Fösvény és tékozló dzsentrik? Egy Somogy megyei nemesi família története a 19. században
Miserly and Squandering Gentries? The Story of a Noble Family from Somogy County in the 19th Century

Summary/Abstract: The decline of the middle strata of nobility was a significant social process in the 19th century according to historians. The causes of this included the distrainment of their estates, the accumulation of debt by the nobility, and their subsequent migration to administrative fields. This social group was referred to as gentries. This paper presents the opportunities this group of nobility had to avoid losing social status through the history and inner conflict (an 1861 inheritance dispute) of a noble family. One of these options was adopting state-ofthe-art management practices, keeping the administration of their estates in one hand, and even acquiring new properties. However, besides the pragmatic nobles, there was another the type of gentries who left their lands and adopted a freelancing lifestyle. They were more akin to modern intellectuals than to land-owning nobles. The middle ground between these two career paths and attitudes was the younger son’s gentry lifestyle and rational management style. I’m aiming to use the family and court documents to call attention to a dichotomy in mentality between generations: the father took on characteristics of the old-fashioned, “miserly” attitude, while the son was the “squandering” person in this conflict. This contra position was made possible by the statements made during the dispute and the argumentation techniques used in these statements. However, it is important to consider that these different lifestyles can also be discussed in juxtaposition, as the mixing of these lifestyles was not uncommon during this period.

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