim that the new policy had an imperial character but also an equally significant colonial character, since it was a long-term goal of joint ministers Agenor Gołuchowski and Benjámin Kállay to bring the territory and inhabitants of geographical Albania in the Western Balkans under the political, economic, and cultural influence of Austria-Hungary in an asymmetrical relationship. Drawing on unpublished archival sources and the secondary literature on international colonial practices at the time, I seek to determine why the term colonial can be reasonably applied to the new Austro-Hungarian policy towards Albania launched at the end of the century. I begin by offering a brief summary of the attitudes in Austria-Hungary towards colonialism in 1890s. I then provide a broad overview from a transnational perspective of the historical context of the conference where the new Albanian policy was adopted. I analyze the minutes of the conference, examine the personalities and roles of the participants, describe the main features of the new Albanian policy, reveal the hitherto unknown roots (e.g. African aspects) of this policy, and present the imperial interest group that managed to keep the new Albanian policy in operation for two decades, in spite of the fact that the people filling the roles of common ministers were constantly shifting.

Finally, it is worth clarifying the concepts used as a basis for a colonial interpretation of the Austro-Hungarian ventures in Albania. Though Albania was far from the only colony of the Monarchy on the eve of World War I, the colonial expansion pursued by the Ballhausplatz towards the territories inhabited by Albanians was a kind of mixture of “border colonization” and “construction of naval networks” described by Jürgen Osterhammel.4 Albanian politics was at once a border colonialism, as geographical Albania lay in the immediate vicinity of Austria-Hungary. On the other hand, it was also part of the strategies involved in the construction of naval networks, as the target area was surrounded by a wreath of huge mountains towards the Central Balkans, so the region was most easily approached from the sea.

Another source on which I draw in my interpretation of Austro-Hungarian expansionist efforts in Albania as an essentially colonial venture is an article by Trutz von Trotha on colonialism. According to Trotha, the distinctions historians draw among colonies should be based more on the forms of expansion and the goals set by the colonial power with respect to each individual colony than on classifications according to type (colony, protectorate, or mandate). Thus, building on this idea, I suggest that historians would be well to examine imperial expansion in Eastern Europe as a form of colonial expansion.5

The Ballhausplatz’s Colonization Efforts in the 1890s

Based on the monograph of Stephen Gross, Export Empire, we have reasons to suggest that the colonial policy pursued in the 1890s by the two Austro-Hungarian foreign ministers, Gustav von Kálnoky and Agenor Gołuchowski, was originally inspired by the work of the German chancellor Leo von Caprivi.6 Under Caprivi, the state became the most dominant actor in German (informal) colonialism. Caprivi sought to make Germany a much more active participant in the global project of colonialism than it had been in Bismarck’s time, but he did not seek to achieve his aims through a great power policy. He used the organizing power of the state and soft power policies to win the active support of German economic interest groups for his policies. Furthermore, he considered it necessary to win the support of broad sections of German society for the cause of colonialism. In order to do this, he gave active political support to the mass social organizations of the upper and middle classes which promoted colonialism, including, for instance, the Deutsche Kolonialgessellschaft (German Colonial Society).

Kálnoky and Gołuchowski started taking preparatory steps in the 1890s to transform Austria-Hungary into an openly colonial power. In the Austro-Hungarian foreign ministry, the questions of colonialism and emigration were entrusted to a separate organizational unit independent within Ballhausplatz. Gołuchowski also provided political support for Austrian civilian organizations which, through their lobbying and publishing activities, urged the participation of the Dual Monarchy in the colonial partition of the world. Finally, Gołuchowski strove to win the support of the political elites of the two empires: the two parliaments and the two delegations debated Gołuchowski’s ideas concerning possible colonial ventures during the annual negotiations concerning the joint budget (1898–1901).

In 1891, at Kálnoky’s instructions, Adalbert Fuchs, who worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was entrusted with the management of overseas and emigration affairs. In 1894, the reorganization of Fuchs’ office was ordered. However, the new organizational system, which was based on new departments or Referatur, was only put in place under Agenor Gołuchowski, who assumed the position of joint Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1895. The new III. Referatur, or third department, headed by Fuchs as section chief (Sektionschef), was entrusted with an array of tasks, including colonial policy and the emigration question (Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderungsfrage).7

This third department was created first and foremost because of economic considerations. The Austrian Empire enjoyed a flourishing period of industrial and commercial development at the turn of the century, and this naturally led to the emergence of new types of lobbying organizations. These organizations included a group of large banking consortia (Bodenkreditanstalt, Wiener Bankverein) and chambers of commerce and industry. Although these lobby groups did not have financial assets or backing that would have made them competitive in the spaces under the control of the great powers, they had enough spare capital to look for investment opportunities in Africa, Latin America, and even the Far East. They soon began to take a growing interest in the question of emigration. Many of their publicists who were engaged in propaganda in support of colonial ventures believed that, as was the case in other European states, the issue of emigration should be linked to the economic interests of Austria-Hungary on the African and Latin American continent. In other words, without active state involvement, the big Austrian banks and the chambers of industry and commerce did not dare take serious independent action. The creation of the third department was thus partly in the interests of the new lobby organizations.8

In 1894, Ernst Franz Weisl founded the Österreichisch-Ungarische Kolonial-Gesellschaft, or Austro-Hungarian Colonial Society, on the model of the German Colonial Society. The Society was established to promote the foreign economic interests of the Dual Monarchy and to win social support for the third department of Ballhausplatz. The society was under the political wing of Gołuchowki, and in the 1890s, it worked together with the Ballhausplatz consular network on several African endeavors (Rio de Oro, Morocco). The joint minister either maintained direct contact with them through the head of the third department or held personal meetings with their leaders. Gołuchowski encouraged his officials and consuls to serve as active figures in the society.9

In the delegation meetings and the parliamentary sessions held in both halves of the empire at the turn of the century, the possibility of Austro-Hungarian participation in global colonialism was raised during debates concerning the development of the navy and the budget of the joint ministries. It also came up in connection with the Spanish-American War and the suppression of the Chinese Boxer Rebellion.10 The majority of the Hungarian MPs consistently voted in favor of covering the expenditures of the navy fleet, despite the debates concerning public law. The minutes from meetings of the House of Representatives reveal that Hungary’s elected representatives opposed the idea of colonial policy in principle but not in practice. After 1867, most Hungarian deputies, both those of the governing coalition and the opposition, did not rule out the possibility that sometime in the distant future, if the conditions were favorable, Austria-Hungary or even Hungary might join the ranks of the powers who were leading the colonial division of the world, whether through force of arms or economic influence. By “favorable conditions,” they meant that Hungarian foreign trade and industry would share in the various opportunities and anticipated benefits in proportion to the so-called quota (the rate at which Hungary and Austria contribute to the costs of common affairs between the two states) or on a parity basis. It is also worth noting that, while supporters of a possible Austrian colonial project would have ventured into Africa, Latin America, or the Far East, the attention of those who were kindling visions of Hungarian imperialism was focused primarily on the Balkans, the peninsula where, according to the consensus of the members of the Budapest House of Representatives, Austria-Hungary already had a colony: Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Drawing on domestic political and public law considerations, the Hungarian prime ministers and the Budapest parliament managed to prevent Ballhausplatz from espousing an open and long-term colonial policy in Africa and the Far East at the turn of the century. Ministers of common civilian affairs drew a number of lessons from this failure. One of these lessons was the need to launch and finance, when the circumstances were auspicious, concrete colonial ventures without, however, calling political attention to their endeavors.

Ballhausplatz’s New Albania Policy

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Albania (understood as a geographical territory) began to play an increasingly important role in Ballhausplatz’s visions for the Balkans, primarily for reasons of foreign trade and foreign policy. The strategic importance of the region grew to such an extent for the empire that, at the turn of the century, the joint Viennese ministries announced a new Albanian policy. This was seen as necessary first and foremost to prevent the emergence of a Russian “iron ring” running alongside Austria-Hungary, from the German-Russian border to the Adriatic. But the new Albanian policy was also intended to help keep Italian and Serbian ambitions for the Eastern Adriatic at bay and to prepare the Dual Monarchy for the eventual collapse of the Ottoman Empire.11

The direct cause of the new Albanian policy on the eve of the turn of the century and a clear sign of the impending collapse of the Ottoman Empire was a memorandum written in early 1896. The memorandum was written by Muslim Albanian nobleman and later grand vizier of the empire, Ferit Bey Vlora of the Great House of Vlora (grand vizier: 1903–1908).12

In the 1890s, Albanian Muslims along the coast of Albania who earlier had been loyal Ottoman subjects were becoming increasingly convinced that the Ottoman Empire would soon disintegrate. Out of concern for the future of the Albanian territories and fearing the ambitions of the neighboring nation states, prominent Albanians who held high civil service or military positions in the capital formed a secret organization. Soon, several similar associations were formed in central and southern Albania. One of the goals of these associations was to cultivate the mother tongue (Albanian) and, through it, the national idea. Members of these circles were increasingly convinced that the Albanian people would never be able to create national and state unity on their own, given their cultural backwardness, their social and ideological fragmentation, the threats posed by neighboring peoples, and the sultan’s repressive policy towards the Albanian national movement. In their assessment, it would only be possible to create national and state unity with the help of a benevolent European great power.

In the early spring of 1896, Ferit Vlora, the leader of the Albanian nationalists in Constantinople, met with Austro-Hungarian ambassador Heinrich Calice to inquire about Ballhausplatz’s plans for Albania and to share his thoughts. He said that, thanks to its policy towards Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Austria-Hungary had managed to win the trust of Albanian Muslims. During the visit, Ferit Vlora gave Calice the abovementioned memorandum. It would be hard to overstate the importance of this document. A leading official of the Ottoman Empire was asking Austria-Hungary, a Christian European power, for protection for the Muslim-majority Albanian people.13

Ferit Vlora’s memorandum was essentially a detailed political plan, and it ended up serving as the basis of the program of the Vienna Conference of 1896 (where it was discussed) and the so-called Albanian Action Plans that were a product of the conference. Ferit Vlora asked Ballhausplatz to play a role as protector against the Balkan Slavs and also to launch a consistent policy of intervention against the sultanate in support of Albanian nationhood. This interventionist policy was to have a military side and an economic side. Ferit Vlora proposed that Austrian warships appear in Albanian ports as often as possible and that the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy acquire railway construction and operation concessions on the eastern Adriatic.14 In 1897, in a telegram to Ballhausplatz, Ferit Vlora’s younger brother Syrja Vlora went even further in his proposals: he called for the establishment of an independent Albania as an Austro-Hungarian protectorate.15

Ballhausplatz took the invitation seriously but also with measured caution. The Vlora brothers came from southern Albania, or in other words not from the traditional area of interest for Austria-Hungary. Until 1896, within the framework of the Catholic cult protectorate, only the Catholic Albanians living in the northern regions of geographical Albania belonged to Vienna’s jurisdiction. According to the treaties signed with the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the concordat signed with the papal state in 1855, the duties of the cult protectorate included the protection of the free exercise of religion by local Catholics; the maintenance and operation of churches, schools, and other church buildings; providing training for the Albanian Catholic clergy; preventing taxation of the Church by the state; building new denominational schools and churches; providing financial and humanitarian assistance; and generally providing finances for the operation of the local Catholic Church and providing it with legal protection from the Ottoman authorities. The Vlora brothers were essentially calling for the political and economic extension of this sectarian and humanitarian protectorate power to all Albanians. While it kept this request secret from the outside world and from public opinion in both halves of the empire, Ballhausplatz embarked on a long-term policy of intervention.

Thus, in the name of an influential Muslim group, Ferit and Syrja Vlora, sought the active intervention of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Ottoman internal affairs in the interest of the Albanians against their legitimate ruler, the sultan. When a group of subjects in Africa or Asia sought the active and long-term intervention of a foreign European power in order to assert their interests against their ruler and settle a local, internal political conflict, this is regarded in the secondary literature as the beginning of the establishment of the intervening European state as a colonial power. This type of request, after all, was one of the most important sources of legitimacy for the establishment of colonial rule at the time.16

Regrettably, none of the surviving sources contain information concerning Ferit Vlora’s views on contemporary European colonial issues. However, drawing on contemporary Ottoman sources, Leyla Amzi-Erdoğdular suggests that the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was as much an anti-colonial experience for Muslims in the Ottoman Empire as the loss of other lands which belonged to the empire in Asia and Africa. According to Amzi-Erdoğdular, in the eyes of the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire, the loss of European territories was qualitatively no different from the colonial annexation of Asian and African provinces.17

It would be worth noting, in connection with the independent political initiative taken by the Vlora brothers that they were not the only people to embark on this kind of undertaking among the Albanian pressure groups. In 1901, Haxhi Zeka Mulla, the political leader of the so-called League of Peja, which was a supra-confessional organization which urged Albanian national development, repeated the request, as did influential Kosovo landowner Jashar Erebara in 1903. Zeka and Erebara represented two Muslim Albanian pressure groups which had considerable influence in rural Albanian areas. Like the Vlora brothers, they believed that the fall of the Ottoman Empire was nigh, and Albanians would only be able to prosper under the protection of a great European power. Given of the tolerant policy shown by the Monarchy towards Muslims in Bosnia, both Zeka and Erebara saw Ballhausplatz as a suitable protectorate. Thus, Austro-Hungarian intervention was sought not only by a group of Constantinople officials and intellectuals with roots in southern Albania, but also by the leaders of political groups with influence in the Albanian vilayet of Kosovo.18

On November 17, December 8, and December 23, a conference was held to discuss the foundations of the new Albanian policy.19 The meetings were attended by the two aforementioned joint ministers, Agenor Gołuchowski and Benjámin Kállay, and several experts were also invited. Head of Department Eduard Horowitz, the leading official in the joint Ministry of Finance, managed affairs concerning Bosnia and Herzegovina and was also involved in Kállay’s activities in connection with the World Expositions. Julius Zwiedinek von Sündenhorst, a former student at the Academy of Oriental Languages in Vienna (which trained consuls, interpreters, and economists), was the leading official at Ballhausplatz. He was recognized not only as an expert on Albanian affairs, but also as an international authority and publicist on the Ottoman Empire, trade in the east, the Levant, and Syria.20

Norbert Schmucker, another former student at the Oriental Academy, had served in various Albanian consulates between 1881 and 1893. He was invited to the conference in part because he had served as Consul General of Austria-Hungary in Bombay from 1893 to 1896, he was familiar with the Indian subcontinent, and he had been a member of the Austro-Hungarian Colonial Society since 1896 and was one of its liaisons to the Foreign Ministry.21

The aforementioned Adalbert Fuchs, head of department for colonial policy, was invited by the common foreign minister. Earlier, Fuchs had been responsible for an array of tasks, including keeping an eye on the territories (mostly in Africa and Asia) to which the Habsburg dynasty or the Common Foreign Office had internationally acknowledged religious, economic, or political claims. He was also responsible for organizing, on request, communication and shipping ties with the regions that had caught the interest of politicians in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy who were eager to pursue colonial ventures.22

Four additional experts were later invited to assist with the implementation of the decisions reached at the conference. Kállay brought in Lajos Thallóczy as an expert on Orientalism, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Albania.23 Consul General in Shkodra (Northern Albania) Theodor Ippen was called on by the Joint Foreign Minister, partly because of his experience as a civilian envoy in the Novi Pazar Sanjak. Although Ballhausplatz did not include Austria-Hungary’s experiences in the sanjaks (which contemporary historian Tamara Scheer has interpreted as informal imperialism)24 among the colonial ventures, the secondary literature on British Punjab (North-West Frontier Province) suggests that it might well be worth regarding them as such.25 The Novi Pazar Sanjak in the Balkans and the Punjab in India served very similar functions. While there were differences in the international legal status of the two territories and in the titles of possession, these were the two regions through which the Dual Monarchy and the British Empire could reach the interior of the Ottoman Empire and Central Asia and pursue their ambitions to conquer and control more territory. The tasks and functions of the military occupation regimes, administration, civilian commissioners, and railway construction plans in the two regions are largely comparable.

After graduating from the Academy of Oriental Languages, Julius Pisko served as a consul in Belgrade, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and (geographical) Albania.26 He trained himself to be an expert in colonial affairs precisely under the influence of his experiences in Albania. In 1902–1903, he took part in the SMS Zenta mission to Africa and Latin America, which had three objectives: to demonstrate Austria-Hungary’s great power status, to demonstrate the Monarchy’s military capabilities on the ocean, and to make trade policy surveys and gather statistics. As a participant in the military mission, Pisko visited the British, French, German, Portuguese, and Belgian colonies in Africa and studied them as a trade correspondent for the common foreign office. He also assessed possibilities for Austro-Hungarian economic colonization on the African continent. He regularly sent reports both to the joint ministries and to the Austrian and Hungarian governments. On the basis of his work as a publicist, Pisko seems to have identified, in the course of his travels, with the supremacist, racist views which undergirded the British and French colonial projects. Like all the Austro-Hungarian consuls who later took part in the ventures in Albania, he became a member of the Flottenverein (in 1906). The Flottenverein was a mass Austrian social organization which, on behalf of its several thousand members, demanded of the joint ministries and the governments of the two halves of the empire that the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy play an active role in the colonial partition of the world.27

Heinrich Calice recommended to the conference organizers that they also invite Albanian monk Prenk Doçi. Doçi had taken part in the League of Prizren’s uprising against the Ottoman Empire (1878–1881). He escaped execution by fleeing to Rome with the help of the Austro-Hungarian consular service, which turned to Propaganda Fide to help Doçi escape. In Rome, Doçi became secretary to Cardinal Antonio Agliardi, a papal diplomat, who took him first to Canada and then to India as apostolic delegate between 1884 and 1889. During his two major trips to India, Agliardi was entrusted with the task of reorganizing the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the complex political, administrative, ethnic, and sectarian context of the subcontinent and preparing a concordat on the local modus vivendi with Portugal. He developed a close working relationship with Doçi, one of the consequences of which was that, during the Balkan wars, as nuncio in Vienna, he often presented himself as one of the papacy’s experts on Albania.28 It is perhaps worth noting that, in August 1913, the cardinal, who had visited India, referred to the Austro-Hungarian protectorate in Albania as the jewel in Franz Joseph’s crown.29

As part of the Albanian initiatives, Doçi wrote a memorandum for the common foreign ministry in 1897 in which made concrete suggestions concerning the potential organization of Albania as a state. If one examines his proposals, which included a Catholic Principality in northern Albania as an autonomous administrative unit which would be formally dependent on the sultan but practically dependent on Austria-Hungary, it seems quite possible that Doçi drew on Indian examples when drafting his memorandum.30

The Role of Benjámin Kállay in Launching Operations in Albania

The minutes of the conference reveal that the Joint Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Joint Ministry of Finance played different strategic roles in shaping the new Albanian policy. Foreign Minister Agenor Gołuchowski was looking primarily for answers to logistical and political questions, for instance where and with whom the so-called “Albanian actions” should be carried out and how the Albanian consulates should be reorganized. In contrast, Benjamin Kállay, the Joint Minister of Finance, wanted to implement the new policy within the framework of a complex great power operation. Kállay determined first and foremost the means which would be used to influence the Albanians and the practical tasks which would need to be carried out in support of Albanian nation building. His main proposal was for Vienna to draft an organizational charter for a future Albanian principality which would lay the foundations for a state which would be formally independent but would practically function as an Austro-Hungarian protectorate.31

The strategy adopted by Kállay in 1896 was based largely on his experiences as governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina and his knowledge of British colonial practices. In order to assert the interests of the Monarchy as a great power, Kállay proposed that the plan of action should include the distribution of arms and ammunition to the Albanians and that Ballhausplatz should openly take the side of the former in the recurring Albanian-Montenegrin border disputes. In his assessment, these two steps would offer an immediate sign of the strength of the protections being offered by Austria-Hungary and would win allies for Vienna. Kállay also suggested that some influential Albanian political and military leaders should be provided with financial subsides from time to time through the consulates.32

According to Kállay, an active economic policy was indispensable for the Albanian actions to succeed. In his view, the Austro-Hungarian press should pursue active propaganda to increase trade with the Albanian territories. Albanian merchants, he felt, should be able to bring their goods to Vienna, as this would help win their support. Furthermore, he felt that a trading house should be established to carry out the essential functions of mediation in order to nurture trade between the Dual Monarchy and Albania. Kállay also considered it important that, instead of relying on smaller shipping companies, Ballhausplatz get the Trieste-based Austrian Lloyd, the largest Austrian shipping company, for “special and regular service to Albania.” Head of the colonial department Adalbert Fuchs, who organized shipping connections with Albanian ports, was entrusted with this task. Within a few years, the transport link between Austria-Hungary and Albania was established. The aforementioned Austrian Lloyd and Ungaro-Croata, the largest Hungarian steamship company (Fiume), operated the ship services.33

Although historians have only rarely made the economic expansion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its trade relations with the eastern Adriatic between 1896 and 1914 the focus of their studies, unpublished archival sources reveal that an Austrian businessman and banker named Paul Siebertz established a department store and printing press in the southern Albanian port town of Vlora in the early years of the twentieth century and even bought a hotel at some point. The infrastructure created by Siebertz furthered the interests of Austro-Hungarian imperial expansion because it physically linked the center to the periphery at a historic moment when not only Ballhausplatz but also the Austrian Industrialists’ Association was aiming to acquire Vlora, together with Thessaloniki. Siebertz’s endeavors also helped consolidate pre-capitalist conditions in the region.34

We also know that Zef Curani, an Albanian from the city of Shkodra in northern Albania who had studied at the Vienna Commercial Academy, was one of the Albanian merchants who came into contact with Ballhausplatz as a consequence of the new policy. Curani’s principal tasks in the implementation of operations in Albania included information gathering, propaganda, arms smuggling, nation building, and the creation of a single Albanian alphabet. Ballhausplatz rewarded Curani for his services with regular subsidies. The joint foreign ministry also gave him a financial incentive in the development of Austro-Hungarian-Albanian trade relations: in the summer of 1913, for example, he handled all the shipments of goods between Oboti and Shkodra (northern Albania) on the Buna River to and from the Monarchy (he enjoyed a monopoly), and he received a share of the profits from these shipments. The relationship between Ballhausplatz and Curani offers a clear example of the kind of soft power imperialism described by Stephen Gross in his aforementioned monograph Export Empire.

In connection with the idea of supporting Albanian nation building, Kállay had two fundamental questions in mind. First, he sought to strengthen the social groups and organizations that were capable of shouldering the burden of modern nation building and on which Austria-Hungary could rely. Second, he wanted to nurture national sentiment among Albanians who belonged to social strata which had hitherto been indifferent to the national idea. Kállay wanted to use the new subsidy policy to exert an influence on three social groups: members of the Albanian Catholic Church, Muslim beys from impoverished but respectable families of noble birth, and members of the Albanian diasporas abroad.35

Kállay wanted to transform the Catholic Church into a national church. While it was true that the episcopacy in Albania was indeed comprised of Albanians, most of the lower clergy and monastic orders consisted of Italians or pro-Italian priests who were involved in political propaganda in the interests of Italy. Kállay therefore proposed that, in cooperation with the Vatican and the Jesuit order, the noviciates who were being sent to the Albanian territories would in the future be chosen from among young people of Albanian nationality who were studying theology in the seminaries in Austria-Hungary. With this proposal, Kállay sought, in essence, to reconcile the interests of the Catholic Church with Austria-Hungary’s foreign policy interests so that the latter would dominate. Kállay made two demands that he expected to be met in exchange for more financial support through the institution of the protectorate: the clergy should actively spread pro-Albanian national propaganda and, politically, it should be loyal to Ballhausplatz’s visions. Otherwise, the subsidies would drop or be cut off, or Vienna could even find a way to compel a given monastic order to leave the region.36

Kállay agreed with Ferit Vlora’s memorandum, and he felt it was important to make the Albanians understand that Austria-Hungary was not supporting a denomination, but rather hoped to further the creation of an independent Albania where Catholics and Muslims would strive together to achieve national goals. He urged the participants in the conference to harness the ambitions of influential beys to reach these goals. The quantities and frequency of the subsidies given to individuals, he felt, should depend on the extent to which the beneficiaries took clear political stances.37

The method suggested by Kállay (and later adopted) of selecting the beys is reminiscent of the ways in which the British Empire in West Africa drew distinctions between “good” and “bad” Muslims. Formally, Ballhausplatz strove to maintain a neutral attitude towards the various Muslim groups in Albania, but it supported and strengthened the power, economic sway, and influence of the social stratum of beys who cooperated with it. The Austro-Hungarian consular network, furthermore, was increasingly willing to engage in conflicts with the group of officials running the Ottoman administration when their endeavors threatened the sustainability of the social order. The disruption of the social status quo would have had repercussions which would have been felt on the international stage.38

Kállay also suggested that the planned operations should be extended beyond the Albanian territories and that subsidies should be provided to influence the cultural organizations of the Albanian diasporas in Bucharest and Sofia. The print materials published by these cultural organizations in Albanian and then smuggled into the territory of the Ottoman Empire could be used to propagate a national Albanian idea that was also pro-Austrian. The conference adopted and implemented Kállay’s proposals.

When Albania declared its independence in 1912, of the four large groups of the founding fathers (members of the so-called great houses, refugees, beys, and intellectuals who belonged to the diasporas), the latter two became influential political factors in Albanian society, both because of the unusual political circumstances and to no small extent thanks to the support they were given by Austria-Hungary.39

If one considers Kállay’s proposals from the perspective of the prevailing colonial practices at the time, the new subsidy policy seems to have functioned in part as a tool with which to maintain the diversity of Albanian society by creating a new hierarchy between and within groups which was then controlled and overseen through subsidies. The creation of a national Catholic Church meant that, within the new hierarchy, some orders (Jesuits) enjoyed conspicuously more support, while others (Franciscans) had to make do with less. The deal offered to the Catholic Church in 1896 meant unequal conditions and political subordination for Propaganda Fides on Albanian territory, since the amounts of the subsidies received through the Austro-Hungarian protectorate were also determined by the political reliability shown to Ballhausplatz.

The same logic was applied in secular society to the funding provided for the selected Muslim beys. The Austro-Hungarian consular network identified bey families which, fundamentally because of their economic circumstances, had drifted into the camp of internal opposition to the Ottoman Empire. Their opposition had become an important means of expressing their commitment to the Albanian language and the Albanian national movement (one could mention, for example, the Toptani family in central Albania). As a reward for their political loyalty to Austria, Ballhausplatz began to strengthen the economic position of this social group and its place in Albanian society. Austria-Hungary’s ability to use the beys as tools to achieve its ends was limited, however, by the fact that Italy, in pursuit of its own imperialist interests, also began to finance this social group, as well as the members of the lower priesthood, who were partly Italian.40

All in all, the implementation of the new Albanian policy was successful and remained secret partly because it was possible to avoid calling any attention to the measures among political circles by bypassing the two parliaments on the issue of funding. There was always enough money for the Albanian policy without it appearing anywhere as a separate budget item. Through the item of “Catholic churches in Levant,” Ballhausplatz could use monies provided for the common ministries to pursue its aims in Albania. In addition, since 1864, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been handling the so-called “united Oriental funds,” which were pooled from the assets of two civil foundations (the Sklavenredemptionsfond and the Orientalische Missionsfond). The pooled funds were basically used to run Catholic schools and missions in the Ottoman Empire. If additional funds were needed for the new Albanian policy, these budgets could be increased without attracting notice.41 (For a thorough account of the concrete details and statistics concerning the use of these funds, see the monographs by Schanderl, Schwanda, Toleva, Deusch, and Gostentschnigg.)

The monarch also regularly used monies from the private funds of the Habsburg family to support the Catholic archdioceses in Albania. The sources contain no concrete indication of the Emperor and King having used these funds to finance political enterprises in Albania, but it is worth noting that as early as 1858, Franz Joseph had given permission to finance specific colonial projects, such as Wilhelm Tegetthoff’s expedition to the Red Sea, by secretly using state funds through the private funds of his brother Archduke Maximilian.42

Pax Austro-Hungarica

The participants in the Vienna Conference of 1896 thus adopted a policy of subsidies intended to ensure that, in time, the eastern Adriatic would come under the sway of a prince who would rule under an Austro-Hungarian protectorate. Since the minutes of the conference do not reveal what pattern the protectorate would follow, it is worth keeping in mind that two great powers, Russia and Great Britain, had already used this form of rule not far from the Albanian territories. In the eastern Balkans, Russia had held the Romanian principalities (1830s) and Bulgaria (1878–1885) under its power as a protectorate. Similarly, in the nineteenth century, the so-called Septinsular Republic (1797–1812) in the Ionian Islands near the Albanian coast enjoyed protections as a British protectorate, as did Malta (1800–1813) and Cyprus (1878–1914) in the Mediterranean. In each of these territories, the role of the British Empire as protector was a sort of next step to colonization: United States of the Ionian Islands (former Septinsular Republic) was under British colonial rule from 1815 to 1864, and Malta became a Crown colony in 1813, followed by Cyprus a century later, in 1922.43

For Ballhausplatz, of the two protectorate models, the Russian was preferable, as the Ballhausplatz officials envisioned a prince and principality in Albania after the possible collapse of the Ottoman Empire rather than an administration led by a governor or administrator.

Kállay proposed that an organizational statute be drafted for the future Albanian principality, a suggestion which indicates that he may have been drawing not only on the models of Wallachia and Moldavia, but also the smaller Ottoman units with administrative autonomy and mixed Muslim-Christian populations. These units—Samos (1834), Lebanon (1860–1864), Crete (1868, 1898), and Eastern Rumelia (1878)—had been given an organizational statute (reglement/statut organique) in the nineteenth century with international assistance. As the Austro-Hungarian delegate, Kállay had participated in the drafting of the latter’s organizational statute.

In the formulation of concrete action programs, or in other words, the operations that it was hoped would lead to the creation of a protectorate, the participants in the 1896 conference drew heavily on the example of Syria. The activities of the French consuls in Syria after 1861 and the new methods they had developed to exert an influence on the local population were incorporated into the practices of Austro-Hungarian consuls. But alongside the international models, Ballhausplatz drew at least as much on its own imperial experiences and practices. Ballhausplatz adopted practices which had been used in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the Novi Pazar Sanjak, and it took into consideration and learned from the experiences of the Austro-Hungarian consulate in Khartoum in Sudan (see below).44

After the conference, the various tasks were divided up among the joint ministries. Under the influence of the theoretical and practical guidance of Lajos Thallóczy, the focus of Kállay’s line was primarily on nation-building tasks. They decided to publish a textbook in Albanian on Albanian national history for Albanian ethnic schools. To further the creation of a uniform Latin alphabet, literature programs were launched in Vienna, Borgo Erizzo (or Arbanasi in Croatian and Arbneshi in Albanian, where the population was Albanian-speaking) in Dalmatia, Brussels (where the French-language journal Albanie was published), Bucharest, and Sofia. Several Albanian-language publications were published as part of the program. The joint Ministry of Finance also strove to put forward economic and trade action plans.

The Gołuchowski line undertook political tasks: preparing the Albanian elite and intellectuals for the state-building project; logistical and financial support for the Albanian national movement; and the development of a consular network able to carry out the new tasks.

Although the idea arose of creating a separate department within the joint foreign ministry for the oversight and organization of the new Albanian policy, ultimately, the operations were carried out by the Albanian experts at Ballhausplatz, who worked within the existing organizational structure.45 (Unfortunately, the sources reveal little concerning what the actual responsibilities of this Albanian department would have been.) Lajos Thallóczy selected the consul candidates for the program from among the students at the Academy of Oriental Languages in Vienna, where Thallóczy himself was also an instructor. After having completed their studies at the academy, the candidates attended a six to twelve month continued training course on site, i.e., at the Albanian consulates, where they learned Albanian and acquired knowledge of the circumstances on the ground. Training courses were also organized for these emerging Albania experts in Borgo Erizzo. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs worked together with the Dalmatian governorate to organize Albanian language courses in the local schools in part for Austrian and Hungarian citizens who voluntarily sought, either as civilians or as soldiers, to participate in the implementation of the new Albanian policy. Those who received training in these schools included Heinrich Clanner von Engelshofen, for instance, who was a confidante of Joint Chief of Staff Conrad and the most important intelligence officer for Joint Staff and Ballhausplatz in Albania.46

The allotment to the consuls of the tasks involved in the Albanian operations was the result of a concerted effort by the two joint ministries. The preservation of the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire was still a primary interest for Austria-Hungary, and the preparations underway for the creation of an Albanian state were merely a cautionary step in anticipation of the imminent collapse of the empire, so the consuls had to operate in secret.

Thus, the consuls could not do anything to alter the organizational system of the Ottoman state administration, and they had to build their policies on local structures. Ballhausplatz gave them a free hand in this and did not exercise close supervision over them. Nonetheless, even if the Albanian policies were broken down to the level of the sanjak, they were to be implemented in a coordinated manner. The consuls had to be fluent in Albanian and familiar with local customs and conditions, and they had to build up their own networks of contacts by traveling regularly within the territories of their offices. The consul was expected to build a network of contacts to ensure that, through him, Austria-Hungary would gain prestige as a protector power and would be able to propagate its vision of the values of civilization. The consuls had to prevail on the Albanian beys to turn to them with their complaints and to seek them out as representatives of their interests and sources of advice, and not the state administration or state officials. The Austro-Hungarian consuls took this pattern from the practice of the French consuls in Syria. The primary means used to build a network of contacts were the distribution of gifts and distinctions of various kinds, regular or temporary subsidies, personal visits (e.g. extended stays with the bey families), measures taken against the state authorities, support for education in Albanian, and cultural and financial support for the Albanian national movement. Ballhausplatz also provided logistical support for the leaders of the national movement: they could bypass the controlled communication channels of the Ottoman Empire by using the local branches of the Austrian Post and Austrian Lloyd, which meant that the secrets contained in their letters were safe.47

All in all, the responsibilities and tasks of the consuls described above, the push for the transformation of the Albanian social hierarchy, and the efforts to promote economic expansion were little more than a west Balkan, Austro-Hungarian adaptation of the everyday practices used by the so-called indirect rule protectorates, which were based essentially on the British models in Africa and Asia. The fact that the Joint Chiefs of Staff allowed the military fleet to make regular demonstrations of force in Albanian ports in Ottoman territorial waters buttresses this claim. Indeed, an annual show of military force was one of the features of the British indirect rule in West Africa.48

For as should be noted, Ballhausplatz’s new Albanian policy also enjoyed the support of the joint staff. In a memorandum of April 2, 1897, Chief of the General Staff Friedrich Beck pushed for the creation of an independent, pro-Vienna Albania, which he supported with reference to allegedly “vital” reasons.49 He considered it important to have a strong presence on the eastern Adriatic coast for two reasons from a military point of view. First, control of the area would ensure free passage for Austria-Hungary’s military and merchant fleets to the Mediterranean through the Otranto Strait. Second, it would give the Monarchy a strategic position just to the south of Serbia and Montenegro.50 In effect, Beck’s plan would have meant the creation of a cordon sanitaire in Albania that would have protected the sea route, the free use of which was essential if Austria-Hungary sought to maintain its status as a great power. The chief of the General Staff (and Ballhausplatz) was merely adopting a common practice of colonial great powers: the British Empire, for example, surrounded its sea routes to India with a network of British protectorates in order to ensure that these routes remained safe for its ships.51

Beck adopted a committed imperialist policy: he asked the Austro-Hungarian consuls in Albania to gather geographical, cartographic, and infrastructural data. He was prepared, furthermore, to carry out independent military operations in Albanian territory, and he accepted the proposal which had been made by Ferit Vlora and allowed units of the joint navy to make regular demonstrations of force. One of the primary tasks of the units of the fleet that were deployed was to give Albanians a tangible demonstration of Austria-Hungary’s military capabilities and the protections they enjoyed as a kind of protectorate. The first such demonstration was held in 1902, when the SMS Monarch (1895), SMS Wien (1895), and SMS Budapest (1896), three vessels which belonged to a relatively new class of battleship, docked in Durrës, a coastal city with the largest port in Albania.52

In the first decade of the twentieth century, Austria-Hungary’s new Albanian policy led to serious great power rivalry between the Monarchy and Italy over the assertion of influence in Albania. To this day, the secondary literature on the subject has reduced this great power rivalry, which unfolded in the ecclesiastical, economic, and cultural spheres, to the phenomenon of informal imperialism.53 Yet the interests of the two great powers collided in another fringe territory of the Ottoman Empire, namely the Sudan. North Africa was an important cornerstone not only of Austria-Hungary’s Balkan policy but also of Italy’s.

Ballhausplatz’s Experiences in the Sudan

Historians who have done research on the Austro-Hungarian empire’s policy in the Balkans have paid little attention to the fact that Ballhausplatz’s ambitions in southeastern Europe went hand in hand with its presence in North Africa in the 1880s and 1890s. As early as the British occupation of Egypt and the 1882 Constantinople Conference to address the resulting Egyptian uprising, it had been perfectly clear to joint Foreign Minister Gustav von Kálnoky that any shift of power in Egypt would automatically give rise to international tensions in the Balkans, thus making it difficult to stabilize the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and hampering Austria-Hungary’s efforts to position itself in southeastern Europe. Furthermore, the conflict in Egypt threatened Austria-Hungary’s economic markets in the Levant. This was primarily why Ballhausplatz took an active political stance in North Africa during these two decades. In the great power rivalry, Ballhausplatz took part in diplomatic negotiations in support of British foreign policy interests.54

But how did Ballhausplatz end up getting involved in affairs in the Sudan? From the outset, in the 1840s, the Catholic missionaries from the Habsburg Empire, while spreading the faith and fighting the slave trade, very consciously sought to acquire economic markets for the empire in the region. In 1850, the Khartoum consulate was established to provide political protection for the missions. The Habsburg Consulate and the Catholic missions (Apostolic Vicariate of Central Africa, 1846) immediately developed a symbiotic relationship with each other, and under their oversight, religious and ecclesiastical affairs became completely intertwined (“indivisibiliter ac inseparabiliter”) with commercial and political affairs. That was in part a consequence of the support shown by the Franz Joseph for the Catholic missions founded by the subjects of the Habsburg Empire in 1851. A letter written in 1850 by the Slovenian Father Ignacij Knoblehar, who headed the missionaries, suggests that the monks involved in the mission were aware that, with their work, they could help further the process of colonization.55

The symbiosis between the missions in the Sudan and the Habsburg Consulate in Khartoum was so strong and their commercial ambitions so encouraging that Charles Augustus Murray, the British consul General in Alexandria (and also a man who acquired a reputation as an author of fiction), initiated the establishment of a British consulate in Khartoum. At Murray’s suggestion, in 1850, John Petherick was appointed consul. Petherick was a merchant and mining expert with a strong knowledge of Arabic and the local conditions. In his reports to the Foreign Office in the 1860s, Petherick repeatedly accused Austria of using its local representatives to organize a colony at the confluence of the White and Blue Niles. Even if Ballhausplatz had entertained this idea, in the 1890s, political colonization had long since ceased to be one of the Dual Monarchy’s aims in the Sudan.56

When developing the new Albanian policy, which of its experiences in the Sudan did Ballhausplatz learn draw on? The consulates in Khartoum and Albania were able to work closely with the denominational structure of the protectorate under the same conditions because they were all formally subject to the same international agreements. The Ottoman sultans had consented to the establishment of Habsburg Catholic missions and consulates in the Sudan and in the Albanian territories in the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718 and the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739.57

The Austro-Hungarian consulates in the Sudan and Albania had one important thing in common: the consults sent by Ballhausplatz to both areas were well-qualified, multilingual, and had studied at the Academy of Oriental Languages in Vienna. This stood in sharp contrast to the practices of other great powers, which appointed people from very mixed backgrounds to similar posts.58

Although state interests and the interests of the Catholic Church were traditionally intertwined in the practices of the Austro-Hungarian foreign policy missions in the Ottoman Empire (the ambassador and consuls in Constantinople were also officials of the cult protectorate), the situations of the consulates in Khartoum and Albania differed from the situations of the other consulates. The Common Foreign Office coordinated its policies in the Balkans and North Africa in the last two decades of the nineteenth century: in order to appear as a successful great power in the former, it abandoned its previously acquired positions in the latter and supported the British Foreign Office. Albania and the Sudan, however, were on the periphery of the Ottoman Empire, where the various great powers had conflicting interests. In the Sudan, the British, French, Italian, and Egyptians competed to assert their interests. In Albania, Ottoman, Italian, Austro-Hungarian, and French ambitions collided.

The experiences in the Sudan were also useful in the development of the new Albanian policy because the work of the consulate in Khartoum was intertwined not only with the management of the protectorate but also with the efforts to handle the political tensions that had developed with Italy over the operation of the protectorate. These tensions stemmed essentially from the two problems discussed below, each of which also affected the work of Propaganda Fide.

Although 90 percent of the missions were financed by the Monarchy or the recently unified Germany, the institutions where the next generation of missionaries was trained were still in Italy (which also had unified in the meantime), in territories which had belonged to the Habsburgs. With the birth of the modern Italian state, Italian missionaries became increasingly committed to serving their government’s aspirations for power. While the Ballhausplatz consuls and the personal commitment of Franz Joseph provided political protections for the missions in the Sudan and the missions were financed almost entirely by the German-speaking regions of Europe, many Italian missionaries were increasingly supportive of Italy’s great power aspirations. They were encouraged in their work by the ambitions of the Italian state in neighboring Ethiopia and Somalia. According to Walter Sauer, the missionary order in the Sudan, which was created by Daniele Comboni, pursued a similar nationalist church policy.59

The other conflict of a legal nature related to the cult protectorate concerned the exercise of consular functions. In international relations, it has long been accepted that each state has formalized the right to protect its citizens in foreign affairs affecting its citizens. For many missionaries, the creation of a unified Italy means a change of nationality (or more precisely, citizenship). One could think of the aforementioned Daniele Comboni (1831–1881), for instance, who was one of the most prominent leaders of the Vicariate of Central Africa and who, from one moment to the next, went from being a Habsburg subject to being a subject of the House of Savoy. For decades, the Austro-Hungarian and Italian consuls struggled in their day-to-day workings with the legal complexities of this change of citizenship. Some Italian consuls were also sometimes eager to intervene in the affairs of Catholic clergy who, although Italian nationals, were Austrian citizens.60

The activities of missionaries of Italian nationality and Italy’s great power ambitions in North Africa created lasting friction between Ballhausplatz, the Consulta (the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), and Propaganda Fide (1866–1890). These frictions may have played a role in the decision of the papacy to work together with Austria-Hungary in its ecclesiastical policy in the Albanian territories at the turn of the century. The events which had taken place in the Sudan were repeated: this was why, in part, Balhausplatz sought to replace members of the lower clergy and the orders in Albania who were of Italian nationality with Albanian priests educated in Austria.

It is worth keeping in mind, in the interests of understanding the broader context, that, in connection with the cult protectorate, in the last decades of the nineteenth century, Austria-Hungary was confronted in North Africa and Albania not only by Italy but also by France. The French state had an older protectorate over Catholics in the Ottoman Empire dating back to the sixteenth century. Furthermore, in the nineteenth century, the French cult protectorate also went beyond its denominational borders and became an instrument with which France could pursue political aims. Between 1878 and 1903, the governments in Paris attempted to take the position of the Austro-Hungarian cult protectorate in the Albanian territories from the papacy.61

At the same time, as the French colonial ventures got closer and closer to the Austrian mission houses in the Sudan, the French Catholic Church wanted to annex the Vicariate of Central Africa too. It made its first attempt to do in the 1860s, when Franz Binder from Transylvania was serving as consul in Khartoum. The second attempt came during the Mahdi uprising, when Europeans were forced to flee the Sudan. Charles Martial Allemand Lavigerie, cardinal of Carthage and Algiers and Primate of Africa, was laboring ambitiously to Christianize the continent. With the help of Propaganda Fide, Lavigerie was able to get his hands on the two most important Austrian mission houses, Gondokoro and Heiligenkreuz. After the British put down the Mahdi uprising, the two mission houses were returned to the Vicariate of Central Africa. They were returned not only because the British sought to push the French out of the region. The events were also shaped by the fact that British General Charles Gordon, who was leading the efforts to consolidate the Sudan politically, was working alongside Rudolf Carl von Slatin, an Austrian colonial figure who had entered British service (and who had been raised to the rank of Pasha by the Ottomans).62

Finally, it is worth considering why it was possible for the Monarchy to benefit directly in Albania from its experiences in the Sudan. This was due primarily to the simple fact that, since the early 1880s, however Ballhausplatz’s internal organization (the grouping of cases and referrals) shifted, the European, Asian, and African territories of the Ottoman Empire and its vassal states in Europe and Africa were always in the hands of the same referent. In 1896, this was Julius Zwiedinek, who was entrusted in part with developing concrete plans for the Albanian operations (the other person in charge of the Albanian action plans was the aforementioned Norbert Schmucker, who at the time was the Austro-Hungarian consul general in Bombay).63

Another clear indication of the ways in which the cult protectorate policies in the Sudan and Albania had an impact on each other after 1896 is the fact that, in accordance with Ballhausplatz’s system for managing documents, the consulate in Khartoum received extracts or copies of some of the statistics concerning payments related to operations in Albania. Accordingly, duplicates of certain cult protectorate documents relating to Albania (understood as a geographical region) were also filed under the heading “Africa” in the Austrian State Archives.64

Later evidence that Ballhausplatz’s Balkan and Albanian policy was not completely divorced from its approach to North Africa is found in the person of Aristoteles Petrović. Petrović left his post as consul general in Alexandria to become the Austro-Hungarian delegate to the International Control Commission for Albania, which was formed in 1913. Petrović was also one of the experts in charge of colonial affairs for and a confidant of Leopold Berchtold, the joint foreign minister.65

The Albanian Lobby

In time, the people responsible for the implementation of the decisions reached at the 1896 conference and the participants in the operations in Albania formed a lobby which, by the year of annexation, had grown into an imperial interest group. Kurt Gostentschnigg devoted an entire monograph of several hundred pages to a detailed presentation of the activities of this lobby, including the ways in which it influenced Ballhausplatz’s Albania policy, so in the discussion below I limit myself to the most important features of this interest group.66

The Albania lobby never formally organized into an association. It was very heterogeneous, as it was made up of loosely connected subgroups. Members were recruited from different social strata and ethnicities, and they joined the lobby for varying reasons and with varying aims. However, the interest group did have a strong Catholic, aristocratic character. The subgroups consisted of diplomatic officials, military officers, aristocrats, scientists, scholars, journalists, and one official-historian. For the most part, they were indifferent to Albania. In their eyes, the Albanian cause was little more than a means of demonstrating the strength and unity of Austria-Hungary as an empire, both to the outside world and domestically. In the last decade and a half of the Dual Monarchy, they came together to form a supranational lobby which, step by step, brought Ballhausplatz’s Albania policy under its influence.

The lobby was both the driving force behind Austro-Hungarian policy towards Albania and the source of expertise on the culture and region. The interest group functioned within the sphere of the joint Foreign Ministry. Some of its members were also ministry officials or consuls. In time, they emerged as experts on the Albanian question in the eyes of the relevant policymakers. Step by step, they instrumentalized the foreign ministry and, through it, the consular network. They participated in Albanian nation-building and state-building as external ethnic entrepreneurs.67 This was possible because the changes in personnel at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not drastically hamper the work of the lobby and its pursuit of the original program. The Albanian beys and the diaspora communities involved in Vienna’s project and the various political and cultural operations undertaken in the service of this project were able to count on continuous subsidies from Vienna over the span of some two decades. In the first decade of the new century, some members of the lobby were also continuously recruiting new members who were committed to the imperialist Austro-Hungarian Albanian policy: experts in the Foreign Ministry who had been in charge of Albanian affairs since 1896 were joined at Ballhausplatz for the most part by new young people selected and appointed for this purpose from among the students at the Oriental Academy by Lajos Thallóczy (including, for instance, Carl Buchberger and Konstantin Bilinski Jr.).

In addition to the work of the lobby, another important part of the background of Vienna’s aspirations and operations in Albania was the birth of Albanian studies as a modern, scientific discipline in Austria-Hungary. In the 1850s, Habsburg consuls serving in Albanian territories began, purely out of their own interests, to pursue scholarly research in which they examined questions concerning the linguistic, ethnographic, and historical aspects of the almost unknown Albanian people.68 In time, their research was published in book form. As the great powers began to take an increasing interest in Albania, some of the most eminent Balkan historians of the time also started studying Albanian history, including for instance the Czech historian Konstantin Jireček, the Croatian Milan Šufflay, and the aforementioned Thallóczy.69 By the turn of the century, modern Albanian studies had claimed its place as one of the philological sciences. By supporting this new discipline, Ballhausplatz gained another opportunity to increase the support it enjoyed among the activists of the Albanian national movement, much as it also gained new opportunities to arrive at clearer assessments of the economic potential of the Albanian territories and to arrive at a more precise scholarly and statistical understanding of Albania.

Though the new discipline of Albanian studies was not the product of great power politics, it nonetheless was in a closely symbiotic relationship with the politics of Ballhausplatz after 1896 and with members of the Albanian lobby. Officials in the common foreign ministry regarded Albanian studies as an imperial discipline. In 1911, Head of Department Karl Macchio noted in a summary for internal use that the study of Albanian culture and history played the same role for Austria-Hungary as Egyptology did for France and Mesopotamian studies for Britain. All three disciplines were important because of the interests and aims of the great powers in the east, and the financial support that was provided was an indispensable part of great power politics. It is worth noting, however that unlike Egyptology and Mesopotamian studies, Albanian studies not only gained an institutionalized form in Austria-Hungary.70

Conclusion and Epilogue

Though the archival sources that I have drawn on in the course of this inquiry avoided the use of the contemporary colonial terminology, in my view, one can confidently regard the new Austro-Hungarian Albanian policy of 1896 as a fundamentally colonial policy. On the one hand, the Austro-Hungarian ventures in Albania fit Osterhammel’s concepts of “border colonization” and “construction of naval networks” and Trotha’s interpretational perspective on colonialism. Coastal Albania before World War I was a perfect example of an ideal potential colony according to the turn-of-the-century definition. It was relatively close to the Dual Monarchy, which meant that formally, the new Albanian policy formally fell into the category of so-called border colonization.71 Albania was separated from the interior by high mountains and was therefore most easily accessible by sea, which means that from a certain perspective it could have been considered an overseas territory. Almost all of Albania’s coastline was splotched with swamps that were breeding grounds for malaria. This strip of land which belonged to the Muslim East was practically unknown in Europe. There was a considerable cultural difference and distance between the potential colonizer and the colonized. In 1896, the Dual Monarchy began diligently acquiring scientific knowledge of the region and its culture, a project that enjoyed the support of the joint ministries, the scientific institutions in both halve of the empire, and the joint Austro-Hungarian General Staff.72

On the other hand, the unpublished sources cited in this study (the memoranda written by the Vlora brothers, joint Chiefs of Staff Friedrich Beck, and Head of Department Karl Macchio and the minutes of the 1896 conference) very clearly reveal that Ballhausplatz’s operations in Albania were aimed at establishing an unequal, asymmetrical relationship with the Albanian territories: geographical Albania was to be made dependent on Austria-Hungary politically, economically, and culturally. Through a policy of subsidies and an indirect form of rule adapted to the circumstances in the western Balkans (based in part on military and economic influence), Ballhausplatz sought to transform and control the hierarchy of Albanian society and the Catholic Church; and through the Albanian nation-building project, Ballhausplatz wanted gradually to transform and replace the local cultural mindset, which essentially had been under the influence of the Muslim, oriental Ottoman Empire, with the Central European, Christian values of the “civilized” empire of Austria-Hungary.

The fact that Adalbert Fuchs, who was the head of Ballhausplatz’s colonial affairs department, took part in the launch of the operations in Albania further confirms that the empire’s Albania policy was indeed a fundamentally a colonial undertaking, as does the fact that the Austro-Hungarian consuls involved in the day-to-day shaping of Albanian policy (as did many of the members of the Albanian lobby, including Friedrich Beck, Ferenc Nopcsa, and Leopold Chlumetzky) were all members of the Austrian Flottenverein. The contemporary British and French analogies in Syria, West Africa, and India also lay bare the colonial character of Albanian politics.

The final stop, as it were, of the Austro-Hungarian policy towards Albania in 1912–1914 was the complete economic exploitation of the emerging independent state of Albania. The propaganda efforts of the Albanian lobby between 1896 and 1912 had successfully mobilized society in the two halves of the empire. In Austria, in 1913, inspired by the formation of the British Albanian Committee, an Albanian Committee was formed consisting of aristocrats and leading figures from large industrial and financial interest groups. The primary objective of this committee was to bring the financial affairs of the new Balkan country under its control through the organization of the Albanian National Bank. In an interesting episode in the evolution of colonial thinking in Austrian public opinion, when a revolt broke out in Albania against the princely power in June 1914, civil activists began to recruit a so-called Albanian Legion in Vienna in defense of public order and the interests of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The goal of the recruiting office was to organize independent fighting units consisting of volunteers who would travel to Albania at their own expense and fight against the rebels in central Albania with their own weapons. According to unpublished archival sources, within 24 hours, 2,000 people had signed up, and according to the Vienna police, nearly 10,000 more were expected to arrive the following day. In the end, this office, with which the Austrian Albania Committee was in direct contact, was closed by the Vienna police at the request of joint Foreign Minister Berchtold. Despite the Foreign Ministry’s prohibition, however, several dozen volunteers still traveled to Albania to take part in the fighting.73

As for Hungary, the establishment of Albania went hand in hand with the birth of independent Albanian studies in Hungary, which served Hungary’s imperial aspirations of Hungary at the national level.74 More important was the fact that an Austro-Hungarian-Italian negotiating committee agreed to divide Albania economically into three spheres of interest in November 1913 (50 percent for Italy, 25 percent for Austria, and 25 percent for Hungary). Key to the Hungarian success was, first, that the members of the Asiatic Society of Hungary (the Turanian Society), as Hungarian state-officials, play a significant role in the imperial and colonial actions of Ballhausplatz in Albania and Anatolia between 1912 and 1914. Second, the Hungarian Prime Minister István Tisza pressured Leopold Berchtold to win acceptance for the Budapest government’s national aspirations.75

Ultimately, the way in which Albania was economically partitioned reveals that colonialism did not become a fourth common cause within the Habsburg Empire. Austria and Hungary acted as separate colonizing parties. In talks with the Italian representatives, a joint team of economists of Austrian and Hungarian nationality took part in the negotiations. In other words, the international negotiations were conducted at the level of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The signing and of the agreements and their parliamentary approval, however, were the responsibilities of the respective Austrian and Hungarian authorities. Formally, this never actually took place, as the January 1914 coup d’état led by the Young Turks took events in Albania in an entirely new direction.

Archival Sources

Österreichisches Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (ÖStA HHStA)

Administrative Registratur (AR)

F4: Kt. 99, 450, 456,

F 27: Kt. 8, 28-30,

(I.) Allgemeines

(2. Geheime Akten) Kt. 473,

(7. Delegationsakten) Kt. 573,

(8. Generalia) Kt. 685, 710,

(19.) Nachlässe

Nachlass Kral, Kt. 1,

Nachlass Kwiatkowsky, Kt. 1-2,

Nachlass Mérey, Kt. 15,

Politisches Archiv

XII. Türkei, Kt. 419,

XIV. Albanien, Kt. 21, 64,

Kriegsarchiv in Vienna (KA)

AOK-Evidenzbureau

Kt. 3498,

Militärkanzlei Franz Ferdinand (MKFF)

Kt. 203,

Operationsbüro, Fasz. 46,

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Magyar Országos Levéltára [Hungarian State Archive] (MNL OL)

K 255 Pénzügyminisztérium, elnöki iratok

Z 41 Pesti Magyar Kereskedelmi Bank Rt., Okmánytár (PMKB)

Országos Széchényi Könyvtár [National Széchényi Library] (OSZK)

Kézirattár, Fol. Hung. 1677

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One of the typical social consequences of the introduction of compulsory conscription and mass politics in nineteenth century Europe was the emergence of veterans organizations. This study examines the veterans’ movement in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary between 1867 and 1914. While in Europe and Imperial Austria the widespread military veterans’ organizations were important actors in the relationship between the military and the civilian sphere and also in state policy, in Hungary their spread remained limited. However, their operation, specific ideology and also their reception in local society can provide important lessons about the impact of the military on society, and the forms and workings of loyalty and nationalism in Hungary.

The study consists of two main parts. First, it examines the prevalence and main characteristics of the associations: where and when were they founded, for what purpose were they established, how the state treated them, what social groups did them consist of, and finally how did all this relate to the other half of the empire? The second part of the study presents the activities of veterans’ associations in Hungarian society by drawing on the example of town of Szombathely and Vas County in western Transdanubia. It analyses what activities did they perform in everyday life, what ideologies did they follow, how did they get involved in the life of the local society, and what was their reception in local civil society and administration?
Keywords: Austria-Hungary, Hungary, military veterans’ association, militarism, civil-military relation, veterans

The national perspective has long dominated research on the history of the Habsburg Monarchy. Over the course of the past two decades, however, the “the new imperial history”1 of the Habsburg Monarchy and the concept of “national indifference”2 have shifted attention to transnational approaches, imperial policy, and multi-ethnic frameworks, pointing to the phenomena of national indifference, multilingualism, multiple identities, imperial patriotism, and dynastic loyalties.3 These theories have significantly altered the image of the Habsburg Monarchy, making it clear that the concepts of multinational empire and nation were compatible rather than competing categories and also highlighting the limits of national mobilization and the importance of dynastic loyalty (though without forgetting or ignoring the limits of this loyalty). Research, however, has focused primarily on the western half of the Monarchy, and with the exception of a few scattered research endeavors, Hungary’s place in this narrative remains largely unclear.4

The Imperial and Royal Army was one of the most important institutional pillars of dynastic loyalty and patriotism. In recent decades, historical research in a number of European countries has shown that armies based on the general conscription and military symbols and traditions played a decisive role in building national identity, mobilizing the population for national purposes, and thus militarizing society at the turn of the century.5 One of the most important areas in which civil society and military society intersected were the military veterans’ organizations, which in parallel with the emergence of mass politics became a hotbed of militarism. The Kyffhäuserband (an umbrella organization of veterans), for example, with its 2.8 million members, had become one of the largest societies in Germany by 1913. These associations had a strong nationalistic, authoritarian and militaristic character, which was also propagated in the wider society.6

Similar trends were underway in the Habsburg Monarchy, but of course in a different social, historical, and political context. Although general conscription was introduced in 1868, the Habsburg Army was organized around a supranational ideology which was unique in Europe. The cornerstones of this ideology were loyalty to the emperor and the common fatherland and the equality of nationalities and religions. Since there was no dominant nation in the Monarchy, the army did not symbolize the “nation in arms,” but rather was an embodiment of the community of the peoples of the empire as a whole. The army, too, was not a “school of the nation,” but a “school of the peoples.”7

The military culture developed by the army had an impact on wider society. In his work on military culture and the veterans’ movement which emerged in the 1870s , Laurence Cole draws (at least) two important conclusions. He argues that “a process of societal militarization took place in imperial Austria during the second half of the nineteenth century, much as occurred in other European countries,” and “a considerable reservoir of dynastic loyalty and ‘pro-Austrian’ sentiment existed across the multinational state.”8 Of course, veterans were influenced by nationalism (in Bohemia more than anywhere else), but this did not affect their patriotism. Rather, it merely changed the language they used to express it. In Austria, however, military culture also contributed to the polarization of society as opposition emerged to the militarism and “certain circles of society rejected involvement in activities associated with or symbolized by military veterans.” Thus, Cole agrees with István Deák’s assessment, according to which the society of Habsburg Monarchy was divided not only nationally but also ideologically and socially.9

Cole’s work does not deal with the case of Hungary, and his hesitancy to do so suggests that the distinctive position of the country should be the subject of separate study.10 With the Austro-Hungarian Compromise in 1867, Hungary, which had always occupied a special place in the Habsburg Monarchy, gained full internal autonomy with the exception of foreign affairs, military matters, and certain economic questions. Multilingual and multi-religious but governed by the Hungarian liberal elite, Hungary (in contrast with Imperial Austria) defined and organized itself as a nation state in which the dominance of Hungarian nationalism prevailed, while the nationality movements were ever more restricted.11 For this reason, the lack of a national army was the Achilles-heel of Hungarian politics, and the ideology on which the Imperial and Royal Army’s claim to legitimacy was founded was a constant target of Hungarian nationalists, even if the relationship between the army and Hungarian society had become harmonic and close in everyday life by the turn of the century.12 Another significant and, from the perspective of the development of military veterans’ associations (MVAs), important difference was the absence in Hungary of any modern mass politic. While the gradual extension of the right to vote in Austria eventually led to the introduction of universal and equal suffrage for all men in 1907, in Hungary, only a narrow section of society was able to take an active part in politics throughout the whole period.13

In this essay, I investigate the MVAs14 in the Kingdom of Hungary, not including Croatia-Slavonia. While in Europe and Imperial Austria the widespread MVAs were important actors in the relationship between the military and the civilian sphere and also in state policy, in Hungary, their memberships remained low, and they were established mainly in German-speaking territories and larger towns. For this reason, they attracted less interest from the state. However, their spread, operation, and specific ideology and also their reception in local society can provide important lessons not only about the impact of the military on society, but also about the forms and workings of loyalty and nationalism in Hungary.

The paper divided into two main parts. In the first, I discuss the prevalence and general characteristics of MVAs in the country and the relationship of the state to these associations. I also consider how the circumstances of these associations compare to the circumstances of similar associations in the other half of the Monarchy. In the second section, I shift perspective and, drawing on the example of Vas County in western Hungary, I examine the MVAs activities, the ideology represented by their members, and the reception of these associations in local civil society. As the MVAs in Hungary were mainly concentrated in the larger towns and in areas inhabited with German-speaking15 populations (first and foremost in the western Transdanubian region), Vas County offers an ideal case on the basis of which some general conclusions can be drawn.

Finally, it must be emphasized that the present study is about the veterans’ associations founded by the members of the Imperial and Royal Army and the Royal Hungarian Honvéd Army (königlich-ungarische Landwehr), which was established with the army reform of 1868. I do not intend to deal with the Hungarian Honvéd Associations founded by the veterans of the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848–49 and made the subject of a fairly sizeable amount of the secondary literature.

Military Veterans’ Associations in the Kingdom of Hungary

The first MVA to function as an association in the modern sense of the word in the Habsburg Monarchy was founded in Reichenberg in Bohemia (today Liberec, Czech Republic) in 1821. Similar associations began to appear more and more frequently in the second half of the century, in parallel with the introduction of general conscription in 1868 and the granting of the right to freedom of association under the Fundamental Laws of 1867. By the turn of the century, the MVAs had become one of the most numerous types of civil association in Imperial Austria.16 In his work, Cole makes note of at least 2,800 MVAs before World War I, but he estimates their real number to be at least 10 to 20 percent higher. We know even less about the actual number of members of these associations, but it probably ran into the hundreds of thousands. 98 percent of the associations were founded in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and the Hereditary Lands, while only a few dozen were established in Galicia, Bukovina, and Dalmatia, which had a lower standard of living and had been integrated into the Monarchy and its military system only towards the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.17

Compared to its western neighbor, in Hungary, the MVAs spread at a much slower pace and only to a limited, geographically relatively well-delimited extent. The MVAs began to appear in the 1870s, after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, when the right of association and assembly became free.18 Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to estimate the number of MVAs in Hungary. During the Dualist era only a single census of associations was held (in 1878), according to which there were only 13 MVAs with a total of about 3,000 members.19 In addition, a survey prepared by the Ministry of Interior for the Ministry of Defense during the preparatory work for the Law of Népfelkelés (Landsturm) in 188320 listed some 21 associations.21 Although it is certainly possible that the figures given in the two sources are unreliable or imprecise, these numbers are still strikingly low, as at least 883 such associations had already been established in Imperial Austria.22

Since there are no available census data for the later period, I tried to find another way to determine how many MVAs had been formed in Hungary by the outbreak of World War I. In addition to the two sources mentioned above, I used the statutes approval published in the official gazettes (Budapesti Közlöny and Belügyi Közlöny)23 and the association database of the National Archives.24 According to the sources, the first MVA in Hungary was founded in Királyfalva (today Königsdorf, Austria) in Vas County in 1874, followed by about 100 more over the course of the next 40 years. Of course, this does not mean that there were exactly that many MVAs in the country at the outbreak of war. In Budapest, for example, ten MVAs were founded in the 1870s and 1880s, but by the turn of the century, their number had fallen to five, primarily because some of them had merged together.25 There were similar mergers elsewhere. The Pécs MVA, founded in 1875, was merged into the Baranya County MVA in 1906.26 Of course, there may also have been several associations which were disbanded without legal succession. Nevertheless, the operation of associations was generally quite stable. In Vas County, for example, a total of 17 associations were formed during the period, they were all still in operation at the outbreak of World War I.27 Similarly, of the five associations established in Baranya County, all but the abovementioned Pécs MVA survived until the war.28

The MVAs in Hungary were established in two distinct periods. The first period was in the second half of the 1870s and the first half of the 1880s, when the MVAs were formed primarily in towns and to lesser extent in some villages in western Transdanubia. The second period was from the turn of the century until World War I, when MVAs were formed mainly in larger villages in western Transdanubia and only to a lesser extent in the towns. An important difference between the two periods is that in the 1870s and 1880s, the associations were formed primarily by war veterans, while after the turn of the century, they were formed by veterans of the peacetime army.

Compared to Austria or Germany, politics played no or only a negligible role in the spread of MVAs. Not surprisingly given their small number, their social impact remained largely local, and one cannot speak about a general veterans’ movement throughout the country. The Hungarian state thus understandably paid little attention to the MVAs. The Austrian state, in contrast, began encouraging the spread of MVAs in the 1890s as an important institution of patriotism, and it also played an active role in creating a common federation (thereby also trying to increase the state control over the associations). The success of MVAs meant pressure from below, and this played an important part in obliging the state to react.29 Thing unfolded very differently in Hungary, however. The MVAs, of which there were comparatively few, did not really arouse the interest of the state, neither in a positive nor in a negative sense. The state did nothing to hinder the spread of MVAs, nor did it do anything to help them. It essentially remained indifferent to them throughout the whole period. The biggest problem the associations faced was caused by their uniforms. The MVAs tried to make themselves as similar as possible to the army through their flags, uniforms, and side weapons (in contrast to Austria, where side weapons were forbidden). However, the use of uniforms which closely resembled the uniforms actually in use by the army was expressly forbidden by the military. In 1884, the Minister of Defense drew the attention of the Minister of Interior to this in a special transcript, and in 1896, a general review of the uniforms was ordered.30

The geographical location of the MVAs can also be well defined. They were established mainly in western and southern Transdanubia, in the western part of present-day Slovakia, in Budapest, in two Transylvanian Saxon counties in Brassó, (Brasov today Romania and Nagyszeben (Sibiu today Romania) and, finally, in southern Hungary: in the Bánát and Bácska. There were also a few associations scattered across other parts of the country. Like their Austrian counterparts, the associations were formed on a territorial basis, recruiting members from a particular town, neighborhood, or county.31

The regions mentioned above had one thing in common: they all had a significant German-speaking population (although they were extremely heterogeneous in terms of language, religion, culture, history, and living conditions). The western villages of Vas and Sopron Counties were inhabited by the predominantly Catholic and to a lesser extent Lutheran “Hientzen,” while in Moson County one found the Catholic “Heidebauers.” Transylvania was home to the largely Lutheran Saxons, who had enjoyed considerable privileges and autonomy before the Austro-Hungarian Compromise. These German settlements can be traced back to the Middle Ages. The Bácska and Bánát were home to the Catholic “Swabians,” who had come from southern Germany in the eighteenth century after the expulsion of the Ottomans. The southern Transdanubian Baranya County was home to the so-called “Stiffollers.”32

The German minorities undoubtedly played a decisive role in the formation of the MVAs, as most of the MVAs were established in German-speaking settlements. However, this did not mean that MVAs spread exclusively among German speakers. They could also be found in some Croatian and Slovak villages in Sopron and Pozsony County on the Austrian border. In addition, the Hungarian-speaking population in the larger towns of Transdanubia established their own MVAs, for example in Szombathely, Győr, Zalaegerszeg, Nagykanizsa, Pécs, and Mohács, as well as in the other towns of the country, such as Miskolc, Marosvásárhely (today Târgu Mureş, Romania), one of the main Székely centers), and even in towns on the Great Plain, such as Szeged and Hódmezővásárhely. Finally, in towns with mixed populations such as Budapest, Sopron, Pozsony (today, Bratislava, Slovakia), Óvár, Arad (today Arad, Romania), Nyitra (today Nitra, Slovakia), Újvidék (today Novi Sad, Serbia, and Temesvár (today Timişoara, Romania), the German and Hungarian-speaking populations set up associations together. No MVAs, however, were found among the majority of Hungarians and other nationalities of the country, or in other words in the Slovene, Slovak (except along the Moravian border), Ruthenian, Romanian, or Serbian settlements.

The prevalence of MVAs (like associations in general), were also closely related to the spread of the literacy. With the exception of Hientzen villages in Vas and Sopron Counties, the vast majority of MVAs were formed in towns and in some large villages. The literacy rate of the total population of these settlements was well above the local and national average, which was only 58 percent in 1910. In Vas and Sopron Counties the literacy rate was 70 percent and 74 percent. In Bács-Bodrog County, it was 58 percent, in the settlement of Szeghegy (today Sekić, Serbia), it was 79 percent , and in Apatin (today Apatin, Serbia) it was 84 percent. MVAs were established in both settlements. Similarly, 68 percent of the total population of Stájerlakanina (today Anina, Romania) could write and read, while the average rate in Krassó-Szörény County was only 45 percent. Finally, the literacy rate in Niczkyfalva (today Niţchidorf, Romania) in Temes was 71 percent, while the county average was 54 percent.33

The most important factor in the development of the MVAs, however, was the proximity of Austria. It is no coincidence that half of the associations identified were formed in Moson, Pozsony, Sopron, and Vas Counties on the border of Austria and Moravia, and most of them were found in the western part of the area. In the case of the Nagyfalva (today Mogersdorf, Austria) MVA founded in Vas County in 1874, for example, the alispán (the deputy főispán, or lord lieutenant of the county) explicitly claimed in his report that the local people had taken their model from neighboring Styria.34 In the case of the MVA in Dobrafalva (today Dobersdorf, Austria), also established in Vas County, the local authorities welcomed the formation of the association, because earlier the veterans had joined the Styrian associations.35 The cross-border relations are also illustrated by the fact that, in 1877, 30 MVAs in Hungary, Lower Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia wanted to form a federation called the Allgemeine Österreichisch-Ungarischer Militär Veteranen Unterstützungs-Bund. The federation would have included two associations from Hungary: the Sopron MVA and the Nagyszombat (today Trnava, Slovakia) MVA. However, the statutes of the federation did not win the approval of the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior, as the federation’s headquarters were abroad and thus the Hungarian authorities would have had no influence on its composition and operation. The Ministry therefore did not allow the two Hungarian associations to join.36

Probably because there were comparatively few of them, the MVAs in Hungary did not form a common organization, and no attempt was made to form a federation apart from the attempt mentioned above. The MVAs were also unable to establish a viable permanent veteran press, although several attempts were made to do so, mainly in the capital. The Hungarian-German bilingual Első Magyarországi Hadastyán Újság (First Hungarian Veteran Journal) was launched in 1878, followed by the Hadastyánok Lapja (The Journal of Military Veterans) in 1882 and its German counterpart Veteranen Zeitung, and finally, in 1893, the bilingual Magyar Hadastyán Újság (Hungarian Veteran Newspaper). As individual initiatives, these newspapers were of low quality, and they published articles almost exclusively on the affairs in the capital. None of them lasted for more than a year, and unfortunately very few copies have survived.

It is even more difficult to determine the number of people who belonged to the various MVAs or and the social composition of these associations, as detailed censuses and membership lists are not available. However, there is some partial information on the basis of which a few general conclusions can be drawn. For example, a survey of associations in Vas County in 1892 and 1914 reveals that the MVAs in the villages had an average of 30–60 members, while in Szombathely, the county seat (with a population of 30,000), the MVA had 120 members.37 Similar proportions can be noticed in Baranya County. The Baranya County MVA in Pécs, the county seat (with a population of 47,000), had 111 members in 1901, while its two rural branches had 58 members in Pécsvárad and 25 in Hosszúhetény.38 In Stájerlakanina, a small German-speaking town in Krassó-Szörény County in Bánát, had 61 members at the time of its formation.39 The Fiume (today Rijeka, Croatia) MVA had 99 members,40 the Nezsider (today Neusiedl am See, Austria) MVA in the western part of the present-day Austria had 150,41 the Arad MVA had 120,42 and the Achduke Joseph I Pozsony MVA had over 100 members at the time of its formation.43 In general, the associations established in villages and small towns had a membership of around 50 people, while in the larger towns they had over 100 members. The only exception was Budapest, where the MVAs had 200–300 members or more.44 Based on these facts, the total number people who belonged to one of the MVAs before World War I might have been between 10,000 and 15,000. For the sake of comparison, it is worth keeping in mind that the total population of Hungary in 1910 (excluding Croatia) was 18.2 million.

Unfortunately, even less is known about the social backgrounds of the people who belonged to the MVAs, as the few membership lists which survived do not include details concerning the members’ occupations. One can only draw conclusions on the basis of the statutes and the reports received by the administrative authorities and the Ministry of Interior. The statutes generally distinguished three types of members: the ordinary members were veterans (or in some cases reservists) of the Imperial and Royal Army and the Royal Hungarian Honvéd Army. Although the associations did not differentiate between the soldiers who belonged to the imperial army and those who belonged to the Hungarian Honvéd Army, it is also true that the statutes were only approved in this form by the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defense. The patrons and honorary members could also be civilians with no military background. They helped the associations on a voluntary basis, but they could not claim financial aid, nor could they wear uniforms or bear side weapons. Finally, every association had a protector. The associations would ask a local prominent citizen, landowner, nobleman, or even a member of the royal house to fill this role.

As was the case in Austria and Germany, the ordinary members of the associations were chosen from among the rank and file soldiers, and there were even some associations that stipulated in their statutes that members had to be rank and file soldiers. For example, the First Budapest MVA and the Edelsheim-Gyulai Budapest MVA only enrolled members from the rank of sergeant downwards. However, this was something of an exception. In many cases, one or more officers served as the organizer and the president of an association. For example, the first president of the Pécs MVA was Colonel Baron Gottfried Ottinger,45 and the first president of the MVA in Szombathely was Captain József Gottmann.46 In Fiume, retired ship-of-the-line Captain Gustav von Zaccaria played a key role in the establishment of the association.47

The military ranks of the members offer some indication of their social status. In principle, the veterans came from the lower social classes, whom Thomas Rohkrämer referred to as “little people” (kleine Leute). In Germany, for example, most of the veterans were workers, peasants, artisans, small shopkeepers, and low-ranking civil servants, even if the leadership of the MVAs came from the higher echelons of society.48 In Austria, the majority of the MVA membership was comprised of artisans, civil servants, shopkeepers, merchants, and, as of the turn of the century, peasants. There were, however some regional and national differences. In German-speaking areas, the MVAs also had people who belonged to the liberal bourgeoisie and landowners among their members, while where national politics played an important role (in Czech and Italian territories), the middle class and liberal bourgeoisie were mainly absent. In addition, the majority of the working class was largely left untouched by the veterans’ movement in Austria. Members of the nobility or the clergy and officers participated mainly as initiators, supporters, or presidents. In addition, there was another important peculiarity to the MVAs in Austria. In ethnically mixed areas, the veterans increasingly formed the associations on the basis of nationality.49

In Hungary, the reports preserved in the archives of the Ministry of Interior refer to the “lower social status” of the members, who were generally tradesmen, artisans, lower civil servants, and peasants. Members of the local nobility, the urban middle class, and the clergy were present as supporters at most. In addition, it must be highlighted that not only men but in many cases women also took part in the operation of the MVAs. One way of doing so was to form a sister association. The wives of veterans formed associations in Pozsony in 1882, in Budapest in 1885, and in Pécs in 1884.50 Similarly, several associations in the capital had their own women’s section, such as the First Budapest MVA, the Archduke Joseph MVA, and the Prince Coburg MVA.51

Finally, it is worth offering a few words on the goals of the associations. The MVAs established in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary were first and foremost relief organizations, like their Austrian counterparts. Their members received financial and medical aid in case of illness, and their widows and orphans received funeral and financial assistance in case of death. Most of the associations, however, had two main additional goals: to cultivate the esprit de corps and loyalty to the king and fatherland. In many cases, these goals were met by self-education and efforts to foster civic virtues and respect for the law and legal authorities. The associations, however, were not allowed to engage in political and national activities. Otherwise, they could be banned, at least for the nationalities. In 1885, for example, in Szakolca (today Skalica, Slovakia), in a predominantly Slovak-speaking town on the Moravian border, the local authorities prevented the formation of a MVA because of its national character (the mayor, János Sebesi, was a Hungarian lawyer). After the attempts to reestablish the MVA in the neighboring settlement Holics (today Holič, Slovakia), the association was banned by the Ministry of Interior. According to the Deputy Lord Lieutenant’s report, the main organizers were known nationalist agitators, and therefore the association would have served primarily nationalist and unpatriotic purposes.52 This austerity, however, affected only the nationalities, while, as we shall see, the authorities welcomed indications of attachment to the Hungarian national idea in the associations.

Military Veterans’ Associations in Vas County

In the second part of this study, I examine the functioning of MVAs, drawing on the example of Vas County in western Hungary. I primarily seek answers to the following questions: how was loyalty to the king and the fatherland expressed? What did the concept of fatherland mean according to veterans? How did the MVAs relate to the national idea, and how were they received by the local society? I first examine the Vas County MVA, founded in Szombathely, the county seat, and then the associations formed in the villages of the German-speaking western part of the county. In doing so, I primarily use the local newspapers and the official reports, because the associations themselves did not have any archives or at least no such archives have survived.

The Vas County MVA

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Szombathely was a dynamically developing medium-sized town, an episcopal seat, and an important commercial, financial, and transport hub in the western Transdanubian region with significant industry and a military garrison. It was one of the fastest growing settlements in the country. Its population was only 7,500 in 1869, but by 1910, it has risen to 31,000. 83 percent of the inhabitants were Catholic, 10 percent were Jewish, and the rest were Protestant. Although at the beginning of the nineteenth century Szombathely was a town with a mixed German-speaking and Hungarian-speaking population, by the 1880s, 90 percent of the population identified as native Hungarian speakers.53

In November 1883, at the initiative of Károly Luxander, the police commissioner of Szombathely began organizing the Vas County MVA. Although his original intention was to start an association as a branch of the Sopron MVA, the MVA was eventually established as an independent organization on June 22, 1884.54 At the moment of its formation, it had 87 ordinary members, a number which rose to 120 by 1892.55 At that time, it had 22 additional founding members and 170 patrons. By 1899, the number of ordinary members fell to 95, but by 1909, it had risen again to 124.56

In principle, the association covered the whole county, but its members came mainly from Szombathely. Unfortunately, the sources reveal little about the social background of its members, because no lists of the members have survived (assuming there were such lists). Based on the linguistic composition of the town, it can be assumed that the majority of the members were Hungarian-speaking. The statutes and invitations of the association were only published in Hungarian. It was mixed in terms of religion, with both Christians (probably predominantly Catholic) and Jews. This is indicated by the fact that the most significant internal crisis of the association was not national but religious. In 1899, several Catholic members tried to deprive the Jews of their voting rights in the general assembly. They failed in this attempt, however, and the religious peace was restored.57

At the time of the formation of the association, the majority of its members were probably war veterans, most of them rank and file soldiers. According to a document written in 1894, the association had among its members veterans of the war of 1848–1849, the Italian war of 1859, the Schleswig-Holstein war of 1864, the Prussian and Italian wars of 1866, the Dalmatian campaign of 1869, and the occupation of Bosnia in 1878.58 This is well illustrated by the leadership of the association too. The first president was József Gottmann, while the vice-presidents were Károly Luxander and József Heimler. Gottmann was educated in a military institute, had fought under Radetzky in Italy in 1848–49, and had taken part in the battle of Solferino in 1859.59 Subsequently, he was dismissed as a hussar captain. József Heimler, who later became president of the association, enlisted in the army in 1854, fought at Magenta and Solferino and, in 1866, at Königgrätz.60 Finally, Károly Luxander enrolled in 1864 and fought in the Danish campaign and against the Prussians in 1866. 61

The statutes of the association set out its goals as follows:

a) To cultivate and propagate the military spirit, to maintain patriotic sentiment and loyalty to the king, and to maintain respect for the law and the lawful supreme authority, the esprit de corps outside the military service.

b) To provide financial support for the members of the association, to contribute to the medical expenses of sick members and the funeral expenses of deceased members, and possibly to provide financial assistance to the widows and orphans of the members left behind.62

 

The means of achieving these goals were also laid down in the statutes. Regarding the first point, which is now relevant to my discussion, they were as follows: the association had its own holiday calendar, which included dynastic and patriotic holidays as well as religious holidays including the king’s birthday and name day (August 18 and October 4), the queen’s name day (November 19), Saint Stephen’s Day (August 20), the procession on Holy Saturday, and the procession on Corpus Christi. On these days, the association marched as a body in uniform with side weapons and under the flag. In addition, on Good Friday at least two members were sent with swords and in uniform to guard the Tomb of Christ.63

Nurturing a sense of loyalty to the king was a priority for the association. This is shown by the fact that the first public march-out after its formation was timed for August 18, the birthday of Franz Joseph. The event was celebrated with particular pomp. The town was roused in the morning with the firing of howitzers and an alarm. People then marched to music to the festive mass in the cathedral, and after the official program, they held a popular festival.64 Franz Joseph’s birthday and name day were official holidays in Hungary. In Szombathely, all churches celebrated festive masses, but the central celebration always took place in the cathedral, where the town and county authorities, the military garrison, schools, and many associations appeared. Beginning in 1884, the Vas County MVA also joined, and it became an essential part of all dynastic celebrations. The association commemorated both the royal and the imperial anniversaries, which were not official holidays in Hungary. From the point of view of Hungarian law, Franz Joseph ruled in Hungary as king and not as emperor (as Austria and Hungary were, according to Hungarian law, two independent states). On the occasion of Franz Joseph’s 70th birthday in 1900, President József Heimler had a portrait of the royal family painted. This offers a clear indication of the central role of the emperor for the association. Indeed, this portrait was treasured by the association even in the interwar period.65

The other most important holiday for the association was August 20, the day of Saint Stephen, the first Hungarian king. This was one of the most important public holidays in Hungary, although it was not official due its Catholic character. With some exceptions, the Vas County MVA held its summer feast, the income from which increased the association’s fund, on this day every year. These were usually folk festivals following the mass, with a band, tombola, various outdoor games, and often fireworks in the evening.66 Thus, the association’s main patriotic holiday was linked to the Hungarian state, and the concept of fatherland meant the Kingdom of Hungary, not the unified Austrian Empire. In addition, the association had a strong local identity which was linked to the county. This is also shown by the flag itself. It had a picture of the Virgin Mary with the inscription “Virgin Mary, Patroness of Hungary” on one side and angels holding the holy crown and the coat of arms of Hungary and Vas County with battle badges at their feet and the inscription “Vas County Veterans’ Association” on the other. In addition to the county coat of arms, the colors of the flag (blue and white, the colors of the county) also expressed the attachment to the local community.67

A much more complex picture emerges, however, regarding the military culture nurtured by the association. On one hand, it fostered an attachment to the heroic past of the Imperial and Royal Army, in which its members had served and in which many of them had fought. This is perhaps best illustrated by the Millennium celebrations of 1896, to which the veterans contributed with a special commemorative day. On June 24, the veterans in Vas County of the battles of Solferino and Custoza held a meeting in Szombathely organized by the MVA. On the anniversary day, nearly 200 veterans of the battles gathered with a cockade with the inscription “1859–1866” on their chest. The deputy lord lieutenant and the town mayor and also the delegation of the military garrison appeared in the meeting, while the band of the Imperial and Royal 48th Infantry Regiment was provided by Corps Commander Archduke Friedrich at his own expense. The meeting focused on loyalty to the king and fatherland, a sense of duty, and the memory of fallen comrades. In his speech, József Heimler said,

As the Hungarian nation as a whole celebrates the millennium of its state-existence with a light that shines throughout the world, this time we, warriors fighting in wars, those who with the full devotion of our military oath and duty once risked our lives and blood in bloody battles for the fatherland and the throne, today, on the anniversary of the ever-memorable decisive and bloody battles of Solferino and Custoza, we have every right to enjoy a double celebration.68

It was also decided at the feast that the meeting would be repeated every five years, although we only know of one occasion (in 1901) when it took place again.69

In addition to the Habsburg Army’s heroic past, however, the veterans also nurtured the legacy of the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848–49. In 1886, for example, several Hungarian army veterans from Szombathely were invited to the flag consecration ceremony. Furthermore, Mária Lebstück, who was famous for fighting as a woman in the War of Independence and even received the rank of lieutenant, was also present. Lebstück arrived with the veterans from Pest, and she was personally welcomed at the banquet after the flag consecration, setting as an example for all those present. From the second half of the 1890s onwards, the veterans also took part in many events and ceremonies connected to 1848, such as the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Sándor Petőfi, the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Lajos Kossuth, and the unveiling of the only statue of Kossuth in Körmend in 1907, the only statue of Kossuth in the county. They also frequently took part in the requiem masses on October 6, the day on which 13 Hungarian Honvéd generals were executed in 1849. Finally, in 1895 they joined the Vas County Honvéd Army Association as supporters, and between 1894 and 1899, the two associations had a common president, István Farkas.70

This duality is far from unique. For example, in several associations in Budapest, former veterans of the Hungarian Honvéd army were also enrolled, and in other places the president of the association was a former Honvéd army soldier. For example, Jenő Heinrich, the president of the Baldácsy Third Budapest MVA, fought throughout the War of Independence, after which he was imprisoned and then conscripted into the Habsburg Army.71 But the association protector himself, Antal Baldácsy, was also an officer of the Honvéd army. Heinrich’s case, moreover, highlights the fact that many members of MVAs in Hungary had served both in the Honvéd army in 1848–49 and in the Imperial and Royal Army. After the War of Independence, 25–30 percent of the former Honvéd army soldiers were conscripted, so it was not uncommon for MVAs formed in the 1870s and 1880s to have members with a dual military past.

Based on the above, the MVAs which formed in the towns of Hungary were not left untouched by Hungarian nationalism, especially from the 1890s onwards. In the 1870s and 1880s, for example, the use of traditional imperial symbols was still quite common. On the holidays of the associations, “Gott erhalte” (the imperial anthem) was played, and even in 1888, the associations in Budapest voted down the proposal to replace this anthem with the Hungarian anthem.72 In Sopron and in Fiume, the veterans originally wanted to display the two-headed eagle on the association flags, a plan which was only abandoned because the Ministry of Interior banned it .73

It is hardly a coincidence that in the 1880s Hungarian nationalists often blamed MVAs for “Germanisation.” Pesti Napló, for example (a periodical on Pest), reported on the founding and first march held by the veterans in Szombathely, characterizing it as a “pointless waste of time and money” as well as a “hotbed of Germanisation,” and as such, a “particularly unhealthy movement.”74 But the same accusation was also brought against the associations in Budapest for using the imperial anthem and German-language invitations to their events.75 These criticisms, however, interestingly did not find support locally. On the contrary, in Szombathely, for example, the newspaper of the Independence Party rejected the accusations made by Pesti Napló, highlighting the humanitarian purpose and Hungarian character of the association.76

Although imperial symbols were a constant target of criticism by Hungarian nationalists, they did not really cause much of a clash in everyday life until the turn of the century. In Szombathely, for example, the imperial anthem was used at all official dynastic celebrations until the 1890s, and it generated no particular scandal when it was played before thousands of people at the veterans’ flag consecration ceremony in 1886, just a few months after the so-called Janski scandal, which had provoked great uproar among nationalists.77

In the 1890s, however, the use of symbols began to change in parallel with the strengthening of Hungarian nationalism in general. The imperial anthem was replaced with the Hungarian anthem, in Sopron the German language of command was replaced with Hungarian, and the memory of 1848–49 became more and more important.78 In 1905, for example, the Mohács MVA held its own ceremony to commemorate the revolution which began on March 15, 1848.79 In the same year, the placing of a wreath on the local Kossuth statue was a key part of the flag consecration ceremony for the veterans of the Bosnian occupation campaign in 1878 in Hódmezővásárhely.80 The imperial anthem was now a source of conflict in Szombathely too, and at the commemoration meeting of the veterans of Solferino and Custoza in 1901, deputy lord lieutenant Ede Reiszig did not to deliver his speech, because the conductor of the military band insisted on playing “Gott erhalte” when the name of Franz Joseph was mentioned.81

The relationship with the former soldiers in the Honvéd army and the change in the use of symbols suggest that Hungarian nationalism had an impact on the urban MVAs, at least where Hungarian veterans played a decisive role in their operations. However, it had a specific content corresponding with local peculiarities and the veterans’ military past. Based on the example of Szombathely, the apparent contradiction between the Habsburg army and the 1848–49 tradition did not pose an insoluble dilemma for the veterans. For them, both were examples of military duty and a patriotic act through which they expressed their loyalty to the king. Fatherland in this sense meant the independent Kingdom of Hungary, but as the part of the Dual Monarchy under the rule of the Habsburgs. This is why Custozza and Solferino were presented as a symbol of loyalty to the Hungarian fatherland. For these veterans, the two were not easily separable. For example, József Heimler himself, who led the association from 1899 until his death in 1914, was a committed 1867 liberal. As a wealthy merchant (as the representative of Grazer Puntigam in Szombathely he managed the company’s interests in Hungary, Croatia, and Bosnia), he was a staunch supporter of the Liberal Party and, later, of the Fejérváry government and then István Tisza.82 It should also be pointed out, however, that the supranational patriotic ethos of the army and the idea of the unified empire was also far from the veterans’ philosophy, as it had no tradition in Hungary.

The appearance of national symbols met with a completely different reception in Hungary than in Austria. In Ljubljana, for example, the replacement of the German language of command with Slovenian led to the dissolution of the Carniolan Military Veterans Corps, while in Hungary the local authorities welcomed these processes.83 The examples above, however, are largely from Hungarian-speaking or mixed-population towns, where the assimilation of the Germans was the most significant during the Dualist era. It is worth noting that this issue requires further research. In Szombathely, for example, there was no German-speaking local elite, while the local peculiarities significantly influenced these processes. In towns with strong German elites and a strong sense of local identity (e.g., Temesvár, Pozsony, and the towns in the Saxon territories of Transylvania), the members of the MVAs probably behaved completely differently.84

Returning to the example of Szombathely, the question of how the veterans and their activities were received by local society also arises. In this respect, there is also a kind of dichotomy. On the one hand, the formation of MVAs was supported by the leadership of the town and the county, as well as by a number of local landowners. Prince Ödön Batthyány-Strattmann was the association’s main protector, and the vice-protector was Bishop Kornél Hidassy. The formation also had the support of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria,85 Lord Lieutenant Kálmán Radó, Deputy Lord Lieutenant Ede Reiszig, Mayor Károly Varasdy, several financial institutions of Szombathely, and the landowners of the county.86

The great interest shown by the town is well illustrated by the flag consecration ceremony held on August 22, 1886. The flag itself was donated by two surviving members of the former Tailors’ Guild, which was then modified. The highlight of the two-day celebration was the consecration ceremony in the town’s main square in the presence of nearly 8,000 people. According to press reports, there were even people on the rooftops. The flag-mother was Mrs. Ödön Batthyány-Strattmann, but the town and county leadership also attended, as did many members of the county elite and several local associations. In addition, many MVAs arrived from different towns of the country. Finally, Colonel Rohonczy, the commander of the 5th Hussar Regiment stationed in the county, and a delegation of the 76th Infantry Regiment of Sopron (Szombathely was part of the supplementary area of this regiment) paid their respects on the day of the celebration. The latter regiment also provided the music. The festive mass was celebrated by István Horváth, the parish priest of Szombathely. After the ceremony, the association gave a banquet for 180 people, and the evening entertainment was held in three places in the town. 87

In other words, the association received considerable support from the county, the town, and the diocese, not only from official circles, but also from many individuals, as indicated by the high number of patron members described earlier. The local press also welcomed the formation of the association and appreciated its aims, irrespective of political affiliation.“ The parade, which was watched with warm interest by the people of our town, was in every respect a success [...] the most successful of all this year’s summer festivities.”88 The latter comment was echoed several times in the local press in the following years. The August 20 festivities of the veterans were basically folk festivals, and they drew crowds in the hundreds and sometimes thousands. These festivities were special highlights of the town’s social life. As one local newspaper noted in 1889, “I don’t know how, but this association was born under a lucky star in Szombathely. It succeeds in everything though everyone smiles at it.” 89

The second sentence of the report, however, also points out that the association’s reputation was far from self-evident. According to a local satirical magazine the “old children” were regularly smiled at with a touch of scorn in the town as they marched with their “toys” at every celebration and holiday.90 This seems to have continued in later years, and even on the occasion of the 25th anniversary celebrations of the association in 1909, a local paper noted that the association was “often quite undeservedly the center of jokes and mocking banter.”91 Interestingly, however, these jokes never appeared in the local press.

The habit or practice of mocking veterans was not peculiar to Szombathely. There are several examples of this in many other places, especially in the 1870s and 1880s, and where there was a Hungarian or a significant Hungarian-speaking population. For example, in a report to the Ministry of Interior, the lord lieutenant of Sopron County wrote about the Sopron MVA founded in 1877. He contended that, “this association receives no support or sympathy from the locals,” and“ the citizens also show some aversion to this association, which is rather military in character.”92 Similar voices were heard from Mohács in southern Hungary93 and Arad at the other end of the country, where the mayor wrote that “the members waste their time on parades which have become comical in the eyes of the public.”94 The associations in Budapest also carried the stigma of the “serious old comedians.”95

The events of the association, however, remained popular until the turn of the century, when a rather spectacular break can be observed in the activity of the Vas County MVA. Its public appearances were pushed back. The most obvious sign of this was the end of the summer festivities on August 20 at the turn of the century. In 1913, a local newspaper described the association as follows:

The Szombathely Veterans’ Association does not boast a loud publicity of charity; the whole humble and valuable individuality of the brewery commissioner József Heimler, the president of the veterans, is expressed in the work of the association: to talk little and do as much as possible. To hold as few parades as possible and to wipe away as many tears as possible, to alleviate misery, to make easier the helpless old days of old soldiers.96

The stagnation of the Vas County MVA can probably be explained primarily by the fact that, while the number of war veterans decreased, only a few of those who had done their military service in peacetime joined the association. The association could not adapt to the changing social and political environment of the turn of the century. One of the local papers summed up the situation as follows in 1909: “A somewhat outdated but venerable institution of the old parade world is celebrating on August 15 in Szombathely. [...] The urban development of Szombathely, the progress of the electric tram has made the veterans’ institution a little outdated. Today, the veterans are no more than a crowd for the town or the church celebrations.”97

Veterans’ Associations in German-speaking Areas of Vas County

In Vas County, in addition to the MVA in Szombathely, 16 other veterans’ associations were formed during the Dualist era, all of them in the western areas inhabited by German-speaking “Hientzen.” Of these, 13 were purely German-speaking, two were mixed German and Hungarian, and one was German and Croatian.98 The associations recruited veterans not only from their own villages, which had populations of 1,000 or 2,000 people, but also from the surrounding settlements. Their main aims, as in the case of all MVAs, were to provide relief, foster an esprit de corps and a sense of loyalty to the king and the fatherland, and uphold the rule of law and good morals. There are no precise records of their memberships, but they were probably made up of peasants and artisans who had served as rank and file soldiers in the army. The leadership and organization were often taken over by the local elite. For example, the president of the Vaskomját (today Kemeten, Austria) MVA was Ármin Schocklits, a local landowner, and the vice president was Ferenc Hulfeld, the local teacher. The president and organizer of the Királyfalva MVA was General Wocher, also a local landowner, while the first president of the Némethidegkut (today Deutsch Kaltenbrunn, Austria) MVA was Mihály Rathner, the local priest.99

The local Hungarian nobility also played an important role in the organization and in providing financial and moral support for the associations. Of the three associations mentioned above, the patron of the Királyfalva MVA was Prince Alfred von Montenuovo and the patron of the Vaskomját MVA was Count Gyula Erdődy. The Némethidegkut MVA had most prestigious protector, however. It won the support of Crown Prince Rudolf, while the flag-mother position was taken by Archduchess Stefania. Of course, neither the crown prince nor the archduchess appeared in person at the flag consecration ceremony. Archduchess Stefania was replaced by a local landowner, the widow of Count Herman Zichy.100

It is not surprising that, while they did not always enjoy high esteem in the towns, MVAs were highly prestigious in the rural area. In 1876, for example, the lord lieutenant wrote the following about the Királyfalva MVA in his report: “In rural areas, however, it has a good reputation and is well respected, because it can boast members who are among the most distinguished members of the countryside and belong to the intelligentsia.”101 The rural association had no membership problems and, although it was presumably war veterans who first organized themselves in the 1870s and 1880s, the steady increase in the number of associations suggests that, later, they were able to recruit peacetime veterans who had done general military service. Thus, three associations were formed in the 1870s, four in 1880s and nine more after the turn of the century. The associations also played an active role in local society. They were not only regular participants in certain public and church holidays but also contributed to the village life by holding their own events. More than one association even organized readings and popular lectures for its members.102

In the case of the German-speaking MVAs, which were formed near the Austrian border, one might well assume that they were more influenced by the Austrian state-idea. But this was far from the case. Even an examination of their statutes suggests that, instead of common imperial consciousness, loyalty to the Kingdom of Hungary came to the fore. This is well illustrated by the fact that twelve associations had Saint Stephen with the Hungarian coat of arms and the Holy Crown on their flags, one (the aforementioned Vaskomját MVA) had King Matthias, and one had only the coat of arms and the crown. In addition, the Némethidegkut MVA, also mentioned above, had a portrait of Archduke Charles on its flag. Finally, many associations emphasized their Hungarian character in their choice of name and described themselves as “Hungarian military veterans’ associations.”103

The holiday calendar of the associations was also adapted to the above. All associations marched in uniform under the flag at the celebrations on Franz Joseph’s birthday, on Saint Stephen’s Day, and at all “church and patriotic” celebrations, to which they were invited by the organizers. Saint Stephen’s prominence was further enhanced by the fact that most of the associations also chose a patron saint, and in every such case, they chose the first Hungarian king.

Saint Stephen, as the founder of the Hungarian state, symbolized the Kingdom of Hungary, to which the loyalty of the veterans was primarily directed. This was also reinforced by the local church and noble elite, who played an important role in the organization and support of the associations and who were predominantly Hungarian. Their support was not without any ulterior motives, as they tried to direct the population towards the Hungarian national idea through associations with great prestige in the countryside. At the flag consecration ceremony of the Vaskomját MVA, for example, in his speech, deacon József Pulay noted the following Hungarian heroes as examples of valor for the veterans: János Hunyady, Tamás Erdődy, ban of Croatia (who was obviously included in the speech because of the presence of Gyula Erdődy), Mátyás Hunyadi, and the heroes of the War of Independence of 1848–49. After Pulay’s speech, Gyula Erdődy exhorted those present to show “loyalty and love for His Majesty, the most noble and righteous monarch.” The association also paid tribute to the king on the occasion of the consecration of the flag.104

The activities of the German-speaking MVAs were also positively assessed by the county administration. In his report on the Némethidegkut MVA, the lord lieutenant wrote,

The behavior of its members is not only honorable, but also shows loyal devotion to the reigning king and the Hungarian fatherland, which, with its beautiful character, has a good effect everywhere, but especially on the borders of the country, towards our Styrian neighbors and raises the self-esteem and character of the nation.105

The authorities also welcomed the formation of the associations, because, as the report on the Vasdobra (today Neuhaus am Klausenbach, Austria) MVA shows, the phenomenon that many veterans joined the neighboring Styrian association had gradually disappeared. This was seen as a positive development, even if close links with the Styrians were maintained and they were mutually present at each other’s celebrations. For example, four Styrian associations were represented at the flag consecration ceremony of the Vaskomját MVA, and several foreign associations sent their representatives to the flag consecration ceremony of the Nagyfalva MVA in 1911.106

In other words, the German-speaking associations, in addition to fostering the military spirit and esprit de corps, primarily considered it their task to pledge and nurture loyalty to the king and the Kingdom of Hungary. However strongly the Hungarian political circles may have wanted to push nationalism and Magyarization, these sentiments and ideologies were distant from the rural German-speaking population. Loyalty to king and country did not mean nationalism. Even at the turn of the century, the pre-modern so-called “Hungarus” identity, which had its roots in the Middle Ages but became dominant only in the early modern period, was still predominant among the German minority, and the degree of national mobilization (whether German or Hungarian) remained low. The essence of the Hungarus identity was loyalty to the Kingdom of Hungary without linguistic, religious, or cultural differences, mixed with strong local identity. The German minority groups in Hungary had no common national identity, and they identified themselves according to their place of residence, culture, and religion.107

Conclusion

In Hungary in the Dualist era, there was nothing analogous to the veterans’ movements found in Austria or Germany. Although the number of associations grew steadily before World War I, these associations spread only locally. The MVAs were formed above all in a German-speaking environment (mainly in western Transdunabia), even if they appeared sporadically among Slovaks and Croats in western Hungary and among Hungarians in the larger towns.

The lack of a veterans’ movement is perhaps most easily explained by the lack of a national army and the supranational ideology of the Habsburg Army. This is confirmed by the fact that the 1848–49 Honvéd army veterans’ associations were able to spread throughout the country in a short space of time. In 1867, the former veterans of the Hungarian War of Independence established their associations throughout the country on a territorial basis. As a result, within a year, Honvéd army veterans’ associations were established in every county and several towns, with a total of 50,000 members, and a central organization was even created.108

Attachment to national identity, however, would be an overly simplistic explanation. For example, the number of members in the case of the Honvéd army associations is somewhat deceptive: the associations themselves were largely formed by former officers in the seats of the counties, but membership was not entirely voluntary. It was prescribed by the administrative authorities on central orders, and even the Honvéd army veterans had to prove their identity. It is also surprising that the Royal Hungarian Honvéd Army established in 1868 was not able to influence the Hungarian-speaking population in this respect. Finally, the ideology of the army would not provide an explanation for similar attitudes among the nationalities. It is interesting, for example, that MVAs did not appear among the Serb or Croat population of the former military frontier.

The explanations (of which a sense of national identity is only one) are more complex. First, one must consider the political and economic situation of Hungary. Hungary had always occupied a special status within the Habsburg Monarchy, and military organization was no exception. Until the second half of the nineteenth century, Hungary was less integrated into the Habsburg fiscal-military state, and thus there was less of a military tradition on which to build.109

Financial considerations were an equally important factor. Since MVAs were primarily relief associations, their establishment and maintenance required significant financial sacrifices from the membership. Even to join a MVA required a considerable investment, as uniforms and side arms had to be purchased. Thus, the establishment of MVAs depended heavily on the financial strength and standard of living of the population, which was generally lower in Hungary than in Austria. Furthermore, there were also huge regional differences within Hungary. In rural areas in particular, the population invested primarily in fire-fighting associations and less often in economic or other cultural associations (such as reading or singing clubs), or in the creation of a broader relief association.110

In addition to the above, the lack of a widespread veterans’ movement suggests that there was simply no need to create such organizations, and this in turn point to the limits of the impact of general conscription on the wider society. On one hand, the militarization of society is a phenomenon of modernization, but even at the outbreak of World War I, nearly two-thirds of the country’s population was still traditional agrarian with a very low level of literacy in many places. The lack of MVAs indicates at least in part (and is explained by) the low degree of social militarization of the population. On the other hand, in the case of the Hungarian urban bourgeoisie and middle class, national reasons undoubtedly played a role. Though the officer corps and the army itself were highly prestigious and the spread of pre-military training among the Hungarian urban middle class suggests the importance of military values at the turn of the century, the supranational ideology of the army and the memory of the war of independence did inhibit the formation of MVAs among the national middle class.111 The mixed, often mocking reception of the associations formed in the larger towns also indicates the lower level of prestige enjoyed by veterans.

Even if one cannot speak about a general veterans’ movement in Hungary, the study of the MVAs that were formed nonetheless yields some interesting insights. One of these is that the Habsburg Army could have played a role in strengthening loyalty to the Habsburg House in this part of the Monarchy, but only in the Hungarian context. For historical reasons, there was no breeding ground for the idea of unified empire in Hungary, even among the German minority.

Given the small number of MVAs in Hungary, the state did not play a role in their spread and operation, but the local Hungarian elites supported them in some cases. The example of the MVAs in the German-speaking rural areas of Vas County reveals that, where the MVAs enjoyed a high level of prestige, the Hungarian elites tried to put them at the service of Magyarization. This met with only limited success, however. The identity of Hientzen was more dominated by the pre-modern Hungarus-idea, and even the Vas County MVA in Szombathely (and other towns) had a very special interpretation of the national consciousness. Not only was the use of imperial symbols common among veterans even in the late 1880s, but the heroic past of the Habsburg Army and the idea of the Hungarian nation were compatible for them, as both symbolized loyalty and duty to the king and the Hungarian fatherland. It was at the turn of the century that the imperial symbols began to be replaced by Hungarian ones. This also shows that the Hungarian national idea could have distinct meanings even in Hungarian-speaking populations, meanings which in some cases were very different from what was nationalists expected. Finally, it is noteworthy that these contradictions did not cause any conflict on the local level either, and the Vas County MVA was not exposed to nationalist critics from the Hungarian-speaking population of Szombathely. On the contrary. Even though it did not enjoy a high level of prestige, its humanitarian patriotic goals were recognized and its events were popular among the town’s population.

 

Archival Sources

Budapest Főváros Levéltára [Budapest City Archives] (BFL)

IV.1428. Politikai iratok gyűjteménye [Collection of political records]

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [National Archive of Hungary] (MNL OL)

K148 Belügyminisztériumi levéltár, Elnöki iratok [Archive of Ministry of Interior, presidential records]

K150 Belügyminisztériumi levéltár, Áltatlános iratok [Archive of Ministry of Interior, general records]

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Vas Megyei Levéltára [Nation Archive of Hungary, Archive of Vas County] (MNL VaML)

IV.401.b. Vas vármegye főispánjának iratai, Általános iratok [Records of Lieutenant of Vas County, general records]

IV.405.b. Vas vármegye alispájának iratai, Közigazgatási iratok [Records of Lord lieutenant of Vas County, administrative records]

IV.440. Vas vármemgye egyesületeinek alapszabályai [Statutes of Associations in Vas county]

V.173.b. Szombathely város polgármesterének iratai, Bizalmas iratok [Records of Mayor of Szombathely, administrative records]

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In this essay, I examine how people with business and political interest on both sides of Austrian–Hungarian border, sometimes even in royal courts, could survive in spite of the rather capricious relationship between Hungarian kings and Habsburg rulers in the second half of the fifteenth century and the early sixteenth century. Most of them sought a solution that would enable them to keep the estates and the positions they had already acquired. This “double loyalty” was practically impossible in the midst of the war between Matthias Corvinus and Frederick III, Holy Roman emperor: very few of the figures in question managed to maintain attachments to both sides. A window of opportunity opened with the Peace of Pressburg in 1491, when the two parties recognized the possibility of service in the neighboring ruler’s service. Although the peace treaty did not alter the significant shrinking of the camp supporting the Habsburg claim to the throne, which had been relatively large in the time of the 1490–91 Austro-Hungarian War, from the 1490s on and in strikingly large numbers from the mid-1510s, more and more people could be found whose activities made plainly clear that they were not exclusive in their loyalties: they were quite able to serve two masters at the same time.

Keywords: multiple loyalties, late Middle Ages, Hungarian Kingdom, Habsburg dynastic politics, cross border contacts

 “A Hungarian will always be a Hungarian, with faith and loyalty rather unstable.” Florian Waldauf made this claim in a letter written to Sigismund, archduke of Austria in October, 1490. Waldauf was informing the archduke about the recent developments of the military expedition launched by Emperor Frederick III (1440–1493) and his son, King Maximilian I (1486/1493–1519) in the autumn of the same year.1 As the imperial army entered the Kingdom of Hungary by force, several Hungarian and Croatian noblemen yielded to it, some of whom undoubtedly did so not simply out of necessity but rather as a strategic move. For those going over to the Habsburg side, the peace treaty signed in Pressburg (Bratislava, today in Slovakia) on November 7, 1491 meant relief from retaliatory actions.2 King Vladislaus II of Bohemia (1471–1516) and Hungary (1490–1516) not only had to guarantee a pardon for these subjects of his, he also acknowledged, for the future, that they had the right to join any prince in any country outside Hungary who was not an enemy of His Majesty and the country and who had not allied with such enemies, especially the Holy Roman emperor, as wished or considered convenient, but by all means remained, like the others, obedient and loyal to Vladislaus II before all else, preserving the freedom of the country and bearing the burdens deriving from their possessions and incomes at all times.3

The Peace of Pressburg in 1491 put an end to a period which had borne witness to repeated outbreaks of conflict from the late 1470s on, the roots of which went back to the 1440s. After the death of Albert, king of the Germany and Hungary (1439), there escalated a civic war of varying intensity between the parties in order to acquire possession of the Holy Crown of Hungary and conquer the Hungarian throne as an ultimate goal: some supported the posthumous-born son of King Albert, Ladislaus (1440/1453–1457), while others supported Vladislaus I, king of Poland (1434–1444). King Vladislaus I was killed in the Battle of Varna (1444), so no rivals were left for Ladislaus the Posthumous, but the civil war was not over. At this point, some estates in Western Hungary ended up in the possession of Duke Albert of Austria for a short time and his brother, King Frederick, from the 1440s onwards, some (the smaller share) by right of pledge and some (the larger share) because they were simply taken by force. Peace with Frederick was finalized in the Treaty of Wiener Neustadt (1463) in the sixth year of the reign of the next king, Matthias Corvinus (1458–1490). The most severe “compromise” in the treaty proved to be the terms regarding the right of inheritance of the Hungarian throne. Supposedly keeping the unsatisfying and frustrating conditions in mind, Matthias Corvinus started an open conflict with the emperor in 1477 which did not come to an end until December 1487 (without any significant success). The aforementioned Peace of Pressburg not only set aside the military conflict between King Wladislaus II and his Habsburg rivals after the death of Matthias Corvinus but also confirmed the main points of the Treaty of Wiener Neustadt. Wladislaus II and Maximilian I then signed a marital agreements involving their dynasties, first in March 1506 and eventually, in its final form, in July 1515.4 Finally, the elevation of Ferdinand, archduke of Austria (1521–1564) to the throne of Hungary was based neither on the treaty of Wiener Neustadt nor on the Treaty of Pressburg, but on two symbolic acts at the time: his election in 1526 and coronation in 1527, as was also true in the case of his rival, János Szapolyai (who was elected and crowned in 1526).5

The following questions arise: 1) did the Peace of Pressburg constitute a new phenomenon that had been unknown or did it merely “legalize” it on the highest level; 2) after 1491 and before the Habsburg provinces and the Jagiellonian Kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia were united by King Ferdinand (1526–64), how many people, if any, took advantage of the opportunity, created by the Treaty of Pressburg, to show dual loyalties and serve two rulers, a Jagiellon and a Habsburg at the same time? In order to answer these questions, I first examine the issue in general. I then consider, touching on its antecedents and with the help of some graphic examples, what the point included in the Peace of Pressburg, which may seem a bit unusual at first, actually meant in reality.

Multiple Loyalties

Today, we are perhaps more likely to think (or even judge) about loyalty in categorical terms, but apart from in times of war, loyalty has never been a simple question, as rulers and their counselors themselves quite pragmatically realized in the late Middle Ages. Undoubtedly there were some individuals who showed dual or multiple loyalties for a shorter or longer periods of time, or in other words who served and were loyal to two (or more) masters at the same time.6 Paul-Joachim Heinig stressed that for rather a long time, until the reign of Emperor Charles V (1519–1555), personal commitments predominantly showed a lack of regulation in the Holy Roman Empire. The phenomenon of “serving or being committed to more masters, could, at various levels, lead to one being given the status of familiaritas or being appointed to serve as a counselor. It was not only about titles and formality, but rather went hand in hand with certain functions.”7 Occasionally, however, contemporaries argued8 that “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other” (Mt 6.24).9 Similar arguments can be found in several pieces of medieval European poetry. The strict disapproval of multiple loyalties, however, may suggest that this kind of conduct was more common than poets wanted to admit.10 However, there may have been other “practical” reasons for references to multiple loyalties: conflicts, defections, and betrayals make a more exciting story line. Authors only rarely narrated something that seemed to favor avoiding conflicts and accepting compromise for the sake of realizing multiple interests.11

Multiple loyalty extended beyond borders: first and foremost, permeability was possible due to the identical or very similar social structure (the feudal system).12 Subjects coming from the Low Countries could easily belong to the Holy Roman emperor and to the French king as their liege lord at the same time.13 However, multiple loyalty became more and more conflicted by the growing French expansionism in the early modern period.14 Independently from the social system, actors sometimes performed services for several parties in the world of diplomacy, as recent analysis has shown, drawing on the examples of nuncios, legates, and clerks of the Holy See and the envoys of foreign rulers in Rome in the second half of the fifteenth century.15 Crossing borders between Christian and Muslim countries was not a privilege for traders at all, and sometimes Christian mercenaries paid by Muslim rulers represented the interests of Christian kings (or of the people who had commissioned them).16

The feudal system of Western Europe never set foot in the Hungarian Kingdom, which is why the findings of scholarship on multiple loyalties in Western Europe (a topic which is often intertwined with analysis of the local social system) can only be taken into account in a limited way. A member of the lower nobility, for example, was often “employed” as a so-called familiaris, a position which was distinctive to the world of Hungary and which meant belonging to the familia of a landlord, working in his service. This position had nothing to do with the position of the vassal in the feudal system.17 Based on the criterion of disloyalty, one sees where the limits of loyalty lay.18 However, no systematic analysis has been done on what it meant to be a “good” and “loyal” subject in the Hungarian Kingdom19 or what was done for and thought of loyalty and disloyalty in theory and practice.20 Positions which involved working in the service of the court constituted the highest, most prestigious slice of the “spectrum of loyalty.”21 In most cases, we do not know exactly what service involved or whether any services were actually performed. Receipts and accounts are available only from the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on from the court of the Holy Roman emperor, certifying that someone made it onto the list of payments, or in other words received regular income for his services, but the nature of this service remains unclear.22 The source material on matters of the medieval court of the Hungarian king is even more scattered and fragmented.23

As seen from the discussion of the differing legal systems, the Hungarian-Austrian border had very sharp contours, but this did not really prevent people from crossing it and having short-term or even long-term (business) issues on the other side of the border. If one interprets the concept of loyalty loosely, multiple loyalties might also mean that, for whatever reason, someone was a landowner in one or more provinces or countries, whether these lands were under a single, autonomous sovereign or belonged to a common composite state under one ruler. In fact, in order to maintain possession of an estate successfully over the long run, a certain degree of loyalty was needed. Otherwise, the estates would have been lost. This kind of double or multiple ownership of estates, or in other words, owning estates which were in more than one country, was not a new phenomenon in the late medieval period; it may certainly be detected, albeit in a fragmented form, in the Austrian-Hungarian borderland from the thirteenth century on. From the second half of the thirteenth century, there is more and more evidence of less significant figures settling in or relocating to and acquiring smaller estates on both sides of the border.24 The will of nobleman Wolfgang Rauschar/Rauscher of Levél or Gáta, written in 1526, offers a clear indication of the places which were decisive in his life. For instance, he designated the hospital in Pressburg as a beneficiary, but also the hospitals in Hainburg and Bruck an der Leitha, right across the border.25 Noblemen were not the only people who obtained estates. Ecclesiastical institutions also did (Heiligenkreuz, Pöllau, Vorau), as did burghers, who indeed obtained them in even higher numbers (Bruck an der Leitha, Wiener Neustadt etc.), usually with vineyards in Hungary, which “enjoyed a special status since the thirteenth century, their owner having the right to sell or bequeath them to whomever he wanted as long as he cultivated them regularly.” The burghers in particular managed to make their voices heard when they repeatedly expressed their resentment for having to pay foreign trade duties, that is, the thirtieth and the ninth (nona), the tax of landlords, for the wine they produced on their own Hungarian estates.26 The predominantly German inhabitants of Pressburg and Sopron, which were both close to the border, must certainly have had interests in the territory of the Empire (owing to their numerous family ties),27 but few details are known about this.

As a consequence of the aforementioned wars in the second half of the fifteenth century, life in the Hungarian-Austrian border region became more complicated and conflicted. The world beset by party strife was vividly captured by German poet Michael Beheim, who wrote in the mid-fifteenth century, a time at which the Hungarian, Bohemian, and Austrian territories were plagued by civil war. In one of his poems, Beheim described how a Hungarian nobleman, having noticed the coat of arms on Beheim’s shield and realized that he was in the service of Ladislaus the Posthumous drove him away, shouting imprecations at him all the while for having discouraged his king from visiting Hungary.28 In another poem, Beheim gave an account of an episode when he was verbally abused at the wedding of a prominent big landowner from the Austrian-Hungarian borderland, Count Sigismund of Szentgyörgy-Bazin, in Óvár. This time, however, the source of conflict was not anti-German sentiment but tensions within the House of Habsburg. When the poet inquired as to why he was being taunted, a jester named Christopher told him that, while Beheim was on the side of Frederick III, those hurling abuse at him supported the monarch’s brother, Albert VI, archduke of Austria.29

Waldauf’s negative view of Hungarians, cited in the first sentence of this essay, may have been indirectly fed by this tumultuous period. Bad experiences were naturally engraved more deeply in the memories of those living in the borderland than they were among the inhabitants of the Tyrol (like Waldauf himself). However, the news affected those living farther from the events as well, as they could hardly avoid hearing the flood of reports. The fear of Hungarians became so intense that it was still palpable in Habsburg territories even in the mid-sixteenth century, by which time the rulers sitting on the Hungarian throne had been from the House of Habsburg for decades.30 On the other hand, it was not only Habsburg supporters who were prejudiced against the people of the Kingdom of Hungary. Similar attitudes were also prevalent among members of the Hungarian nobility.31 Later generations were also swayed by these preconceptions. The once significant royal town of Sopron, for instance, was often accused of being “two-faced” or “false-hearted” because, due to its location near the Austrian-Hungarian border, at times of political crisis, it sometimes had to adopt a prudent policy and make shows of loyalty both to the Hungarian king and the Holy Roman emperor.32

From the Empire to the Kingdom of Hungary

If we wish to have a more subtle grasp of what being in the service of more than one ruler meant after 1491, we would do well first to examine the decades before this period. Members of the Cilli retinue, who took part in the administration of their “empire” (which included lands in Carinthia, Carniola, Styria, the Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia), which fell to pieces after the assassination of Ulrich II, count of Cilli (1456), all found their way somehow. It is a well-known fact that thanks to the influential Cilli family, a great number of imperial subjects arrived in the Kingdom of Hungary as castellans or familiares.33 Nevertheless, few of them were able to achieve anything resembling the career of Bohemian mercenary captain Jan Vitovec who, in the 1450s and 1460s accumulated a considerable size and number of estates by maneuvering between Frederick III and Matthias Corvinus.34 Yet, however prominent Jan Vitovec may have been at the beginning of Matthias Corvinus’s reign, his sons were driven away from their Hungarian estates incredibly easily, by the increasingly autocratic king’s troops in 1488.35 All their significant estates in Hungary were lost, and there was probably little left of the estates amassed and owned by the mercenary captain in the territory of the Empire either. According to the records, the two sons, William and George, were on the side of the Habsburgs in 1491,36 although at this time they also enjoyed support from Matthias Corvinus’ widow, Beatrice of Aragon.37 Presumably because of his knowledge of Slavic languages, Count William was sent as an envoy by Frederick III and Maximilian I to Poland, Mazovia, and Russia in 1493–1494,38 then he became assessor of the supreme court (Kammergericht) in Wiener Neustadt. He was given the estate of Bruck an der Leitha, on the Austrian side of the border, probably as a payment for his services.39 His elder brother, Count George, was able to remain on the Hungarian estates, which were then only a fraction of their previous size, but according to the book of accounts of 1494–1495, he may have been given a place in the court of Vladislaus II.40 Complaints concerning various properties were made in George’s name,41 but the family was unable to get back most of the former estates.

Vitovec was not the only person coming from the far side of the border and settling in Western Hungary who entered the service of the Hungarian King but also kept his interests abroad for a time. In 1472, Frederick III complained to Pope Sixtus IV (1471–84) that the king of Hungary had a habit of supporting Austrian noblemen who dared to rebel against the emperor.42 Andreas Baumkircher from Carniola was one such “rebel.” Baumkircher had spent a long time in the service of the Habsburgs (as a mercenary, first of King Ladislaus the Posthumous, then of Frederick III), and he had thus obtained an estate in Western Hungary (Szalónak or Stadtschlaining, today in Austria). On the day of the treaty of Wiener Neustadt (1463), Baumkircher took an oath of loyalty to King Matthias Corvinus, and he was granted a special privilege: he was allowed to serve anyone as long as, in doing so, he caused no harm to the king of Hungary or the kingdom. Not surprisingly, Baumkircher came up as a counsellor of the emperor a few days later. He eventually turned against Frederick III, however, going over to the side of Matthias Corvinus in 1469. In 1471, the emperor had Baumkircher arrested and executed, and neither the Inner Austrian estates or Matthias Corvinus made any protest.43 Thanks to an agreement between the emperor and Baumkircher’s widow and sons in 1472, the family would receive compensation for Baumkircher’s estates on the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, though there is no clear evidence that the whole amount of money was ever actually transferred to them.44 By the end of the fifteenth century, the major part of the estates of the two sons, Wilhelm and Georg,45 consisted of Császárvár (Cesargrad, today in Croatia) and Szalónak, in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, and Rohonc (Rechnitz, today in Austria), bought in July 1490.46 Despite the fact that the Austrian-Hungarian war of 1490–1491 probably also hit his Hungarian estates situated close to the border, Wilhelm Baumkircher did not end up among Maximilian’s troops invading the Kingdom of Hungary but rather joined the supporters of Vladislaus II, crowned king of Hungary in 1490,47 and stayed at his side until his death in 1492. He was rewarded for his loyalty with the position of treasurer for a short time.48 Probably due to considerations of property rights, his brother Georg Baumkircher kept his Austrian estate Kirchschlag49 (which he held by right of pledge) when he entered the service of the Habsburgs in 1493, though he did not choose Frederick III, his father’s executioner, but his son, Maximilian I.50 However, records from 1494 refer to Georg Baumkircher as now (or continually?) a counselor to Vladislaus II.51 Although it is not clear that he played these roles at the same time, one thing is for sure: while the father could not manage to strike a successful balance between his loyalties to the two rulers in wartime, his son managed to do so in a time of peace.

Sigmund Weispriach, a brother-in-law of Jan Vitovec, set foot first as captain of Fraknó (Forchtenstein, today in Austria) in the 1450s in Hungary, serving Frederick III at that time. In 1466, rewarding him for leaving Frederick III’s side and joining the Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus donated Sigmund the estates of Fraknó and Kabold (Kobersdorf, today in Austria), and privileged Sigmund, among others, to use the arms of the former counts of Fraknó. For the following eight years, he was ispán of Sopron county in Western Hungary and, for a while, he even served as captain of the town of Sopron. Meanwhile, he was possibly able to keep his offices on the other side of the border, namely the captaincy of Pettau (Ptuj, today in Slovenia), which belonged, however, to the authority of the archbishop of Salzburg.52 The path to the Hungarian king’s service was less direct for his sons, Ulrich and Andreas.53 In January 1475, Andreas was said to be a courtier (aulicus) of Corvinus.54 In December 1479, the brothers and their widowed mother refused to open the gates of the Castle of Pettau for the troops of the Hungarian king under an agreement between Corvinus and the archbishop of Salzburg.55 It was probably due to the Hungarian invasions in Styria and Carinthia in the early 1480s as well as a financial conflict of financing mercenaries with Frederick III at the same time that Andreas went over to Matthias Corvinus’s side in 148256 and, following in his father’s footsteps, he became ispán of Sopron.57 Later, as a courtier (“unnser diener, hofgesind”) of Corvinus he was even imprisoned by the emperor for a time, against which the Hungarian king tried to take action.58 Matthias took Ulrich von Weispriach under his protection around December 1485 and made him a member of the royal court (“zu unserm diener und hofgesind”).59 In the case of the Weispriachs, too, a serious break came with the aforementioned 1488 campaign against the Vitovec.60 After that, they came to serve Frederick III and Maximilian I, participated in the aforementioned Habsburg invasion of 1490, and Andreas von Weispriach became captain of the Hungarian town of Veszprém, which was occupied by imperial troops.61 After the Peace of Pressburg, the Weispriach family remained in control of the estate of Kabold and acquired the pawned estate of Kosztel (Kostelgrad, today in Croatia).62 The sources offer no indication that they performed any services for the Hungarian royal court after 1490. They started (or kept) collecting estates in the Habsburg lands, and they were commissioned by King Maximilian to perform some services: Ulrich Weispriach, for example, became governor (Landeshauptmann) of Carinthia (1500–1503).63

The third person arriving from the territory of the empire and dominant from a political perspective was Ulrich von Grafeneck from Swabia, who obtained his first estates in 1447 in Hungary (Sopronkertes or Baumgarten, today in Austria) in the service of Frederick III. In the early 1450s, he served as the castellan of Kőszeg, which at the time was occupied by the emperor’s troops. At the turn of the 1450s and 1460s, Frederick III appointed him to serve as ispán of Sopron county. At the same time, Grafeneck got hold of the estate of Trautmansdorf on the Austrian side of the border (1459) and, gradually, further estates in the Archduchy of Austria. In addition to increasing his wealth, Grafeneck also successfully expanded his network of connections. In the late 1460s, he was often seen around Matthias Corvinus, and he even received an estate from the king (Scharfeneck, 1470). In those days, he clearly tried to achieve a balance by serving both rulers. The cracks in the relationship between Grafeneck and the emperor were probably caused by Andreas Baumkircher’s execution in 1471. Grafeneck took part in a feud (Fehde) led by several Austrian noblemen against the empire, which enjoyed the overt backing of the Hungarian king himself. Eventually, Grafeneck and the emperor reached an agreement in early 1477. In return for 50,000 Rhenish guilders, Grafeneck would give up all his estates in Austria. Not much later (before the spring of 1478), though, the Swabian nobleman went back to supporting Frederick III, then, after further unknown turns, he returned to the service of the Hungarian king. It is possible that in 1487 he was about to change sides again, but this was something the Hungarian king would not tolerate, and it is possible that Grafeneck was killed at his behest. There is no indication in the sources that any of his descendants performed any services for the court. They maintained ownership of (or at least their rights to) both their Hungarian and Austrian estates until they sold them in 1504.64

From the Kingdom of Hungary to the Empire

It was not unusual at all, in the fifteenth century, for Hungarian and Croatian nobles in the service of the Habsburgs to maintain their contacts with the Hungarian king.65 Yet the strategy of Emperor Frederick III and his son, Maximilian I, brought new elements, quite similar to the “methods” used by Matthias Corvinus: they exerted influence on the dynastic policy of their neighboring rival, made some subjects falter in their loyalty by making them various offers, and then built a group of followers who would work to further their dynastic policy, which aimed at destabilization and securing local support for possible military action. This method was particularly used in the period between 1440 and the Peace of Wiener Neustadt in 1463 and the period after 1491. After Matthias Corvinus’s death (1490), and later the Habsburg rulers continuously gave indications of their desire to do so. One of the most emphatic examples of these efforts was the funeral procession of Frederick III (December 6–7, 1493). According to the diplomatic protocol, Maximilian I, delegates of the Holy See and of Charles VIII of France were followed by two emissaries of Vladislav II: Tamás Bakóc, bishop of Eger, and Miklós Bánfi of Alsólendva. They were not the only subjects of the king of Hungary present at the funeral: Hungarian noblemen were also seen in the procession symbolizing the lands of Frederick III. Representing the Holy Roman emperor’s title as king of Hungary, they marched with the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Hungary, right in front of the people symbolizing the Empire, and were last but one (in other words, the second most important figures) in the entire procession. Four of the five delegates can be identified. Two of them were individuals who had recently risen to prominence (Jakab Székely of Kövend and János Kishorvát), and two of them were from prestigious Hungarian noble families (Miklós Szécsi of Felsőlendva and János Ellerbach of Monyorókerék).66 The fact that these noblemen represented the interests of the Holy Roman emperor in the funeral procession was probably a consequence of their serving the Habsburgs during the war of 1490–1491 and continuing to maintain their network of relationships.

In the period after the Peace of Pressburg in 1491, for Frederick III and Maximilian I, openly supporting those loyal to the Habsburgs would have meant weakening the peace treaty, which had been signed to strengthen the Habsburg claim to the throne in the first place, so their followers could only count on some informal support. At the turn of 1494–1495, the news of the ongoing military campaign ordered by Vladislav II against Duke Lőrinc Újlaki reached Maximilian I, who at the time was in Antwerp, somewhat differently: The Hungarian king and his counselors were settling accounts with Maximilian’s former and present supporters instead of dealing with the Ottoman threat. The king of the Romans did not wish to violate the peace agreement, nor did he want to let down his followers, who were “his only joy and comfort in the Kingdom of Hungary,” and who (and here he was clearly referring to his estates in the south) would “also serve as a shield against the Ottomans.” Therefore, he intended to send a delegation to the Kingdom of Hungary to address the conflicts and more soldiers to fight against the Ottomans.67 This “hesitation” probably paralyzed the supporters of the Habsburg’s claim to the throne, and in time, their numbers dropped. As time passed, the threat of the Ottoman Empire likewise diverted the attention of the inhabitants of the southern regions, including Maximilian I’s former followers. Perhaps it was despair due to the hopeless situation that motivated Ferenc Beriszló in 1511 to revive his earlier relationships with the House of Habsburg, for as former ban of Jajce (1494–1495, 1499–1503), Beriszló knew very well what the Ottoman threat entailed. In his own name and the name of his brother, Bertalan Beriszló, prior of Vrana, he offered his services to Maximilian I,68 and then to the chancellor of Tyrol, Zyprian von Serntein.69

In the former letter,70 Beriszló also mentioned his joint service he had performed earlier with János Kishorvát. He may have been referring to the civil war of 1490–91, but that he had another in mind is also possible, as he and Kishorvát had served the emperor for several years. Yet as an envoy of Matthias Corvinus in 1489 in the Ottoman Empire,71 two years later during the preparatory meetings for the Treaty of Pressburg, Kishorvát represented fellow Hungarian and Croatian noblemen finding themselves on the side of the Habsburgs,72 and in the spring of 1492, he was seen, with many others, in Habsburg service in military campaigns against the Ottomans.73 It was probably on the grounds of his military services that he lay claim to some smaller or greater sums of money, which can be traced in the documents concerning him from late 1496 on.74 At the same time, the amount owed to Kishorvát was so large that, in 1497, the Holy Roman emperor gave him Arnfels, an estate in Styria.75 Kishorvát received half of the 6,000 guilders, Maximilian’s debt, in June 1506 but the rest was considerably delayed: part of the arrears was still unpaid in 1524, years after Kishorvát’s death.76 Like Beriszló, Kishorvát had estates in southern Hungary, so it is quite possible that he was motivated to serve the emperor at least in part because of the dire necessities he faced back home. He also may have been tempted to serve the Habsburgs because he lost his Hungarian estates by the mid-1490s as a consequence of his highly aggressive, sometimes even criminal activity,77 and it became impossible for him to prosper in the political sphere. In 1503, when Kishorvát and his brother-in-law, Lőrinc Bánfi of Gara, got back a part of their estates with the help of Duke John Corvin (under the condition that, in absence of any heir, the estates would become the property of the Corvin line), Kishorvát obliged himself to serve the duke but nobody else.78 He was chosen to be one of the executors of duke’s will after the death of Corvin (1504).79 However, we can assume, given the large debt which had been incurred by the Habsburg court, that Kishorvát’s contacts with the Habsburg court were eagerly kept.80

Alongside Kishorvát, Jakab Székely of Kövend was also in the permanent service of the Habsburgs. In the 1470s, he took on military service in Matthias Corvinus’s court, and he played important roles in the king’s campaigns against the Habsburg lands in the 1480s and even obtained estates in Styria. His decision to change sides was not prompted by the Ottoman threat, but rather by the hope to protect and keep his estates in the Habsburg lands, which he had received in the 1480s. He proved successful in these efforts. The fact that certain sources in the Holy Roman Empire refer to Jakab Székely as a counselor (Rat) of Maximilian I may indicate that he held a position of some distinction but was never a real insider.81 His place of origin and the fact that he owned a considerable number of estates in the Kingdom of Hungary in the 1490s played almost no role in his services to the empire, with the exception of Frederick III’s funeral procession in 1493. The tasks he was given required loyalty and reliability, such as military missions in Italy (e.g. in 1496) and the Habsburg provinces or supporting the emperor in his disputes with the Styrian estates. Occasionally, Székely participated in negotiations and diplomatic missions. It is also possible that sometimes he was consulted in issues concerning Hungary. Perhaps the greatest achievement of his career was his triumph in ensuring that both his brother and his sons would have opportunities to move up in the ranks in the Hungarian royal court, thus considerably expanding their room for maneuver.82

Among the families permanently in the service of the Habsburgs, as opposed to the Hungarian royal court, some of the most prominent members of the Hungarian and Croatian nobility can be found. Among the counts of Szentgyörgy and Bazin, who had close connections to both the Moravian-Bohemian83 and the Austrian-South German84 nobility through kinship and estates, the most important supporters of the Habsburg court were John and Sigismund, who lived in the fifteenth century and whose political role was especially notable in the 1440–60s,85 that is, at the time when the Habsburgs were particularly active in their foreign policies towards the Kingdom of Hungary and Hungary was struggling with serious internal conflicts. And although in the end, the family returned to being loyal supporters of the Hungarian king (mainly because of their important Hungarian estates), their network of connections, the prestige they had won, and their knowledge of German were not wasted, and this sometimes made them seem suspicious in the eyes of several fellow Hungarians, who feared that they might be engaged in malicious negotiations against the Hungarian king.86 It was due to the close-knit network that, in June 1480, a few months after the third Austrian-Hungarian war broke out, Frederick III and counts Sigismund and John made an agreement that would guarantee peace between the two parties with a non-aggression pact, and protect the counts’ estates in Moson County from being taken away by the emperor.87 Count John’s and Sigismund’s orientation to the House of Habsburg was partly followed by Sigismund’s son, Thomas,88 and the half-brother, Christopher, who was in the service of the Habsburgs in 1506.89 Christopher’s ambitions may also have derived from the fact that, thanks to his wife, Elisabeth von Neidberg, he acquired quite a few estates in Styria, which Maximilian I topped up with an estate in pledge (Wachsenegg) in 1501.90

John and Sigismund of Szentgyörgy and Bazin may also have been the people who were able to gain a foothold in the Duchy of Bavaria, though for reasons yet unknown.91 It was, however not them or their lineal descendants, but Count Francis of Szentgyörgy and Bazin, who belonged to another branch of the family, who entered the service of Albert IV, duke of Bavaria (1467–1508).92 It is thus possible that, during the negotiations for the marriage between his son, William IV, duke of Bavaria (1508–1550), and the sister of King Vladislaus II of Hungary and Bavaria (1509–1510), Peter of Szentgyörgy and Bazin, voivode of Transylvania, was purposely commissioned to be the chief negotiator on behalf of the Hungarian party, as he had a good knowledge of both Bavaria and the German language owing to his relatives.93

The Croatian Frankopan family, which had huge estates in the southern regions of the Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia, was also traditionally oriented to the House of Habsburg. Except for a short period, Count Stephen Frankopan was ban of Croatia from 1434 to 1437,94 and between 1436 and 144095 and then again between 1453 and 1454 he served as governor (Landeshauptmann) of Carniola,96 a position that his brother, Duim Frankopan probably also held between 144497 and 1447.98 At the same time, the growing number of members of the Frankopan family in the service of the Habsburgs is also quite notable.99 At the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Michael Frankopan (from the Slunj line) and his cousins John and Nicholas Angelo (from the Trsat line), as well as John and Nicholas from the Cetin line are noted to have been in the service of the court.100 Bernard from the Modruš line of the Frankopan family may also have had close relations with the House of Habsburg, but the details are unknown.101 In November 1509, Maximilian I reinforced Bernard’s previously granted privileges in the empire (his title as palatine) with reference to the services he had performed.102 The services rendered by Bernard Frankopan’s son Christoph for the Habsburgs in the 1510s and 1520s are among the most documented cases. In 1522–1523, he was Master of the Horse (grand escuier d’escuierie) in Archduke Ferdinand’s court, which, given his role in the War of the League of Cambrai (1508–1516), should be interpreted not as a “classical” position in the court but as a function on the battlefield.103 Presumably maintaining his remarkably good relations with the archduke,104 in 1525 Frankopan appeared as one of the familiares of Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia and then as one of his counselors.105 As in the case of the aforementioned noblemen from the south of Hungary and Croatia, fear of the Ottomans was a decisive factor among fellow Croatian noblemen. Keeping contacts with the Habsburg House and their officials, moreover, receiving financial and military support from them in the 1520s provided a partial solution to the Ottoman threat106 that could, however, give some extraordinary answers to loyalty issues. As Lajos Thallóczy puts it:

the court of Buda was not too delighted to see Christoph, Wolfgang, George and Matthias Frankopan, as well as Stephen Blagajski in the service of Ferdinand, but the same noblemen both frequented the court of Buda and accepted a soldier’s pay from Archduke Ferdinand. This could be accounted for by claiming that, as landowners at the border of Carniola, they were protecting the Austrian territories from the Ottomans too, and the payment they received from the archduke was in fact a contribution to the defense of their own country.107

Although several members of the Kanizsai family, which had estates in the Austrian-Hungarian borderland and enjoyed considerable prestige in the Kingdom of Hungary, likewise served the Habsburgs in times of crisis and civil war, despite their marriages with Austrian families, their service did not prove long-lasting. The only exception was János Kanizsai, whose demonstrable service to the Habsburg court beginning in 1498 can hardly be explained. At the same time, Kanizsai did not give up serving the King of Hungary either (as the ispán of Sopron and ban of Jajce, i.e. a holder of an important military office in the anti-Ottoman defense system), and he kept his estates in Hungary. Initially, he was probably employed as a military man with some horses, then, from the mid-1510s, when he moved to Austria, his service might have involved a permanent presence at the imperial court.108

The fact that János Kanizsai was able to have such a remarkable career may be due in no small part to the intertwining of the Jagiellonian and the Habsburg dynasties. The mutual attitude of distrust, which lasted until 1506 (i.e. until the Treaty of Vienna, which was signed after a short war between Maximilian and Vladislaus II) and, in certain respects, until 1515 (i.e. until the agreements made at the First Congress of Vienna), was obviously not too favorable for the development of such careers. From 1515 on, however, subjects had more room than ever before to find easy transit between the provinces ruled by the dynasties and their courts. The joint courts of young princesses Anna of Jagiello and Marie of Habsburg, who were brought up together in Innsbruck between 1516 and 1521, served as a king of melting pot for the elites, leading to marriages between female and male members of the court.109 It was, however, not the only place where intertwining interests can be seen. One of the master of courts of King Louis II was said to have been a counsellor to Emperor Maximilian I at the same time.110 In 1518, Maximilian I took István Hásságyi, chamberlain of Louis II, into his own service for an annual payment of 200 guilders.111 The assignment of Stefan von Zinzendorf from the Archduchy of Austria was probably partly an undercover maneuver: in February 1516, the Holy Roman emperor gave orders “secretly” to pay him 200 Rhenish guilders for his future services. Zinzendorf’s task was to espouse the issues of Emperor Maximilian I and support them at the Hungarian and Bohemian royal courts. The Austrian nobleman continued performing this task after the death of Vladislaus II in March 1516, following the emperor’s orders, in the court of the new king.112

In the 1510s and 1520s, Péter Erdődi was present in the courts of both Vladislaus II and Louis II,113 but from 1522, in parallel with his service for the latter, he was a familiaris and counselor in the court of Archduke Ferdinand as well.114 It would be difficult to deny that the decisive factor behind this career was his powerful relative, Tamás Bakóc, cardinal and archbishop of Esztergom, who also participated in the First Congress of Vienna in 1515. In 1522, Péter Erdődi obtained the estate belonging to Kőszeg (situated in Western Hungary, under Habsburg rule at the time) by right of pledge, as a result of an agreement to resolve a long financial dispute between Maximilian I and Bakóc, both deceased by then.115

Summary

In a formal or informal way, the persons discussed above all tried to balance between the Hungarian royal court and the court of the Habsburgs in the hopes of ensuring their own prosperity and the prosperity of their families. Such relationships, however, involved great risks, especially in times of war. Some of these individuals were executed (Andreas Baumkircher, for instance), while others “only” lost their estates when suspected of disloyalty to the king (such as the sons of Jan Vitovec).

While at the time of the conflicts between Frederick III and Matthias Corvinus it was primarily those who took the side of the Hungarian king who were able to pursue successful careers, after 1491, the situation reversed, and those who were on the side of the Habsburgs seemed to have more opportunities. However, this was not simply a “180-degree turn,” as the period after 1491 was not the exact opposite of the previous one. Rather, it differed in terms of its dynamics and the logic of power, as well as the ways in which one could adapt this logic. The post-1491 period was less about great changes and, for those supporting the cause of the Habsburgs, definitely more about careful maneuvering. Considerable change was only brought about by turns in the dynasty in 1506 and 1515. Perhaps it is not only the wealth of sources which allows us to identify so many instances of dual loyalties to different rulers and ties to the courts from the mid-1510s, or in other words precisely the time when Anna Jagiellon and Mary of Austria were brought up together on Habsburg soil.

The section of the Peace of Pressburg quoted at the beginning of this essay indeed makes mention of a kind of career which may not have been widespread but which was not completely unknown, neither in the borderlands nor in the royal courts. Including this section in the peace treaty probably served the purpose of reassuring the then numerous Habsburg supporters for many of whom the possibility of serving the House of Habsburg would become unrealistic within a few years: they could not expect any military aid from Maximilian I, as a few of the noblemen in the southern regions, who had fallen into despair because of the ever more impending threat of Ottoman encroachment, had already experienced firsthand. The winds of change could also be felt when, due to the Ottoman threat, Louis II and his brother-in-law Archduke Ferdinand were frequently forced to cooperate in the beginning of the 1520s, which was a new situation for both of them. It meant that, besides the royal courts, in which double loyalties had a place as a consequence of the Habsburg–Jagiellon dynastic agreements in 1515, serving two lords (i.e. the Habsburgs and the Jagiellons) became also possible on the Hungarian-Croatian military border for the sake of a more efficient defense system.

Archival Sources

Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich (BHStA)

Abteilung I (Ältere Bestände)

Herzogtum Bayern (HB)

Ämterrechnungen bis 1506

Kurbayern (KB)

Äußeres Archiv (ÄA)

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [Hungarian National Archives, State Archive], Budapest (MNL OL)

Fényképgyűjtemény [Photo Collections]

Diplomatikai Fényképgyűjtemény [The Photo Collection of Medieval Documents] (DF)

Magyar kincstári levéltárak [The Treasury Archives of the Hungarian Kingdom]

Magyar Kamara archivuma [The Archive of the Hungarian Chamber]

Vegyes iratok, ügyviteli segédletek, pecsétnyomók [Mixed Files, Finding Aids, Seals]

A bécsi Udvari Kamarai Levéltárban őrzött segédkönyvek és iratok másolatai [Copies of Finding Aids and Files Kept in the Archive of the Treasury in Vienna] (E 239)

Mohács előtti gyűjtemény [Collection of Medieval Documents]

Diplomatikai Levéltár [The Archive of Medieval Documents] (DL)

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna (ÖStA)

Allgemeine Verwaltungsarchiv (AVA)

Adelsarchiv

Reichsadelsakten (RAA)

Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv (FHKA)

Alte Hofkammer, Hoffinanz (AHK)

Gedenkbücher (GB)

Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (HHStA)

Reichsarchive

Reichskanzlei (RK)

Reichsregisterbücher (RRB)

Maximiliana

Urkundenreihen, Siegelabguß- und Typarsammlung

Urkundenreihen (UR)

Allgemeine Urkundenreihe (AUR)

Sonderbestände

Familienarchiv Erdődy (FA Erdődy)

Urkunden (D)

Országos Széchényi Könyvtár [Széchényi National Library], Budapest

Kézirattár [Manuscript Collection] (OSZKK)

Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv, Graz (StLA)

Allgemeine Urkundenreihe (AUR)

Tiroler Landesarchiv, Innsbruck (TLA)

Landesfürstliche Hofkanzleien

Sigmundiana

Mischbestände

Pestarchiv-Akten

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Béla Vilmos Mihalik
Research Centre for the Humanities
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 10 Issue 4  (2021):675-705 DOI 10.38145/2021.4.675

In this essay the potentials for political interaction among local communities will be examined through parish organization in the century following the expulsion of the Ottomans from the territory of Hungary, i.e. the period referred to as late confessionalization (1681–1781). Roughly 150 years of Ottoman occupation had wreaked havoc on the parish network, which was reorganized over the course of the eighteenth century. Village communities took the initiative to establish parishes, but as they did so, the clashing interests of the Catholic Church, the landlords, and the state had to be addressed and negotiated. The dynamics of this process and the ways in which the local communities were able to assert their specific needs should therefore be discussed. The complexity of often divergent interests and aims compelled the communities to devise cautious means of communicating with the competing groups, and it also helped further the internal integration of the local societies and the integration of these communities into church and secular structures. However, growing state influence made abundantly clear that the roles of the church administration and the parishes would soon undergo slow but meaningful change.

Keywords: late confessionalization, parishes, local communities, community politics, integration

Introduction

In the eighteenth century, after the Treaty of Karlowitz and the end of the Ottoman occupation (1541–1699), it was finally possible to begin reorganizing the administrative structures of the Kingdom of Hungary. At the local level, one of the most important stages in this process was the establishment of Catholic parishes, since the parish, as an institution, played a central role in the integration of smaller communities into the larger networks of secular and ecclesiastical government. Once new settlers arrived in areas which essentially had been left desolate by conflict and flight and the network of settlements had been reestablished, the country bore witness to the rapid foundation of new parishes. This essay focuses in particular on the moment of parish foundation in order to shed light on local developments in the larger process of Catholic reorganization. In the following discussion I examine how the local community was able to communicate its needs and aspirations within the web of often competing interests which emerged around the foundation of a parish.

The period under examination, which began with the religious articles of the Diet of Sopron 1681 and came to an end with the Edict of Toleration of Joseph II in 1781, is considered the century of late confessionalization in Hungary by András Forgó.1 One might well have been tempted, therefore, to analyze the aforementioned questions within the familiar theory of confessionalization presented by Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling.2 However, in this article I argue that the case of Hungary provides good support for criticisms of this paradigm.3 First, the late developments of confessionalization in eighteenth-century Hungary prove the untenability of chronological definitions, which typically put the end of the confessionalization at the time of the Peace of Westphalia.4 The other principal criticism was the exaggerated role of the state. Micro-historical studies have shown the active role played by local communities, as confessionalization took place in areas where there was no strong state power. Even when the state was present, its aspirations could only be achieved when they overlapped with the expectations of local communities.5

In case of eighteenth-century Hungary, Zoltán Gőzsy and Szabolcs Varga came to similar findings in their research on the diocese of Pécs. Gőzsy and Varga demonstrated that the communities played a very active role in the consolidation of the post-Ottoman period and successfully articulated their specific local interests to the higher ecclesiastical, state, and landlord levels.6 Their research, however, relied on descriptive, often generalizing, serial sources produced by the Catholic Church, for instance, the church visitation records. Thus, they examined the communities through the lens of an external observer, the higher church authority. Although Gőzsy’s and Varga’s conclusions concerning the role of local society were convincing, I approach the topic from a different point of view. The goal of this essay to describe the internal and external dynamics of the local village communities, challenging the excessive top-down, state and church power perspective of the confessionalization thesis.

Highlighting the role of communities, one should consider the phenomena of communalism, a fruitful concept introduced by Peter Blickle.7 Although Blickle stressed the importance of both rural and urban communities in the spread of the Reformation, case studies proved again the limits of their influence and the various grades of their dependency.8 Thus, the complexity of the concept of community is a reason for caution. Instead of over-generalizing the notion, it is better to focus on the internal dynamics of the community.9 The variety of internal and external interactions and the forms of political communication used within and by communities offer the potentially different approaches. The “politics of parish,” in Keith Wrightson’s approach, could include many elements of communication: gossip, rumors, symbolic acts, forms of exclusion, inclusion, etc. The individual smaller components of the community and the interactions among them could have a major influence on the external, political space of the community.10 In the case of Hungary, Dániel Bárth focuses primarily on the conflict between the lower clergy and their communities in the early modern period. His recent studies, however, go beyond this, addressing several considerations about the local (horizontal) fields of power structures and communication with the (vertical) ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies, offering a more complex image of the functions of the parish in the lives of village communities.11

The concept and function of the parish changed a lot in the Middle Ages and early modern times in Hungary. The first king, Saint Stephen I, in addition to the establishment of the first bishoprics, placed great emphasis on the founding of parishes. In his second law-code, he ordered that every ten villages should build a church and provide these churches with various benefits in kind. The king provided the vestments and altar cloths, and the bishop provided the priests and the books.12 By the fourteenth century, parishes had often been transformed into donated benefices, where a substitute clergyman appointed by the beneficed provided the actual pastoral care.13 This was accompanied by the separation of different types of parishes. The titles of parish priest (plebanus) and parish (plebania) were reserved for a narrow, privileged part of parishes. This distinguished them from the ordinary parochial churches (ecclesia parochialis) and their priests (rector ecclesiae, sacerdos) without prerogatives. Although privileges were not lost, by the early fifteenth century, the title of parish and parish priest had been extended to all congregations and their priests.14

The exact size of the Catholic parish network in the Middle Ages is not known, but it is estimated that by the mid-sixteenth century, as much as 60–70 percent of it may have been destroyed as a result of the Reformation and the Ottoman conquest. By 1600, this figure had risen to 90 percent.15 The reorganization took around two centuries. The Catholic renewal marked by Cardinal Péter Pázmány (1570–1637), archbishop of Esztergom, in the first half of the seventeenth century built up the institutional system (seminaries, schools, university) on which the Catholic Church could rely to strengthen itself again in the territories ruled by the Habsburgs.16 However, the violent counterreformation in the last third of the century was so overwhelming that the number of the newly occupied Protestant churches exceeded the number of available Catholic parish priests. In a situation which escalated into a religious civil war, the Habsburg rulers and the Catholic prelates were forced to make concessions. Protestants were granted limited religious freedom at the Diet of Sopron in 1681. In the western part of the country, religious practice was permitted only in certain settlements, the so-called articular places, and several other restrictions were imposed. A 1691 royal decree (Explanatio Leopoldina) which explained the law in detail further restricted these rights, confirming the jurisdiction of the Catholic clergy over Protestant congregations.17

Following the expulsion of the Ottomans, the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699) and the Rákóczi War of Independence (1703–1711), the parish network underwent a huge development in the eighteenth century, which is clearly reflected in the following diocesan data.18

Diocese	Early eighteenth century	Late eighteenth century
Bishopric of Eger	1715: 72 parishes	1786: 328 parishes
Archdiocese of Kalocsa	1733: 17 parishes	1763: 58 parishes
Bishopric of Veszprém	1710: 20 parishes	1777: 185 parishes

 

This process was also supported by the secular government, notably through the Royal Council of Lieutenancy, which was established in 1723. Within this government body, two committees dealt mainly with ecclesiastical matters. The Religious Affairs Committee was responsible for the observance of the Sopron Articles of Religion of 1681 and the religious practices of Protestants.19 The Clergymen’s Fund (Cassa Parochorum), on the other hand, financed the salaries of Catholic parish priests, the establishment of new parishes, and the construction of churches. When the Fund was established in 1733 by Charles III, a royal decree stipulated that the income of a parish priest had to be at least 150 forints a year, in addition to the incomes from fees and parish lands. Parish priests whose annual income did not reach this minimum received additional state subsidies from the Fund. This minimum wage provided them with a modest standard of living, but one worthy of their profession. The royal decree also encouraged the creation of new parishes, therefore a country-wide census of parishes was carried out, diocese by diocese. On the basis of the surveys and other proposals and petitions submitted by the bishops to the Fund, the Council of Lieutenancy had to make suggestions concerning the construction of new churches and parishes or the renovation of old ones.20

As an institution, the parish was more than a simple, geographically defined, territorial ecclesiastical administrative unit. It was also a community of believers living in a defined area and headed by a priest, the parish priest. At the center of the parish, in the mother church (mater), was the parish church, where the parish priest lived, but the parish could also include one or more daughter churches (filia). The choice of the parish priest was determined by the practice of patron’s right, which had been developed and refined over the course of the centuries. The landlord-patron suggested his own candidate or, if he didn’t have a candidate, a person recommended by the bishop (recommendatio) was presented by the landlord to the same prelate in writing (praesentatio). The bishop ordered the investiture, which was performed by the dean of the area (investitura and installatio).21

Although many municipalities in the Middle Ages won the right to elect their own parish priests,22 this was limited by the time of the Catholic Revival in the early modern period. Unlike in Carinthia and southern Germany,23 however, the community was not completely excluded from controlling the parish. This was due to a complex economy based on a system of allowances paid by the community for the pastoral work of the parish priest. In the eighteenth century, this was supplemented by the parish’s lending function.24 Typically, the churchwarden (aedituus; egyházbíró) was chosen from among the village aldermen, and he played an important role in overseeing the management of the church’s finances and in preparing the annual accounts. These accounts were also audited by the village magistrate. Churchwardens also had a role in collecting and administering parish revenues. The schoolmaster, who was often also the cantor and organist, was under the supervision of the parish priest, but as an educated man, he very often became the village notary and thus a member of the local lay council.25

The study focuses less on conflicts and more on the tools of the struggle for the parish. Therefore, three key factors, specifically competing interests, local integration, and possible hindrances and interference will be discussed. The foundation of parishes will be discussed through examples from the dioceses of Veszprém and Eger. The two dioceses bore important similarities. A significant part of both had fallen under Ottoman occupation in the sixteenth century and, after some initial events, it was only with the expulsion of the Ottomans that the reorganization of the church became possible in the eighteenth century. In both dioceses, there were significant population movements. New communities were created, and in parallel with this, there was an explosion in the creation of new parishes. In addition to the vast body of secondary literature on the history of both dioceses, the essay uses as sources parish documents preserved in the diocesan archives, primarily petitions submitted by the communities and testimonies.

Interests

Below, I consider the interests which lay behind the foundation of parishes from the perspectives of the different actors involved. Clearly, one should consider first the needs of the local community. As Christine Tropper has pointed out in her study of parishes in Carinthia, one of the most common reasons given in petitions for the establishment of a new parish was the physical distance of the community from the mother church, i.e. from the site where church services were held.26 Poor roads, bad weather, and geographical obstacles made it difficult to maintain contact between daughter churches and parishes. One finds frequent reference to precisely these reasons in the Hungarian examples. The inhabitants of Alattyán, which belonged to the diocese of Eger and was pastored by the Premonstratensian monastery of Jánoshida, on the far side of the Zagyva River, offered a vivid description of the difficulties they faced. It was difficult to maintain ties between the two communities, because “when there are floods, which are sometimes frequent, sometimes occasional, it can take five or six days to get there.” This was an obstacle to the work of the local pastor, of course, and the people of Alattyán experienced “many shortages in spiritual things” because of the difficulties posed simply by transportation. Finally, in 1748, when Easter mass was almost cancelled due to a flood, the village asked the Bishop of Eger to establish an independent parish.27

Alongside geographical distance, the apparent indifference of a parish priest to the members of his fold could also be a factor. The parish priest in Dorogháza, for example, kept to himself so much that the local community found it difficult to get him to baptize their children or go to the bedside of the dying, which in the case of members of the fold who lived in more distant communities was almost impossible.28 The difficulties faced by people living in villages distant from a mother church in getting the pastoral services often prompted members of these communities to seek to establish separate parishes and obtain their own parish priests.

Apart from the parishes that were created when discontent daughter churches sought to break away from the mother parishes, new parishes were often very quickly founded on recently resettled areas. After the Ottoman occupation, new settlements were established, and new parishes were organized on the sites of villages which had been destroyed. This is striking because the establishment of parishes put a heavy burden on the community. A church and a parish house had to be built, money had to be found to cover the annual salary and maintenance costs of the priest, the salaries of the parish staff (cantor, sacristan) had to be paid, and a building had to be provided for the school and the schoolmaster’s house. Most of these buildings were available in a filiate parish that wanted to break away from the mother church. In the newly founded villages, however, they often had to be built. Even if the remains of a medieval church which had been destroyed during the period of Ottoman occupation survived, the ruined edifice needed almost complete renovation and rebuilding.

The fact that so many parishes were founded (and as noted above, this required a significant financial sacrifice from the new community) is also striking in part because many of the population movements were motivated by the economic challenges faced in the original settlements. Towards the end of the 1710s, the economic situation in Jászapáti was becoming increasingly difficult “because of the growth of the population and the scarcity of land,” and this led to social tensions.29 In 1719, to resolve the growing tensions, farmers from Jászapáti began to settle in Kunszentmárton, a town in the region to the east of the Tisza River that had been destroyed by the Ottomans. The new community was able to establish a parish in only two years, i.e. very quickly. It was very important because Kunszentmárton became the first Catholic parish in a region in which the Calvinist Church held sway, and thus the Catholic Church managed to break into what before had been essentially a homogeneous Protestant block. The importance of this parish became clear in the second half of the century, when the Catholic community in Kunszentmárton became the basis for the establishment of Catholic institutions in the surrounding Calvinist settlements.30

The church authorities thus had a fundamental interest in the establishment of the parish. In most cases, if the local circumstances were considered appropriate, they supported and initiated the process of founding the new parish. For the diocese, the most important prerequisite was that the community have adequate resources to meet the requirements listed above (to provide a salary and housing for the parish priest and wages for the parish staff). In addition, if a former daughter church wanted to become an independent parish, the church authorities also had to consider the consequences this would have for the financial situation of the former mother parish and parish priest and whether the new parish could be established without endangering the old parish. Thus, even if the ecclesiastical authorities had an interest in expanding the parish network, they had to take into account an array of complex considerations affecting several communities.31

For the church leadership, the establishment of parishes could also be an issue which touched on denominational interests. Although the Sopron Articles of Religion of 1681 and the subsequent royal decrees allowed only limited religious practice among Protestant communities, these measures also constituted a hindrance to the Catholic counterreformation.32 The Catholic Church was only able to break up Protestant communities and establish Catholic institutions locally if it was able to work in cooperation with the landlords and the secular authorities. The Lutheran village of Iharosberény in the southern part of the diocese of Veszprém offers a good example. The Franciscans of Kanizsa provided pastoral services for the small number of Catholics in the settlement in a small chapel next to the manor house of the local landlord, Boldizsár Inkey. As early as 1746, Bishop of Veszprém Márton Biró Padányi contacted Inkey in order to inquire about the possibility of bringing the local Lutheran religious services to an end. This took place during the canonical visitation of 1748, and in order to strengthen the position it had gained, the Catholic Church founded a parish in the village the following year.33

The aforementioned resettlement of the lands which had been left devasted by the Ottoman occupation was unquestionably one of the most significant processes of post-Turkish reconstruction. The landlords, who were eager to see their estates resettled and their lands tilled, realized that the foundation of parishes would facilitate the peaceful development, growth, and strengthening of the community. In the region of southern Transdanubia, for example, the reestablishment of the network of settlements and the revitalization of the church went almost hand in hand. The landlords gave priority to the centers of their estates, and where necessary, they used their manorial administration to quicken the foundation of new parishes. The Esterházy family, for example, instructed their officers to supervise the parish priests and the management of the parishes in order to ensure their smooth development, while at the same time insisting that they cooperate with the clergy.34

In some cases, the interests identified above intertwined. Balatoncsicsó was home to Calvinist members of the petty nobility who rented the land around the village from the landlord, the Bishop of Veszprém. The establishment of a new Catholic parish in that village was a direct consequence of the economic reform of the bishopric’s estates, the aim of which was to restructure individual contracts in order to increase the incomes. The bishopric probably hoped to achieve several goals at once in Balatoncsicsó. In 1753, the aforementioned Márton Biró Padányi, as bishop of the area, lord lieutenant of Veszprém county and landlord, forbade the Calvinists of Balatoncsicsó from practicing their religion, adding that if they disobeyed, the lease would be terminated and the petty nobles living in the village would have to move. The community appealed to the Royal Council of Lieutenancy, which also investigated the matter from an economic point of view. In other words, the Council sought to determine whether the eviction of the noble tenants and the arrival of new settlers would reduce or increase the state tax incomes. In 1754, the Calvinist nobles of Balatoncsicsó were finally forced to leave the village, and the bishop soon concluded a contract with the new Catholic settlers. As a result, the bishop’s income as landlord increased considerably. When the new settlers arrived, a Catholic parish was established.35 Two decades later, the parish of Balatoncsicsó included eleven surrounding villages as daughter churches.36

One comes across many other cases on church estates of events very similar to the developments in Balatoncsicsó.37 The bishop-landlords often achieved several aims. They were able to assert the denominational interests of the diocese in opposition to Protestant congregations and to extend their institutional system by establishing stable Catholic parishes in areas which they had previously been unable to reach. Furthermore, although they were largely unable to retain and convert the Calvinist populations, they were able to emerge from the situation with considerable economic advantages by bringing in new settlers and signing new landlord contracts.

We see that the Royal Council of Lieutenancy played an important role in the case of Balatoncsicsó, and this indicates that the state, i.e. the secular authority, was also concerned with the issues surrounding the establishment of parishes. Through the council, the secular authorities provided sustained and assured support for the expansion and strengthening of the parish network. The Clergymen’s Fund, mentioned in the introduction, was responsible for these matters within the organization of the Royal Council of Lieutenancy. Thus, through the Clergymen’s Fund, the state entered the reorganization of the parish network. The aim was clearly to create stable parishes with well-educated and well-paid parish priests. In 1732, one year before the creation of the Fund, the community of Jászladány petitioned their landlord and the Council of Lieutenancy to support the foundation of a local parish. It only succeeded two years later in 1734, with the financial support of the Clergymen’s Fund.

In contrast to the paradigm of confessionalization, the initiative seems to have been taken by the communities. The intention to found a parish easily met with the approval of the landlord, the church, and the state. Although all from different points of view, they supported the process and the local needs. However, none of the actors, including the community, would have been sufficient to establish the parish on its own. The internal need of the community was based on easier access to better pastoral services and, consequently, the provision of salvation. In the external communication with the ecclesiastical and secular authorities, this need was most often complemented by the need to overcome geographical barriers and distances.38 There were significant differences, however, in the envisioned roles of the parish in the lives of the local communities.

Integration

One can approach the question of parish renewal as a process of integration from several points of view. The individual and group relationships which were an intricately interwoven part of local society were constantly evolving through internal processes, as these relations had to be constantly molded depending on the specific situations that arose. At the same time, integration was also a matter of how and to what extent individuals or a small group of individuals could become part of the larger whole. This can be examined within the local community, of course, but also in the context of the relationship between local communities on the one hand and the secular or ecclesiastical authorities on the other. Thus, integration implies a kind of political communication, not only between the community and the representatives of the power above it, but also between the key actors within the community.39

These multi-directional interactions were crucial from the perspective of the foundation of new parishes, but the organizational processes hardly came to an end at the moment of the foundation of a new parish. With the creation of the new institution and the entry of the parish priest into the community, the relationship between the institution and the individual on the one hand and the community on the other had to be defined. The following discussion offers insights into this process of integration by drawing on some of the examples mentioned in the previous section and considering the main nodes of intersecting (and colliding) interests in parish organization.

The first of these nodes is the decision of the community itself. The initiative was usually taken by the community leaders. In the aforementioned village of Alattyán, after an Easter mass which had almost been cancelled, “the magistrates and several inhabitants, coming out of the church, gathered at the master’s house.” Thus, the leaders of the community appeared, or in other words, the magistrate and the aldermen, as well as the schoolmaster, who was probably also the local notary. These individuals were essentially the local elite. Later, however, a popular assembly was held at which “the people, gathered together, cried out the same thing, that yes, they too wanted a parish priest.” Thus, the idea of founding a parish was suggested by the community leaders, but they also had the support of the local population.40

Tarnaszentmiklós in Heves County was founded in 1751 by the farmers who were leaving the neighboring settlement of Pély, but Tarnaszentmiklós remained a daughter church of the parish of Pély for nearly thirty years. The people of Tarnaszentmiklós submitted their first application in the spring of 1779, which shows that they tried to lay the proper foundations for the establishment of the parish. They seem to have had a sense of community awareness and the necessary knowledge of the background of the parish.41 A building which would serve as the parish house had been built with the help of the landlord, i.e. the Eger Chapter, and efforts had already been made to generate parish income. They visited the neighboring settlement of Hevesvezekény for precisely this reason. Hevesvezekény was a daughter church of the market town of Heves, and it had a completely different social makeup. While Tarnaszentmiklós was a village of serfs, Hevesvezekény was a settlement of manorial servants. Thus, the Tarnaszentmiklós aldermen ended up “holding conference with the compossessor [landlord] of the neighboring Vezekény.” The serfs of Tarnaszentmiklós had to persuade the landlords of Hevesvezekény to join forces and support the establishment of a parish, with Hevesvezekény as the daughter church and Tarnaszentmiklós as the parish. This meant that the local community had to step out of its own social circle and had to negotiate with a socially superior stratum in the interests of achieving a common goal.

This brings us to the second node, which concerned the ways in which a local community communicated with the outside world on the issues surround the foundation of a new parish. A given community had to interact with higher levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In the case of Tarnaszentmiklós, there is no precise information as to whether the lower ecclesiastical dignitary in the area, such as the dean or archdeacon, was contacted. It is true that the landlord of Tarnaszentmiklós was the Eger Chapter, and it appears from the petition submitted for the foundation of the parish that the community, by helping to build the parish house, had the support of the ecclesiastical body as landlord. This was emphasized in their petition to the bishop, but they also mentioned their discussion with the noble landlords of Hevesvezekény as an important element. The community of Tarnaszentmiklós may also have thought that their negotiations with the nobles would strengthen the validity of their request in the eyes of the bishop.

This was more difficult in the case of Alattyán, where the local community did not have the support of the landlord (i.e. the Premonstratensian monastery of Jánoshida), and indeed the parish was established against his wishes. However, even in this case, the most prestigious representatives of the community were asked to communicate with the bishopric. One of them was the schoolmaster, who was also the notary of the village, thus he was a key intellectual figure in the community. Another was Gergely Ivanics, head of the local noble family, who had lived in the village since birth and was one of the people who best knew the recent history of the village community, since he remembered, for example, the first parish in Alattyán, which had existed in the 1690s. Both his father and he were local churchwardens at one time, so this added to the prestige and, thus, authority he enjoyed. Their selection was symbolic, and it seems to have been a shrewd decision, because they did not go to the bishop’s court in Eger immediately, but rather went to the district dean in Jászapáti, and only after having obtained his support did they take their request to the bishop. This was a symbolic communicative gesture: the most respected members of the community, supported by the territorial mid-level church authority, personally took the village’s humble petition to the bishop.

Thus, they brought the petition before one of the highest possible ecclesiastical authorities, the diocesan bishop. As noted in the previous section, the diocese was seeking to expand the parish network, but it wanted to do so by founding stable, adequately prepared parishes. At the instructions of the bishop, the territorially competent deans therefore held inquiries in both Alattyán and Tarnaszentmiklós. It is telling and indeed reveals a great deal about the interests of the ecclesiastical authorities in ensuring stability that “my Lord the Vice Deacon came [to Alattyán] and summoned all the farmers, especially the better-off, together with all the judges and aldermen,” and had them sign a contract concerning the parish priest’s salary. In other words, he asked for a guarantee from the leaders of the parish and the wealthiest farmers, i.e. the local “elite,” on behalf of the church.

For this very reason, the dean’s first investigation in Tarnaszentmiklós was unsuccessful. In today’s terms, it could be referred to as an “impact assessment.” The dean contacted the parish priests of Heves and Pély to ask them whether their parishes would actually continue to function properly if the daughter churches (i.e. Hevesvezekény and Tarnaszentmiklós) were to be separated from them. He then also visited the villages which would be made part of the envisioned parish, the future mother parish (Tarnaszentmiklós) and its planned daughter parish (Hevesvezekény). For example, he accurately assessed the different social composition of Hevesvezekény: the community consisted of four serfs who worked the land and otherwise only manorial servants, and the local members of the nobility. These nobles shared commonly managed estates, and they were only part of the petty nobility (kurta nemesek), thus, they would be unable to provide support for the parish.

The dean’s negative assessment delayed the foundation of the parish, but it did not discourage the people of Tarnaszentmiklós. They seem to have resolved to make better and more strategic use of the community’s communication network. This meant, in part, more intensive discussions with the community in Hevesvezekény, but also with the community in Pély, which had already yielded some results. The people of Pély agreed to increase the salary of their own parish priest, and the poorer residents and nobles of Hevesvezekény also made more serious and concrete commitments. As a result, in the summer and autumn of 1780, a precise financial and economic plan was drawn up for each village, detailing where and how much agricultural land and what cash and in-kind commitments could be made to cover the costs of the priest’s salary. The successful work was probably facilitated by the fact that the community of Tarnaszentmiklós, which was made up of farmers from Pély, had close family ties in Pély. Furthermore, they had been in contact with the parish priest of Pély for 20 years, which, according to the documents that have survived, made it possible for the village to separate from Pély amicably.

At the other end of the country, in the diocese of Veszprém, the ecclesiastical authorities were conducting similar investigations concerning the possible establishment of the parish of Kővágóörs. Here, the situation was different (and involved different competing interests) because the parish had to be established in opposition to the local Protestant community, with a large number of filia. This may explain why, although the dean had already concluded his investigation in 1750, it took another five years for the parish to be founded.42 In these cases the Catholic Church was assessing the potential economic consequences of the establishment of a parish not as landlord, but from the perspective of an ecclesiastical authority. Its main aim was both to expand and stabilize the parish network.

The construction of the parish house in Alattyán, which was an important prerequisite for the establishment of a parish, also sheds light on the forms of internal cooperation within the community. However, since events in the village unfolded relatively quickly and the parish had to be established in the spite of the opposition of the landlord, the building was only erected after the parish priest had arrived. Pending the completion of the house, at the request of the people of Alattyán, the Heves County authorities agreed to provide accommodations for the parish priest in the county building in the village. The population of Alattyán consisted essentially of three major groups: the serfs of the Premonstratensian monastery of Jánoshida (they were the majority), the serfs of the Calvinist Recsky family, and the local nobles. The Premonstratensians opposed the establishment of the parish. The Calvinist landlord was indifferent to the issue. The only concrete step he had taken was to forbid his serfs from transporting the Premonstratensian canons from Jánoshida to Alattyán across the Zagyva River at their own expense and in their carts. The leader of the community was the aforementioned elderly nobleman Gergely Ivanics, who even remembered where the house of the parish priest had stood in the 1690s. The building had been destroyed, but the cellar had survived. The community started to build the new parish house here, but the Premonstratensian administrator, as landlord, forbade his serfs from Alattyán from taking part in the construction. The community therefore decided that the peasants and the serfs on the Recsky lands would start building the house, with the Premonstratensian serfs helping out in the evenings or on days when it was very unlikely that the landlord would take any steps to check on them. The establishment of the parish was a matter for the ecclesiastical authority, and the community had the support of the bishop in this respect. The serfs of the Premonstratensian monastery had to deal with the consequences they might face for having provoked the antipathies of the landlord, but in practice, the other two larger groups in the community provided them with protection.

Thus, with the establishment of the parish, a new institution appeared in these villages which was also a new factor in the cohesion and identity of the communities. The primary expectation of these communities is captured in the request made by the people of Tarnaszentmiklós that the Bishop “be merciful in creating a parish priest to comfort our souls.” In their request, the people of Alattyán noted that the parish priest would “be our consolation in secular and spiritual matters,” or in other words, they made specific reference to the role the parish priest would play in secular affairs. At the time, the parish priest was treated essentially as a member of the community. It was only at the end of the early modern era that the parish priest began to emerge and rise above the community due to the efforts of the church and the secular government.43 The community valued their parish priest and expected him to be both their spiritual (and even lay) leader, but also not to lose touch with the community and to abide by its “norms.” In a 1726 letter sent on behalf of their first parish priest, the parishioners of Pély, for instance, noted that “he lived with endurance among us, quietly and in peace.” The community knew full well that the stability of the parish was always fragile under the difficult local conditions, and they appreciated the fact that the parish priest was willing to live alongside them under modest circumstances and serve them.44

The parish was the crucible for a number of initiatives in the first period after its creation, and these initiatives further contributed to the internal and external integration of the local community. The religious confraternities that emerged in the village environment could become the primary form of community organization for local society. In Alattyán, by the 1740s, i.e. before the establishment of the parish, a local Confraternity of the Cord was set up by the Franciscans of Szolnok, which, in addition to overseeing various liturgical occasions (monthly mass, processions, etc.), also provided for the care of sick members of the society.45 In addition to strengthening the internal community networks, it also provided the locals with another external link to a nearby major settlement, Szolnok, and its important ecclesiastical institution, the Franciscan monastery. A local branch of the Society of Holy Mary, which had been founded in the neighboring market town of Jászapáti around 1700, was established in Pély in 1736, a good ten years after the local parish was created in the village.46

Integration, of course, was not simply an inclusive process. It was also an exclusive one, whereby elements deemed dangerous or alien to the community were pushed out, if this was considered necessary. These people were usually individuals who had come from other settlements and who did not adhere to the community’s norms. In some cases, this person was the parish priest himself or a member of the household which had come to the community with him. As noted above, in 1726, the people of Pély spoke highly of their parish priest, who kept a low profile among them. It was necessary for the people to speak out on his behalf because the maid at the parish house had claimed that she was bearing his child. The leaders of the community were united in standing up for the beleaguered priest on behalf of the community. The local magistrate, the cantor, the aldermen, and the head of the local petty nobility family signed the petition. Thus, the same key figures in the community played the crucial roles in this communicative process as had initiated the establishment of a parish in the case of Alattyán. It is clear from the letter that the maid who had made the accusation was not a member of the community, and the people of Pély emphasized that she was from Héhalom, and thus from another county and diocese. The parish priest allegedly had admonished the woman in vain, sometimes with quiet words, sometimes with harsher reprimands, but she did not forsake her “many regularly bad ethics,” and “there was a time when for a whole month she went to and for in rakish disgrace.”47 The case ended up coming before the bishop’s court, however, and the parish priest ultimately broke down and admitted that he had indeed had an immoral affair with the woman and was thus unworthy of his priestly vocation, but he insisted that he had not impregnated her. With the removal of the parish priest, Pély was briefly returned to its former mother church, Heves, and the community was right to fear that the unpleasant affair might result in the loss of their parish. This presumably was why they had been willing to overlook the priest’s conduct.

A similar incident took place twenty years later in nearby Jászladány. As was mentioned above, the local parish was established in 1734 at the initiative of the local community, with the financial support of the Clergymen’s Fund. Mihály Árvay, a highly qualified priest, was appointed to serve as the second parish priest in 1743, but he quickly ended up in conflict with the community. He embezzled from the church treasury, bought luxury goods, and behaved boorishly with the parish leadership and the parishioners. His most serious transgressions, however, were of a sexual nature. The testimony of the witnesses reveals that one of the parish priest’s first lovers was a local Roma woman, who was driven from the village under this pretext. The woman had cursed the village, saying, “rot in hell for driving me out, for the whole village knows that the priest does the same.” However, it was easier for the community to expel the Roma woman, who was on the periphery of local society, than to start a long process of ecclesiastical proceedings that would imperil the very existence of the parish and would have implications far beyond the local community. The moment the parish priest tried to take advantage of a prominent member of the community (the midwife) or of individuals related to the local leaders, however, the village reacted and informed the ecclesiastical authorities, using the channels of communication discussed above. The community took these measures in spite of the fact that the parish itself was relatively new. In Jászladány, the parish did not cease to exist, but the bishop appointed only a deputy parish priest, who was only installed three years later.48

As the examples above show, the communities were aware of the prerequisites for the establishment of a parish, and they used the related communication channels carefully and strategically. This of course meant going beyond the internal space of the community itself, i.e. the space of local politics. When necessary, they responded by sharing tasks within the community, and they stood up against individuals who potentially threatened their efforts and against other exterior hindrances to their goals through the actors who embodied the unity of the community itself. This indicates that the community was very much aware of its strengths and possibilities, and it was also well-informed about the procedures before ecclesiastical and secular authorities. This enabled the village community to achieve its goals and made it possible for grassroots initiatives to succeed. To this end, they were ready to engage in internal discussions and negotiations, which could mean both exclusion and inclusion. Through internal community integration and external integration into the secular and ecclesiastical structures, they were also able to solve the problems that hindered the establishment of the parish.

Hindrances and Interference

As the discussion above shows, the process of establishing a parish depended on a number of issues, and in order for a parish to be founded, several factors had to come together. The process was made all the more complex by the fact that in many cases various hindrances arose, sometimes from unexpected sources of opposition. In the discussion below I will examine a few of the most important phenomena which either made the creation of a parish additionally complex or hindered it altogether.

One of the most common sources of opposition was the entirely predictable resistance from Protestant communities. The above examples show that even in the best cases (when the community enjoyed the support of the ecclesiastical authorities and the landlord and there was an existing local Catholic minority), it was difficult to establish parishes in Protestant or mixed communities. Jászkisér, the only Calvinist settlement in the Jászság region, offers a good example of this. Several successive bishops tried to establish a parish in Jászkisér using different means. In 1701, a parish priest was installed in cooperation with the secular authority (the administration under the palatine) and the ecclesiastical authority (the Bishop of Eger), but less than half a year later, the local women chased the priest from the village, loading him and his household on a cart and sending him to the neighboring Catholic town of Jászapáti. Almost four decades later, in the wake of the plague epidemic of 1739–1740, the authorities wanted to settle Catholics on plots of land which had been left vacant so that the larger Catholic community could be used as a justification for founding a parish in the village. The Calvinists of the settlement, however, poured water mixed with cow manure into grape-picking buckets and used them to block the village street so that they would be able to pour the contents on any Catholics who were to arrive in the village. It was only in 1769 that a parish was finally established in the village, but the diocese of Eger was unable to rid the settlement of Calvinists.49

In the case of the secular landlords, as noted above, following the expulsion of the Ottomans, they were mainly interested in the settlement of their estates and the rapid launch of production in the fields, and they usually established Catholic parishes in central settlements of their estates. At the same time, if the settlement consisted exclusively of Protestants, they were also careful to ensure that the Protestants could continue to practice their religion, and they were willing to confront both the ecclesiastical and secular authorities in order to do this.50 This is striking because in the seventeenth century the Catholic nobility was still the main driving force behind counterreformation efforts in Hungary. Furthermore, agricultural production was the primary consideration for the ecclesiastical landlords too, the examples cited above of the bishoprics of Eger and Veszprém notwithstanding. The administrator of the Teutonic Order that held the landlord’s rights of the Jászság region, noted with incisive mockery about Bishop Gábor Antal Erdődy of Eger that the bishop was more than happy to tolerate Calvinism when it was in his own private interests (i.e. when it was in his interests as a landlord), while at the same time he would stand up in fervent opposition to Calvinists on other estates, completely ignoring the interests of other landlords.51

Much as in the case of the Teutonic Knights in Jászság, in Alattyán (a case to which I have now referred several times as an example), the Premonstratensian order was also an ecclesiastical landlord. Although the village was Catholic, the Premonstratensian canons of Jánoshida did not support the establishment of a parish there. This was presumably because there was little or no separation between the functions of the landlord and the church in the case of the Premonstratensian monks of Jánoshida. Obviously, the loss of ecclesiastical income from Alattyán affected them, even if they maintained their power as landlords. Nevertheless, they opposed the parish establishment of 1748 so vigorously that the Bishop of Eger was forced to bring the matter before the Primate-Archbishop of Esztergom, and in 1754, a decision was made in favor of the diocese and the community of Alattyán.52 This example also shows that, in principle, even in the face of strong opposition (in this case, from the landlord), people pursuing a local initiative from within the community could prevail even when their case was brought before the highest ecclesiastical forums if they could win the support of the right parties (in this case, the diocesan bishop).

A similar conflict arose between the bishop of Veszprém and the Cistercian abbot of Zirc over the establishment of the parish of Magyarpolány. This case was made distinctive by the fact that before the establishment of the parish, the church authorities and the ecclesiastical landlord had to take coordinated action against the religious practices of the local Calvinist congregation. Once the parish had been established, however, a dispute broke out as to whether it was under the jurisdiction of the diocese or the Cistercian abbey. The local Calvinist community, furthermore, tried to take advantage of the tension between the two former allies and appealed to the Royal Council of Lieutenancy to ensure their right to practice their faith. Thus, the Cistercian abbot had to defend his acts even before the secular authorities.53

As the examples above illustrate, the most important thing for the dioceses was the creation of stable parishes. However, in the eighteenth century, after the expulsion of the Ottomans, the dioceses had to take many other factors concerning the reorganization of the Church and church life into consideration. The synods and visitations, which were the cornerstones of internal renewal, consumed a great deal of energy, time, and resources, as did the reform of instruction for the priesthood, the reorganization of education, the maintenance of social institutions, the construction of the episcopal seat, and the restoration of episcopal estates. The establishment of parishes was sometimes relegated to the background, not because it was unimportant, but because the diocese had to ensure the necessary conditions (including, for instance, a sufficient number of adequately trained priests). In the diocese of Veszprém, for example, in the 1730s, the bishop was compelled to exercise caution, since he recognized the complications that would arise as a consequence of the poverty of the parishes. He also recognized that the church was facing a shortage of priests in part because of the comparatively rapid foundation of new parishes in the earlier period and in part because many of the members of the priesthood had aged. The process of parish establishment gathered momentum in the 1740s, and by the early 1760s, the diocese’s parish network was so thick that only a few areas were still in need of further development. The bishop’s attitude may also have changed. There were periods when the emphasis was on areas closer to the bishopric seat, while at other times, attempts were made to build up the parish network in areas more densely populated by Protestants.54

These kinds of considerations, which varied from diocese to diocese and from bishop to bishop, may well also have influenced the intensity of the process of parish creation. Thus, even if there was a demand from the community for the establishment of a local parish and even if the necessary preparations had been made, the bishop at the head of the diocese could hamper or block these local initiatives, depending on his ecclesiastical policy objectives and the more general, broader picture of the situation in the diocese.

Conclusions

The process of parish establishment in the eighteenth century forms a different picture than the Catholic renewal in the seventeenth century, a picture in which the growing importance of communities is vividly clear. Earlier, the church, the state, and the landlords had essentially cooperated against Protestant communities (if admittedly at times with tensions and hiccups). After 1681 and particularly in the eighteenth century, these actors were pursuing a much more diverse range of objectives. This led to increasingly frequent clashes of interests, which, while not necessarily preventing or interrupting the general process of the establishment of new parishes, did at times slow it down or break it up into several successive phases of greater and lesser intensity. It was also an era in which the initiative taken by village communities became more visible. The period of peace that followed the end of the Rákóczi War of Independence (1711) helped strengthen local society, and the consolidation of ecclesiastical and secular government structures enabled proactive communication.

The dramatic growth in the numbers of new parishes is striking in part because in nearby areas which could be seen as parallels from other perspectives one finds a very different trend. Studies show stable parish numbers in Carinthia and the territory of the diocese of Constance, with rare instances in which new local parishes were founded (and this process was hampered by considerable difficulties). In the Hereditary Provinces under Habsburg rule, a new wave of parish foundation began only in the last third of the eighteenth century as a consequence of the aims of Josephine ecclesiastical policy.55 Clearly, the explanation for the dramatic rise in the number of new parishes in Hungary may well lie in the large-scale destruction of the parish network during the period of Ottoman occupation and the delayed recreation and reorganization of the parish network.

While the process of parish foundation may have been considerably more restrained in the German-speaking areas than it was in Hungary, there were still some significant similarities in the initiatives that were taken. Communities in the German lands were also proactive, even if they had to use different strategies and methods to achieve their goals. The distribution of ecclesiastical jurisdictions was very different from the development of the church in Hungary, with monastic orders and ecclesiastical institutions in many places annexing beneficies on which the local communities could have founded their parishes. Thus, they often had to restructure their finances in a manner that would allow them to free up at least enough income from each local ecclesiastical benefice to create a position for a chaplain or a curate. In order to do this, of course, they had to use their network of contacts and gain the support of individuals in the various institutional structures, or in other words, they had to mobilize their political toolbox.56 The Hungarian communities were not lacking in these tools, and the examples presented above show how shrewdly and strategically they were able to use them.

In exceptional cases, such as the foundation of a parish in Alattyán or the accusations brought against the parish priest in Jászladány, one discerns indications of the use of the more elusive tools of local politics, such as gossip, threats, public gestures, and symbols. Catholic communities fighting to persuade the church to establish a parish had to use other means of communication with the authorities, of course, such as petitions, envoys, and the mobilization of supporters from higher and more influential social strata.57 The foundation of a new parish sheds light on the interactions among different small subgroups within a community and the construction of elements of collective identity (e.g. the memory of the old parish).58 It is also clear that the existence of a local parish constituted a source prestige for a village. Further examination of these experiences will foster a more subtle understanding of what a parish meant to a given community, in addition to the functions it served for the state and the church.

If we consider the individual local cases from a slightly more distant perspective, even over a longer time span and in a comparative context with other cases, we get a sense not only of the political-communication tools used by the community but also the wider field of “parish politics.” The ongoing changes in local social relations can be further grasped if we embed them in the structures of the world defined by the triad of landlord, the church, and secular power. Tropper, for example, suggests that the spread of literacy and administration strengthened the role of the power of the landlord in the lives of local communities to such a dramatic extent that these communities began to be excluded from the control of their parish.59 Although the social order in Hungary may have developed differently in this respect, Zoltán Gőzsy has also convincingly outlined how the state attempted to redefine the role of church administration and, within it, the roles of parishes in terms of social policy objectives.60 However, Keith Wrightson has argued, considering precisely these kinds of changes and what came in their wake, that although the higher powers (state or church) had incomparably greater means to impose their will, even this seemingly overwhelming power had its local limits. The local power structure was able to adapt to the efforts of the state and church to assert their will, since even strong power from above required the cooperation of key local actors. This in turn made it possible for communities to maintain local spaces of power where they could continue to use their own specific political tools.61

In the eighteenth century, following initials shifts in the seventeenth century, the influence of the state on parish organization became more and more pronounced in Hungary. This was due in no small part to the various efforts of the Clergymen’s Fund in the foundation of new parishes. Due to the parish census of 1733, which covered the whole country, the richness of the records of the Fund’s activities is unprecedented. A longer-term aim could be to examine the history and the registry of the Council of Lieutenancy over a longer period of time to shed light on the growth of state influence through parish organization and the reactions of local communities to these measures. By taking into account regional changes in landlord and church power, this kind of research would provide deeper insight into the changing political opportunities for the communities within ever shifting frameworks.

Archival Sources

Egri Főegyházmegyei Levéltár [Archdiocesal Archive of Eger] (EFL)

Archivum Vetus

nr. 14. Alattyániensis ecclesia

nr. 764. Árvay Michaelem respicientia

nr. 1097. Ferenczfy Franciscum respicientia

nr. 1746. Pélyiensis parochiae divisionem

Visitationes Canonicae

nr. 3414. Districtus Heves 1746

Veszprémi Főegyházmegyei Levéltár [Archdiocesal Archive of Veszprém] (VFL)

I.1.8. Visitationes Canonicae

Districtus Zaladiensis 1778

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