Adminisztráció és likviditás: gróf Festetics László anyagi helyzete a 19. század első évtizedeiben
Estate Management and Liquidity: the Finances of Count László Festetics in the First Decades of the Nineteenth Century

Summary/Abstract: Estate Management and Liquidity: the Finances of Count László Festetics in the First Decades of the Nineteenth Century Count László Festetics (1785–1846) inherited large estates in Transdanubia. His father, Count György Festetics (1755–1819) was not only the founder of the first steward training college, thereby providing trained agriculturists and stewards for Hungary’s most important sphere of production, but bequethed a well-managed system of domains and consolidated family finances to his son. &e debt level of the Festetics family was outstanding among the Hungarian aristocratic families at the end of the eighteenth century. However, the ensuing boom of the Napolenic wars as well as the combined effects of the government’s devaluation patents issued in 1811 and 1816, whereby previous loans granted in silver or gold were converted to bank notes and treasury vouchers according to a daily rate of exchange, largely contributed to the rise of the Festetics family. Nevertheless, the depression of the 1820s adversely affected Count László Festetics’s financial status resulting in the sequestration of his estates. &is paper is meant to present a general view of contemporary estate management of one of Hungary’s foremost aristocratic families as well as arguing that it was not exclusively due to Count László Festetics’s high-handedness and lavish life style which inevitably brought about the introduction of such drastic measures, but the concommitant effects of a depression also contributed to the substantial deterioration of his finances thereby failing to maintain the required level of servicing his outstanding debts.

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