Historica Olomucensia

Civil Elites and Municipal Self-Government

Article analyses the methodology of both the German and Austrian historical writings regarding research on township and civil society, with additional information on the up-to-date state of research in the Czech Republic. The author works with the traditional triad (Stadtbürgertum - Wirtschaftsbürgertum - Bildungsbürgertum), focusing his attention on differences in social and cultural profile of the Czech Lands in comparison to Germany, as well as on the process of mixing the old burgher classes with the newly rising liberal society, a process that highly contributed to severe failings in Austrian liberalism. Kleinstadtbürgertum and Kleinstadtbildungsbürgertum also constitute relevant terms in this geographical area, because they (according to Austrian historians) more precisely express the factual economic and educational weaknesses of the part of most townspeople. The process of instituting a specific middles-class, bourgeois identity in contrast to the city itself and to lower social classes (for example the working classes) is also studied.