There are several detectable ideological precursors of Central and Eastern European land reforms of 1919–1920. However, these old “sherds” of ideology are not sufficient, even in their totality, to “explain” the advent of land reforms. As compared to the more forcible and larger scale confiscation of property in the course ofthe land reforms, any previous state settlement and similar precursors were inconsiderable. These ideas and ideological elements, however, may still serve as bridges in the course of events leading to land reforms in three distinct ways. First, they already contain the idea that the state is responsible for shaping the structure of society, even if it entails the intervention into private property or families. Secondly, these ideas also suggest that the state can consult “experts in this undertaking. Thirdly, the idea emerged that large estates serving as the essential basis for the old feudal elite should be replaced by a better distribution of land. The logic of the world war brought three further catalytic factor into the equation. First, some land had to be allocated for the victims of war and the returning soldiers. Secondly, mass displacement began as early as the Second Balkans War, and this caused the rise of the opinion that foreign population poses military risk. Lastly, military administration has already imposed confiscation and used force on the population, which escalated by the catastrophic shortage of supplies in the last year of the war. Despite all this, it is safe to state that the aforementioned precursors had much less impact on the historical events between 1918 and 1930 than they did on the historiography of the subject between 1989 and 2011.

The study addresses the problem of the historical development of social groups which embraced a strategy of professionalization in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but had less than full success with the project. This is the group of what might be called ‘semi-professionals’. The original sociological model of professionalization includes a number of clearly defined criteria. However, drawing a sharp dividing line between professionals and other vocational groups only reveals those groups aspiring to professional status, which have in fact remained on the less fortunate side of that dividing line. This study examines those groups which had partial success in professionalization. The largest ‘semi-professional’ groups in mid-nineteenth-century Europe were engineers, surveyors, and agricultural experts. By the late nineteenth century, these groups managed to establish specialized vocational training institutes. The diplomas conferred by these institutes served to define the group, but failed to establish a job monopoly. Regarding the kind of techniques that were employed in order to accelerate the ‘professional project’, it emerges that an aid to ‘professionalization’ might have been supplied by an ideological charge. An example for this is when an individual was considered to be a good (and vocal) engineer and an ardent (and vocal) patriot at the same time. In this case, either the first quality could latch onto the second, or the second one could carry the first. Out of the many possible variations, some examples of similar ideological charge are also described in the study. ‘Professionalizing’ groups with ideological sidelines were so common that one hesitates to use these supplementary factors as defining criteria. Instead of attempting to create a ‘typology’ of successful and semi-realized or partial professionalization projects, the study focuses on the contemporary social scenes, especially the exchange between professionalizing groups and others which these professionals associated themselves with. Two major comparative cases are discussed: the relationship of the notion of the gentleman and that of the professional in England, and the relationship of professionals to the process of embourgeoisement (Verbürgerlichung in German-speaking lands including Austrian territories). First, the results of research on the professionalization project in Britain are examined, engaged as it was in a long-term, nation-wide flow of public discourse. This discourse has linked the ‘service component’ to the ideal of the gentleman; and the cultivated, refined ‘gentleman component’ to the ideal of the professional — redefining and strengthening one another in the process. In the same way, the early nineteenth-century German university reform and its subsequent amendmends went a long way towards defining the part of the middle class called Bildungsbürger. The fight of ‘semi-professional’ engineers for the victory of their ‘professional project’ took the form of a fight for upgrading their training institutes to ‘technical universities’. Here, public discourse was not centred on giving or withholding respect from professionals on account of their distance from or proximity to ‘gentlemen’, but according to the merits of their knowledge and ‘Bildung’. In both cases, however, would-be professionals participated in a nation-wide discourse about their position in the social hierarchy. They strove to define their own place there by reference, allegiance or opposition to other groups, which themselves were in the process of determining their own place in society.

The paper attempts to give a parallel review of the “agrarian” movement in Hungary and in Germany. A twofold defi nition is applied for the “agrarian” movement: on the first level, “agrarian” is used to indicate organized advocacy of agricultural interests. On the second level, “agrarian” is used to refer to a popular movement of the rural society protesting against the capitalist mobilization of landed property and its deepening dependence on the world market. Here the development of agrarian movement is analysed through three stages. The first stage extends from the end of the 1870’s until the grain crises of the Central European agriculture. At this stage, diff erent agricultural associations can be identifi ed, which work for agricultural improvement and the spreading of new agricultural techniques and practices. Already at this stage, in the German lands a deeper involvement of rural elites in these associations may be observed than in Hungary. The second stage runs from the onset of the grain crises to the mid-nineties. This stage witnessed a shift towards protective tariff s in Germany, but not in Hungary. The situation of the two economies diff ered substantially, and called forth diff erent responses. But the diff ering situations were only partially responsible for the diff erent reactions. The mobilization to defend the agricultural interests was regionally and socially much more variegated in Germany than in Hungary. At the end of the period, there were attempts in both countries to mass mobilization on a much larger scale than previously. The ideological content of these drives transcended the level of advocacy. The drive resulted in a massorganization in Germany, the Bund der Landwirte, but no equivalent emerged in Hungary, apart from the old style associations. The German movement was much more aggressive, ebullient than its Hungarian counterpart. An explanation to these diff erences is sought by looking at the third period as well. Part of the answer can be found in the particular circumstances at the time of the mobilization drives in the mid-nineties, such as the launching of a popular Catholic party in Hungary, which must have taken up much of the potential followers of a prospective agrarian party. But there are other reasons as well. If we look at the actual activities of the Bund der Landwirte in Germany, we see an enormous range and volume of services, aid, tuition and mediation in farmers’ aff aires. This was largely missing in the corresponding Hungarian association, although the need for these services was felt and discussed. The success of the German Bund der Landwirte as a support organization might have been a key to its success as a political force. A second diff erence is that the great Hungarian landowners might have been unsure of the durability of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and therefore reluctant to kick off political mass mobilization. Thirdly and most importantly, the German rural elites might have provided a much broader and stable base for anti-liberal, anti-capitalist mobilization than their Hungarian counterpart

In the first half of the 19th century, the US was an enormously fascinating andattractive land for Hungarians to travel in and to report on. TheHungarian liberalBoloni Farkas travelled and wrote on America at the same time as Tocqueville,with resounding success. Th is paper picks up the story of the changing image ofAmerica after the 1849 defeat of the revolution in Central-Europe. It is a storyof consecutive deterioration of the shining image of America. Thetravellers wereof very diff erent social background, from aristocratic landowner to professionaljournalist, from university lecturer of chemistry to a clerk of the Ministry for Agriculture,Industry and Trade. Thedeepening aversion to America can be linked toa generally sceptical outlook towards the development of capitalism and liberalpolitical democracy. Interestingly, however, it does not stop there. From the first to the last of the travellers there are a number of criticisms, which refl ect profounddiff erences in the way an appropriate, humane, dignified life of the community ispictured by the visitors as opposed to what they see in the US.

The Hungarian Economic Society was one of the strongest lobbies in the last third of the nineteenth century. Here we have a look at its inception in the 1820-ies. This was not at all of an economic nature. The predecessor was an informal society of aristocrats and great landowners organizing horse-races. This friendly informal gathering has evolved slowly and gradually into a regular association. The gradual character was itself a pointer to the fact, that there was an effort to be made here. On the one hand, the transformation went in the direction of formal association, something that was not quite the usual aristocratic societal form. On the other hand, although the gentlemen were in every land and in every age horse-lovers, here the Hungarian aristocrats did need to learn a new set of social roles, a body of technical knowledge and – a “culture”. They have learnt from England and the English aristocrats, consciously and continuously, the word “imitate” would not be amiss here. Therefore, the present paper starts by taking a look at the development of the enthusiasm of the English aristocracy for sports, games and specifically, for horse-racing in the Napoleonic period and afterwards. It seems that there was indeed a deeper meaning of these fashions, and it had to do with a certain unease emerging in the traditional aristocratic social role. The importer of these fashions into Hungary was always held to be Count István Széchenyi, but as a matter of fact there were a number of other lords participating in the same effort. It is conspicuous, when looking at the social structure of the different informal societies and bodies of associations promoting horse-racing in Hungary, what a large proportion was made up by members of court society or high-ranking officers. By the same token, in the Hungarian races there were always quite a number of the aristocratic families from the Western half of the Empire, and vice versa there was a substantial group of Hungarian aristocrats represented in the races and clubs in the Austrian half of the Empire. All that suited the plans and designs of Count Széchenyi fine. Horse racing was meant by him to be the field of individual self-perfection, an area of moral and social accomplishment and rejuvenation of the aristocracy that Count Széchenyi thought to declining in every way, and to be one of a number of ways of bringing together and civilizing Hungarian society. The success of a society for horse-racing was probably ensured by the patronage of the aristocracy in the first place and the avowed non-political nature of the society in the second. By about 1834 the society was, on account of its membership and income, a success. But at the same time there was a new agenda emerging: horse and sheep breeding, that was starting to take even further away from a passion for horses and the fun of racing towards the more serious business of developing a backward economy.

The paper looks at the development and possible uses or advantages of the spatial typologies of agrarian societies that were developed a hundred years ago in German history. These were dual typologies, contrasting East and West, and hinged on different ways of peasant subjection in the context of reinvigorated early modern manorial economy in the East and the absence of such a subjection to a manor (Gutsherrschaft) in the West. There is an attempt made here to point out major inconsistencies of the terms as employed by those conceiving them and especially by their heirs in contemporary scientific discourse. Although there were some important modifications of the concept that tried to concentrate on the economic behaviour and economic activities of lords and peasants, the terms, notions, typologies developed at the end of the 19th century have been quite resistant to change and are still very much in use. Part of the answer for this continuing power simply lies in the absence of better models giving deeper insights or a better interaction with other disciplines. The article tries to review some contemporary attempts at developing typologies that do not hinge on the relationship of the peasant and the economy of the lord, but are based on a wider consideration. The wider concept looks at the question, which institutions lordly domination and peasant subjection in peasant societies are built upon, e.g. any typology of peasant subjugation is set not above, but within peasant society itself. For this, a new interaction with historical anthropology has been developed by contemporary historians of agrarian society in Germany.