Civic gentry in Sáros county in the 19th–20th century: the history of Hazslinyszky family, part II.

Abstract

In the first part of this sequence to discuss the concept of Hungarian gentry, its character, role in society and depiction in literature I wrote about the Hazslinszky family, its roots and most relevant member: Frigyes, representative of the first generation of a newly emerged gentry society in Hungary. In the following, his brother’s, sons’ and grandsons’ lives are analyzed from the viewpoint of a more and more controversial social development during the first half of the 20th century. The signs of belonging to a rather noble strata appeared in the second generation: marriages show high connectedness, but values were constant. A new administrative stratum evolved in this period showing a fairly integrated image as a historical formation, but behind the employment groups, social positions, digging deeply into personal fates we found very altering value systems. These lives represent an alternate to those mostly described in Hungarian historiography characterizing a whole period.