The Austrian Nobility
Country life in all parts of the Austro-Hungarian dominions possesses a charm of its own that rarely fails to strike even the most casual visitor. Nowhere else in Europe, perhaps,…
From: 1910 C.E. To: 1910 C.E.
Location: Austria
From Austro-Hungarian Life in Town and Country by Francis H. E. Palmer, 1910.
Country life in all parts of the Austro-Hungarian dominions possesses a charm of its own that rarely fails to strike even the most casual visitor. Nowhere else in Europe, perhaps, does it present itself under so many varied aspects, but everywhere it is interesting and picturesque.
As might be expected among the Austrian races of Germanic and Slavonic origin, there is often much that reminds one of the corresponding classes in Germany or Russia; but notwithstanding these frequent points of resemblance, the Austrian, to whatever race he belongs, almost always possesses very distinct national characteristics of his own. Whether of Germanic or of Slavonic race, there is rarely any difficulty in distinguishing the generally light-hearted German Austrian from his kinsmen in the German Fatherland, or the Austrian Slavs from those living in the Russian Empire.
For Austro-Hungarians of every race, and every class of society, the pleasures of country life have almost always a peculiar fascination. In this respect even the Polish nobles in Austria differ widely from the higher classes of Slavonic race in Russia, who, as a rule, regard a prolonged residence upon their estates, whenever circumstances render it inevitable, as a punishment but little less terrible than exile to Siberia.
In Austria, it is true, the wealthiest nobles are often absentees, or spend but a very short period of the year upon their estates; but absenteeism is not, as in Russia, regarded as a sign of social distinction. In the case of the Austrian noble, however, it must be admitted that sport, rather than what would in England be regarded as the duties of a landed proprietor, forms the chief attraction in country life. The hereditary passion for sport in the Imperial family is well known, but that of the landowners and the higher classes generally is just as real and by no means a mere fashion.
Their love for the free life of mountain, plain, and forest is as natural an element in the Austro-Hungarian character as in the English. It is perhaps quite as much this passionate love of nature which has led to the creation of the vast number of far-famed Austrian watering-places as the medicinal virtues of their mineral springs. In such localities the British and American tourists, by whom they are so largely frequented, have ample opportunities of seeing at least some phases of Austrian character; but it would be a great mistake to suppose that the "Austrian life" seen in these fashionable resorts gives a fair idea of the normal existence of the Austrians at home.
Frank and open-hearted though they unquestionably are, it needs far more than a flying visit to the country, or a casual meeting at a hotel during a few weeks' holiday, to gauge the strangely complex elements in their character or form any accurate idea of their real home life. The Austrians possess many excellent and attractive qualities, but, notwithstanding, especially among the higher classes, they are, before all things else, a pleasure-loving people. There are many striking contrasts between the fiery and impetuous Magyars, the more dreamy and imaginative Slavonic peoples, and the Germanic Austrians who have hitherto regarded themselves as the Imperial race, whose language, religion, and customs were destined to replace those of the "inferior" nationalities. But in one respect they all possess a common characteristic, an intense passion for pleasure of every kind, which not even the most grinding poverty can wholly suppress. We will disregard for the moment the life led by the great nobles, many of whom possess princely fortunes, as we shall meet with them again when describing Court life in town and country.
Austria is still comparatively poor, and it is in the home life of the landed proprietors of average fortune, of the Bauers, and the labouring peasantry in the rural districts, rather than amidst the splendour of social functions in the capital or the chief pleasure resorts, that we shall find the normal features of Austrian character.
A Country House Near Zell-Am-Bee, circa 1903. Image from book.
Notwithstanding the Austrian noble's love for country life, he, like the Russian landed proprietor, is not remarkable for his business capacity in the affairs of everyday life. There are exceptions, of course, but as a rule, and especially among the smaller landowners, Austrian estates can rarely be taken as models of good management. This is partly due to the want of capital, but besides this there is a recklessness in the typical Austrian noble's character, an incapacity to take life seriously, which is generally only too evident in the administration of his property.
I will take as an example the family of an Austrian noble to whose country residence I have often paid a very enjoyable visit. If in the management of his private affairs there was somewhat more of the national laissez-faire than among the average of his neighbours, it was only a question of degree, and his manner of life may be regarded as a type of that led by a very large proportion of the class to which he belonged.
The house was approached by an avenue of fine trees running through several acres of park, gardens, and pleasure-grounds. Fifty years ago my friend's father had erected a monumental gateway, with a gatekeeper's lodge adjoining, but the latter was still unfinished, and the railing-in of the park and pleasure-grounds had never even been attempted. The peasant labourers upon the home farm had made a short cut through the grounds beside the gateway. This at length was employed by every one, and the approach to the house was along a bone-shaking road that skirted the "carriage drive," now a mass of weeds and wild flowers, with here and there in the centre a promising young fir or pine tree.
A large conservatory had been built years ago by my friend himself, but the heating apparatus had never been provided. The mansion, which dated from the middle of the eighteenth century, was built upon the model of the French châteaux of the period, but had never been finished. It would, indeed, have cost a fortune to complete it upon the scale upon which it had been commenced. The gardens and grounds alone would have needed a small army of gardeners to keep them in order.
Only the entrance hall, the principal salon, dining-room, and about a dozen other rooms were habitable. All the rest remained exactly as they did when, a century and a half ago, my friend's great-grandfather suddenly realised that the house he was building would need far more than his whole fortune to complete. A magnificent stairway led to rooms in which not even the floor had been laid down, and which still remained a wilderness of bricks, planks, and plaster, recalling to my mind the unfinished rooms in the palace of King Ludwig of Bavaria at the Chiemsee.
The furniture in the habitable rooms was a curious mixture of styles. In the drawing-room were handsome ormolu tables and inlaid cabinets of considerable value, side by side with ordinary cane-seated chairs of cheap Viennese make. In all the other rooms similar incongruities were to be found. In one were a splendid polished floor beautifully inlaid and a finely painted ceiling; in another the floor was of roughly stained wood, but partly covered with rich and expensive rugs and carpets. Upon plastered yellow-washed walls were hung fine old family portraits in richly gilded frames of carved wood, each of which was a work of art in itself.
My friend, who was an ardent admirer of all things English, had laid out a tennis-court beside his house. This was kept in excellent order, but beyond, the view of a beautiful little ornamental lake was completely cut off by the wild growth of willows and other bushes upon its banks. The owner of the estate, a man of education and refinement, was perfectly conscious of all its deficiencies and incongruities. He was always going to complete the old family mansion "when his fortunes changed," but a seeming incapacity to look at the practical side of life, or even to take the necessary measures to secure the ends he had most at heart, frustrated all his spasmodic attempts at setting things right.
His fortune was by no means inconsiderable, but losses at cards, the bane of Austrian as it is of Russian society, kept him in a state of chronic impecuniosity. Open-handed, hospitable, lavish, spending money with both hands upon wholly needless extravagances, with frequent alternations of extreme economy in matters connected with his property that would have considerably increased his income, he was nevertheless a charming host, and possessed of the special fascination of manner that renders the Austrians of the higher classes popular almost everywhere.
Both the Austrians and Hungarians are, as a rule, devoid of the false shame which so often
leads the Russian nobles to adopt all kinds of expedients to convey the impression that their wealth and social importance are far greater than in reality. The Austrian noble will often reveal his impecunious condition with almost startling frankness, and never dream that he is running
the risk of losing caste among his associates by the admission. So long as any means remain of satisfying his craving for pleasure and excitement, he will continue his happy-go-lucky existence to the very brink of disaster; and then, when all is gone, and irretrievable ruin stares him in the face, only too often by his own act, he will quit a world that can no longer offer him any compensation for the trouble of living.
In Russia the more practical character of the women of the higher classes often compensates in some degree for the reckless extravagance of their husbands and fathers. In Austria this more stable element in the landed aristocracy is much more rare. Charming as Austrian women of the higher classes most certainly are, good wives and mothers as are unquestionably very many among them, the comparative rarity of the prosaic quality of practical common sense is a very serious misfortune for society. For them, fully as much as for the men of their own class, the world of poetry and romance seems often more real than the crude, hard facts of everyday life.
Among the poorer class of nobles, compelled to cultivate their own land themselves, the absence of this controlling influence in their households makes itself especially felt. Country life, for the majority of Austrian women among the aristocracy, is enjoyable enough so long as it means riding, shooting, or hunting excursions, balls and parties, music, dancing, and private theatricals. Its charm quickly disappears when it entails the control of a large household, the supervision of the dairy, and the usual avocations of a farmer's wife.
The attractions of Vienna, or at least the nearest large provincial town, become irresistible; and often in a month's visit half a year's income will have been lost or won over the card-table. There are, of course, many exceptions, but far too often it needs a greater amount of moral courage than this class of the Austrian nobles generally possesses to abandon a mode of life which society demands.
A small Austrian landowner of good family would not lose caste if it were known that his lands were all mortgaged, his crops often sold in advance, and that the old family mansion showed evident signs of becoming a more or less picturesque ruin; for only too large a number of his friends and neighbours are in the same plight.
An Austrian Country House, circa 1903. Image from book.
The urgent demands of his property for improved agricultural machinery, of his land for drainage, or of his farm buildings for repairs, are all put off to a more convenient season if the money be needed for a grand ball to which all the notabilities of the district are invited, the entertainment of a houseful of visitors from Vienna, or in winter a splendid fête upon the ice. Nothing could be more beautiful than the scene to be witnessed at some of these winter fêtes, in which hundreds of lamps and flaming torches convert a picturesque corner of a forest into a piece of fairyland.
From the severe winters in many parts of Austria, this form of social gathering is a very favourite one, and is often organised at great expense. Musicians are frequently engaged from Vienna or the provincial capital, ice kiosks of fantastic form are erected and brilliantly lighted, and the skaters, in rich and varied costumes and splendid furs, trace intricate mazes upon the glittering surface of the ice.
But though almost all the pleasures of the Austrian nobles are expensive, money alone by no means ensures an entrée into the society of the old landed aristocracy. As an example of this, I may mention a case that came to my knowledge a few years ago.
A millionaire financier of German origin purchased a large estate in Upper Austria. It was his great ambition to be recognised as a territorial magnate by the old noblesse. As most of those in the vicinity were owners of small but heavily mortgaged estates, he felt confident that they would all be only too glad to court the favour of so great a man as himself, and thus give him the entrée into society that he so ardently desired. The fine old château was restored and refurnished at immense cost, though not perhaps with the best taste.
The grounds were laid out afresh, and the adjoining forest was cleared of the undergrowth that had sprung up during years of neglect and mismanagement. The land was drained and improved, and agricultural machinery was introduced. But, alas! the new proprietor soon discovered that there are things that not even money can purchase, and that all his hopes of being received as an equal by the old landowners in the neighbourhood were vain.
"I could buy up the whole lot of them if I liked,” he grumbled to me one day; "and yet they treat us as if we were mere peasants! In fact, they treat the peasants better. I have often seen the Countess X— calling upon some of the little Bauers near and chatting quite amiably with their wives and daughters. Would you believe it?—she has never even entered our house. And yet every year they have a lot of riff-raff down from Vienna to stop with them—writers, artists, singers, musicians, and even actors, people who have hardly a florin to bless themselves with!"
The costly and disappointing discovery that the unfortunate financier made reveals a very typical phase in the character of the old-fashioned Austrian nobility in their country homes. Their intercourse with the working classes on their estates, and with the poorer peasantry in their neighbourhood, is natural and unconstrained, for their respective social positions are clearly defined and recognised on both sides. In the world of literature and art, music and the drama, it is the same.
For generations the houses of the Austrian nobility both in town and country have always been thrown open to literary men and artists, quite irrespective of their fortunes. As a rule, however, and above all in the more conservative country districts, their doors would be as rigorously closed to the nouveau riche, however great his wealth might be, if that was all he had to offer.
Of course, in Austria as elsewhere, the half-ruined representatives of grand old historical families are sometimes willing to restore their fortunes by marriage with the daughters of commercial or financial millionaires. When such marriages occur, however, it is generally in the families of the highest nobility in Vienna, and far more rarely among the provincial aristocracy residing upon their estates.
The character of the Polish nobles in Austria is of a different type from that of the Teutonic nobility. Not less unpractical, and often as reckless in the administration of their affairs, they resemble more nearly the old French noblesse of the Faubourg St. Germain. Like them, they have learned nothing by their misfortunes, and they have forgotten nothing. The world has moved on since the partition of their ancient kingdom, but they have remained ever since stranded, as it were, upon the shoals of the eighteenth century. For the Polish nobles, whether in Russia or in Austria, it often seems as if the most important affairs in life sink into insignificance in comparison with the loss of their country's independence.
The feeling is not due to patriotism, however, in the real meaning of the word, for rarely will a Polish noble do anything of a practical character to raise the status of the Polish or Ruthenian peasantry upon his estate. It is one of personal humiliation alone at the loss of the power and privileges their forefathers enjoyed, and so grievously misused, in by-gone times. A poor Austrian landowner will generally manage his property himself, if he resides in the country, and, however careless he may be in the administration of his own affairs, he rarely forgets that his position entails a certain amount of responsibility towards those who are dependent upon him.
The Polish noble will talk a great deal more than the Austrian about the "moral responsibilities of his position," but seldom indeed will his professions take any practical form. As long as he can afford it, he leaves the real control of everything to his agents, and as a result in every Polish district the power and influence of the ubiquitous Jews are constantly increasing. They alone purchase on their own terms the produce of the land, and by complicated systems of " rings' ' retain in their own hands a complete monopoly of the rural trade. Between the Polish noble and the Polish and Ruthenian peasantry there is a great gulf fixed, and in Austria, as in Russia, the Jew has stepped into the vacant space. As we shall see in dealing with Hungarian life, the economic development of the Transleithan half of the monarchy derives far more assistance from the Magyar nobles than Austria does from the Germanic or the Slavonic aristocracy.
Fortunately for Austria, beneath the nobles of various fortunes there is another section of society, known in Austria and Germany as the Bauer class, which in the former country is capable of supplying to a great extent the more solid moral qualities of which the Empire is so sorely in need. I have intentionally employed the German expression Bauer, as the word “peasant”— the nearest English equivalent—would convey quite a false impression when ap- plied to the richer members of this class.
The Austrian Bauers and the Hungarian Paraszts occupy a position corresponding in many respects to the French paysans. Like the latter, they form numerically a very large proportion of the whole population, embracing not only men who are really “peasants” in the ordinary English sense of the word, but also agriculturists in the enjoyment of very substantial fortunes, who resemble more nearly the prosperous English yeomen of former days.
In many districts, indeed, Bauers are to be met with who, from a financial point of view, are really far better off than many of the poorer landowners of aristocratic lineage. At the same time, whenever they happen to be found in the same locality, there is always socially a sharp dividing line between them. Noblesse oblige, and the noble landowner, however severe the pinch may be, feels himself compelled to keep up, as long as he can, a style of living that becomes harder and harder to bear with the diminishing value of the produce of his estate, and only too frequently he is forced to make up the deficiency by successive and often crushing mortgages.
But the Bauer also has a social code of his own, to which he clings all the more tenaciously, as, in his case, too, it is based upon class feeling and pride of race. Rarely, indeed, even among the most prosperous Bauers, so long as they are occupied in the cultivation of their land, is there any tendency to ape the manners or social customs of even the poorest of the aristocracy or of the official or professional classes, although a growing proportion of the latter is now drawn from the younger sons of their own families.
It has hitherto been the pride of the Austrian Bauer that he is able to provide his household with almost all the necessaries of life from the productions of his own land alone. The fall in the money value of his agricultural produce consequently affects him only in that portion of it which he is obliged to sell to provide for his relatively small outgoing expenses, his taxes, and the purchase of the few commodities he needs which his land does not produce.
Unfortunately, there are influences at work which must eventually change the patriarchal and picturesque mode of life still led even by the richest Bauers; but long-established customs and habits of thought are not easily uprooted, and the steadfastness of character and capacity for work that have been formed during many generations have left traces that play no small part in the success that is now often won by their sons in other walks of life. This is especially observable in the universities, where the sons of Bauers often distinguish themselves far more than students drawn from a higher social class.
It would need far more space than I can command to give a detailed description of the life of the various classes of Austrian peasantry, not only from the fact that the economic conditions are by no means the same in all parts of the Empire, but also from the striking differences in nationality. Notwithstanding this, however, there are many wide-spread and picturesque customs that are common to the peasantry in nearly all parts of the Austrian half of the monarchy.
To illustrate this, I will take as an example the family of a well-to-do typical Bauer whose acquaintance I made under very favourable circumstances, as their mode of existence will give us an insight into the relations of the richer peasants with the agricultural labourers and several other classes of the Austrian people. Nearly all I shall describe might also be found, with but slight variations, among most Bauers in a similar position of fortune in the Tyrol, Upper and Lower Austria, and in many parts of Bohemia.
Palmer, Francis H. E. Austro-Hungarian Life in Town and Country. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1910.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
