Armen- und Sozialpolitik in Ungarn im Vergleich zu Österreich

The volume deals with the central themes of social change in the Habsburg Monarchy and accompanies in narrative form the recently published volume IX/2 which offers the cartographic-statistical basis. The first part covers the structural changes affecting the society in the period 1850 to 1914 (“The Turn to an Industrial and Knowledge-Based Society”). These epochal changes took place not within the framework of the historic lands or the cultural communities of nations and religion but within socio-economically determined spaces of economic labour and production (“Living Space and Working Process”). The second part covers the ambivalent road “From a Society of Estates to a Society of Class”. Nineteenth century “Intermediate Europe” was a zone of change “from estate to class”, and this development affected all parts of society. Within the framework of the Habsburg Monarchy, the “social question” showed many facets and provoked many answers. Helplessness and resignation in view of this critical challenge led from discussions about strategies for compromise and adjustment towards a willingness to solve the seemingly unsolvable by means of force (“Social Change as a Socio-Political Challenge”). This volume is of central importance to the debate on the modernization of Central Europe. The problems of the common social and economic area of the multinational Habsburg Empire, as analyzed in this volume, are relevant to the challenges of today’s Common Europe.