„Nyugdíj” és időskori hivatalviselés a baranyai tisztikar példáján keresztül, 1790–1850

Absztrakt

Landless or impoverished county nobles had limited options for maintaining their social status and securing their family’s livelihood. Besides military and ecclesiastical careers, serving as an official for landed estates or for the county offered opportunities to improve their situation while preserving their prestige. However, such offices were liable to become a source of strain: the prospect of loss of power–and even more so, that of a regular income and financial stability–caused considerable anxiety for aging administrators. It is hardly surprising that officeholders held on to their hard-earned positions as long as possible, leading to a county administration staffed by civil servants over sixty–and in some cases seventy or eighty–whose capacity to fulfill their duties was progressively diminishing.By analyzing individual trajectories in office, the study presents an overview of patterns of the political elite’s end-of-career strategies in Baranya County between 1790 and 1850. The inquiry extends to elderly officeholding as well as the county’s proposed solution, the Baranya County Pension Fund for Former Officials, Widows, and Orphans, and its institutional history. The research highlights that, in many cases, late-life officeholding was not a matter of personal choice but a generational economic necessity.