Leibeigenschaft im spätmittelalterlichen Ungarn und die Bauernaufstände von 1437 und 1514
Serfdom in late medieval Hungary and the peasant-uprisings of 1437 and 1514

Summary/Abstract: Describes the development of serfdom (jobbágyság) in Hungary in the late Middle Ages. The decline of the situation of dependent peasants lead to different forms of resistance, as the two large peasant uprisings of 1437 in Transylvania and 1514 in the most parts of the hungarian kingdom. Both uprisings were characterised by conservative thinking, based on the idea of an ideal primitive state, when all peasants were free. The aims of the uprising peasants was thus to go back to "the good old times", to restore their allegedly ancient rights. Even if the uprising peasants had radical claims, they never tended to abolish the existing social order, but to go back to the ideal social order of an imagined beginning and to eliminate negative excesses that they beliefed were introduced later by the nobility.

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