Arisztokrata családok életmódja, életstratégiája 1945 után
The Lifestyles and Life Strategies of Aristocratic Families after 1945

Summary/Abstract: Using interviews, the paper examines the life circumstances of the aristocracy after 1945: how the social changes influenced the picture the members of this community formed about their own world, their lifestyles and their everyday routine? From the establishment of Communist dictatorship until the first half of the 1960s, the nobility's chances in education and the labor market were limited. Their children, stigma-tized as “class aliens”, were to experience the differences between the values of the outside world and the family first in primary school, and then had to face difficulties when con-tinuing their studies in higher levels of education. Mostly, they completed their final exams in a church grammar school, while in higher education they had the best chances if they pursued technological studies. After the War, they were manual workers for some time. Their most useful cultural ad-vantage was their knowledge of a foreign language. Men learnt some trade, while women were working as nurses, secretaries or in other fields of administration. The possibilities for a change came in the second half of the 1960s, but they often needed to rely on influen-tial friends. Their career possibilities were limited. Some of the interviewees had already given up their aristocratic lifestyle and identity before the war. In the post-war period, those who had not done so met often, maintained lively connections with each other, married each other, but some, due either to fear or the lack of parental pressure, did not join these reorganizing societies. Family background, however, was important when it came to choosing friends and partners, and this prefer-ence gradually became a part of their common – religious and conservative – values and views.

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