The peasant is free

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Hans Kudlich demanded freedom of the press and political participation, but above all the emancipation of the peasants from obligatory dues and services and all aspects of subservience – and thereby the abolition of manorial rights. The manorial system had guaranteed the European system of rule since the early Middle Ages. The ‘lordship over land and people’ meant that the peasants were legally subordinate to a landowner and that the land they farmed did not belong to them. They were therefore obliged to pay dues to the owner, mostly in the form of money, obligatory labour (robot) and payments in kind, such as a proportion of their harvest.

The Vienna Imperial Diet, the first freely elected parliament in the Danube Monarchy, addressed the demands of the peasantry in the Agrarian Reform Patent of 7 September 1848. Whether we can truly talk of ‘peasant emancipation’ is however questionable. Peasants could legally apply to buy their farms for one third of the estimated value. The state paid a further third to the landowners, who for their part had to forgo their own third. However, many peasants were unable to raise the necessary funds to buy their farms, and many of them consequently moved to the towns and cities and henceforth supported themselves by waged labour.

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