The Death of the Breadwinner As a Factor of Social Mobility in the Civil Service Milieu in Bohemia in the Latter Half of the 19th Century
The Death of the Breadwinner As a Factor of Social Mobility in the Civil Service Milieu in Bohemia in the Latter Half of the 19th Century

Summary/Abstract: The paper studies the intergenerational social mobility of state officials and their children in Bohemia in the latter half of the 19th century. It focuses on families where the father, working in a senior managing position in the state administration, died leaving behind a wife and children unprovided for. It follows both the structural inadequacies in the state administration pension system and the strategies the widows used in order to cope with the unexpected situation and the sudden drop in their living standards. Based on examples from the pension files of the Governor’s Office in Prague, it documents the subsequent life path of children that were still deemed dependent at the time of their father’s death, seeking to show the vulnerable position of the daughters that lacked financial or social capital for their eventual wedding, yet were limited in their choices by the strict social limitations imposed on middle-class bourgeois families.

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