Der Adel und die Bodenreform in der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik (1918-1938). Positionen, Strategien, Identitäten

Abstract

With the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, the nobility lost the
exclusive status and privileges it had enjoyed under the Habsburg Monarchy. The
new elite clearly indicated that members of the noble ranks would not be playing an
important role in the new republic – in politics as well as in public life. Particularly
painful for the noble families was the comprehensive land reform that resulted in
many of them losing large parts of the estates they had often owned for centuries. In
her study, the author reconstructs the strategies resorted to by representatives of the
nobility in Czechoslovakia in hopes of protecting at least some of their property
from confiscation. On the one hand, she shows how some noble families attempted
to employ legal means or use their connections to influential politicians to effect
exemptions from the land reform. On the other hand, she investigates the networks
that nobles forged to advocate their interests – including at the League of Nations.
The study ends with the year 1938, when the nobility’s hopes for a return to the “old
ways” were destroyed for good with the Munich Agreement.