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Dissertation Information for Belazs A. Szelenyi

NAME:
- Belazs A. Szelenyi

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (1998)

ADVISORS:
- Ivan T. Berend

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Robert P. Brenner
- Michael Mann

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: German burghers in sixteenth-nineteenth century Hungary: A study of a substitute middle class

Abstract: The specificities and peculiarities of the development of the Hungarian middle class have been a key point of interest for social scientists in and outside of Hungary since the dawn of the Enlightenment. In the modern period the issue of the Hungarian middle class has been especially heated, with first the establishment of a right wing dictatorship in the inter-war period followed by the establishment of communism from after 1945. Many of the problems associated with the founding of non-democratic and anti-civil society regimes have been seen as emanating from the lack or weakly developed nature of a western type of middle class.

This work addresses the questions and problems associated with middle class development in Hungary, by looking at the evolution of half a dozen of the oldest urban middle class families in the Hungarian Kingdom. The research for this work has relied extensively on the use of both municipal and county archives and has tried to paint a picture of Hungarian history from a micro-historical perspective. However, while the methods and perspectives are of micro-historical origins, the focus of the work is deeply influenced by macro-historical debates involving the divergent roads of development that took place between eastern and western Europe in the transition from feudalism to capitalism.

The work lays bare both the origins and historical evolution of the Fischer, Genersich, Liedemann, Nendtvich, Schneider, and Szontagh families in the county of Scepius from the turn of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. It attempts to portray Hungarian history from an "urban middle class perspective". By tracing both the social mobility and occupational structure of the 10 generations involved in the study, a contribution is intended to be made in the understanding of the generalities and specificities of the evolution of the Hungarian urban estate from the time of the Reformation to the outbreak of World War I.

The central finding of the work has been that historically the dynamic elements of the Hungarian middle class have been new immigrants into Hungary. Indeed, much like the success some Jewish immigrants experienced in the nineteenth century, the families researched in this work were all new immigrants into the Hungarian Kingdom in the time of the Reformation and prospered in a similar way as the Jewish immigrants had; as filling the "middle class vacuum" of Hungarian society. However, while the families researched originally prospered as a substitute middle class, as Hungarian society followed a Prussian Road to modernity, in time the members of the researched families became ennobled and gentrified and flooded overwhelmingly into the ranks of the Hungarian professional middle class in and against careers in business.

MPACT Scores for Belazs A. Szelenyi

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-10-08 11:02:25

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Students under Belazs A. Szelenyi

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None