Subtitle:

Acta Poloniae Historica T. 121 (2020) ; Local Elites in the Habsburg Monarchy after 1868

Institutional creator:

Polska Akademia Nauk. Komitet Nauk Historycznych ; Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla

Contributor:

Polska Akademia Nauk. Komitet Nauk Historycznych ; Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla

Publisher:

Instytut Historii PAN

Place of publishing:

Warszawa

Description:

p. 27-41

Type of object:

Journal/Article

Abstract:

In Cieszyn Silesia (the eastern part of the crownland of Austrian Silesia) from the time local government was introduced in 1864 until 1918 it is possible to identify 1332 village mayors (German: Gemeindevorsteher; Polish: wójt; Czech: starosta). Of these, at least 1006 (almost 76 per cent) had another village mayor in Cieszyn Silesia in their ‘kindred circle’, which includes second-degree relatives according to canonical computation, as well as witnesses at weddings and baptisms of their closest family (children, parents, siblings). The uninterrupted lineage of these types of relationships connected at least 875 village mayors, or 66 per cent of all those known. Thus the partial democratisation at the level of local self-government led to a kind of oligarchy, with the position of the village head being assumed by wealthy peasant families who all had connections to one another. Outside of the ‘kindred circle’, there were the factory owners and officials of archdukes and counts, who took the position of village mayor in industrialised areas, as well as a few Jewish village mayors and probably the majority of village mayors from the mountain villages. The question examined here is whether the situation looked similar in other parts of the Habsburg monarchy, or whether Cieszyn Silesia stood out in this respect. This question remains unanswered due to the lack of analogous studies on village mayors.

References:

Kasprzykiewicz Josef, Landesgezetze für Schlesien, i (Teschen, 1870)
Minakowski Marek, ‘Gęstość sieci koligacji w parafii Kampinos’, Przeszłość Demograficzna Polski, xxv (2014), 65–74
Mitchell William E., ‘Theoretical Problems in the Concept of Kindred’, American Anthropologist, lxv, 2 (1963), 343–54
Morys-Twarowski Michael, ‘The Relationship between Religion, Language and Nationality on the Example of Village Mayors in Cieszyn Silesia in 1864–1918’, Historie – Otázky – Problémy, x, 2 (2018)
Morys-Twarowski Michael, Wójtowie na Śląsku Cieszyńskim 1864–1918. Studium prozopograficzne, 3 vols. (Kraków, 2018)
Nowak Krzysztof, ‘Życie polityczne i społeczne’, in Idzi Panic (ed.), Ustroń 1305– 2005, i (Ustroń, 2005)
Pilch Józef, ‘130 lat samorządu wsi, osiedla, miasta Ustronia’, Pamiętnik Ustroński, vi (1993)
Šústková Hana, ‘Nobilitovaní příslušníci slezského zemského sněmu v letech 1861–1918’, Historica – Revue pro historii a příbuznévědy, 14 (2017), 263–83

Relation:

Acta Poloniae Historica ; Acta Poloniae Historica

Volume:

121

Start page:

27

End page:

41

Detailed Resource Type:

Article : original article

Format:

application/octet-stream

Resource Identifier:

oai:rcin.org.pl:138255 ; 0001-6829 ; 2450-8462 ; 10.12775/APH.2020.121.02

Source:

IH PAN, sygn. A.295/121 Podr. ; IH PAN, sygn. A.296/121 ; click here to follow the link

Language:

eng

Rights:

Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license

Terms of use:

Copyright-protected material. [CC BY-ND 4.0] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license, full text available at: ; -

Digitizing institution:

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Original in:

Library of the Institute of History PAS

Projects co-financed by:

National Programme for the Development of the Humanities

Access:

Open