The gentry of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and the Duchy of Bukovina

In the Austrian Empire, the “titular nobility” ( German Betitelter Adel ) from 1806 (that is, from the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire ) consisted of five steps and had the following titles:

• “Noble” ( German: Edler ) - lower level - titles “ Edler von ... ”;
• The Imperial Knight ( German: Reichsritter );
• "Baron" ( German: Freiherr );
• "Count" ( German: Graf );
• "Prince" ( German: Fürst ).

After the Imperial Decree of January 1757 (amended on April 16, 1811), each officer who served immaculately 30 years and took part in at least one battle could apply for elevation to noble rank. Without participation in military campaigns, the compulsory service period was 40 years. The noble officer stood closest to the clan aristocracy.

The Austrian peculiarity was the "Order nobility", which existed since 1758 and was associated with the award of the military order of Maria Theresa. Subsequently, the acquisition of the titles of Ritter and Freiherr was also extended to gentlemen of various degrees of the orders of St. Stefan, Leopold and the Iron Crown. The noblemen belonged to the so-called “second estate” —they belonged neither to the aristocracy (“first estate”) nor to the “people” in the generally accepted sense. These were noble officers, entrepreneurs, employees, artists and people of other free professions, who remained mostly ordinary people in their mentality and social behavior, despite the nobilization. The Austrian second estate was formed in the 18th century, and since the middle of the 19th century, the liberal bourgeoisie has partially entered into it.

After the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the Habsburgs, who had been Austrian emperors since 1804, continued to erect subjects into the nobility until the collapse of the monarchy in 1918. Some nobles even earned the right to be hereditary peers in the House of Lords (Herrenhaus) of the imperial council (Reichsrat) - Parliament of the Austrian Empire.

The process of confirming the gentry dignity in the western and eastern Slavic lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth , which was transferred to the Habsburg empire in 1772, was started from the very beginning of the entry of these lands into the Holy Roman Empire (the Austrian Empire since 1806), and the "Magnate Commission ", Which was composed of the most famous magnate clans of the region. She examined each case of gentry on the merits, but unlike the Russian Empire , in the event of refusal to recognize gentry rights for any kind, this kind had the right to appeal this decision in court, and then the court made a final decision on this issue.

In order to confirm his gentry dignity, the applicant for gentry in the kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria needed to bring in court three other persons who had gentry dignity and could confirm this dignity with the person (s) who sought it. Since the documentation (metrics about baptism, marriage, death, etc.) in the Catholic and Greek Catholic churches of the Ukrainian lands of the Commonwealth was organized at the then European level, this procedure was not difficult for most noble families, and almost all of them passed without special costs. Almost all gentry births confirmed their gentry dignity, although there were exceptions when, due to the loss of metric documents, a certain category of impoverished (clerical gentry) had problems confirming their status.

For 1778, according to the Joseph Metric (Galicia’s first land cadastre), about 2.6 million people lived in Galicia, the number of gentry was 19 thousand births, with family members up to 100 thousand people (about 3% of the total population of Galicia).

In 1857, a gentry stamp was published ^[1] , which included all those representatives of the gentry clans who were able to confirm their status. It is also worth noting that in the Habsburg empire, some genera succumbed to temptation and actually bought themselves the highest titles - counts , or barons , which they did not have in the past. ^[2]

The religious affiliation of the aristocracy, just like ethnicity, did not have much significance - the Austrian nobleman (German - österreichischer Adel) could belong to any of the religions recognized within the Habsburg empire: Roman Catholic in Austria , Hungary and Poland , Protestant in Bohemia ( Czech Republic ) and Transylvania , Greek Catholic and Orthodox in Galicia and Transylvania ^[3] . The “Right of Tolerance” ( German Toleranzpatent ) was established by decree of the Holy Roman Empire Emperor Joseph II in 1781. This decree equalized Ukrainian rights or, in the language of that time, the Greek Catholic gentry with the Polish - Catholic (Orthodox, Protestants and Greek Catholics with Catholics). Ukrainian gentry and priests gained equal rights and opportunities with the gentry of other Christian denominations. ^[4] . In 1907, in Sambir, 57 immigrants from gentry families founded the "Society of the Russian gentry in Galicia" (organization " Partnership of the Russian gentry ". ^[5] ), in 1938 it was transformed into the partnership of the Ukrainian gentry named after Peter Konashevich-Sagaidachny ”( Ukrainian Ukrainian gentry im. Peter Konashevich-Sagaidachny ).

One of the features of Galicia, as well as other lands of Western Russia that were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, is the presence of a large number of local nobility. Despite the process of polonization in the 15th – 20th centuries, most of this estate retained the Greek Catholic faith and language. However, despite its origin and a significant number, unlike the Polish gentry, for various reasons it did not become the basis for a national revival, where it was replaced by immigrants from Greek Catholic priestly families (which, however, the majority also had gentry origin )

Most of them lived in villages in large communities, and although having some peculiarities, life in general was similar to peasants. At the same time, many settlements were divided into the rustic (peasant) and gentry parts.

Among the descendants of the chervonoros gentry clans until the first half of the 20th century there was no unequivocal national political homogeneity. The majority of those participating in the national cultural and educational organizations of the region belonged initially to the Galician-Russian movement, however, with the growth of the national movement by the 20th century, they are gradually moving to Ukrainian-philic positions.

Due to such a significant amount of Ukrainian gentry in rural areas in the XIX century. Often there were cases of Russification of the descendants of the Polish gentry and their transition from Roman Catholicism to Greek Catholicism. This fact in Interwar Poland served as an argument for the assertion that the entire local nobility of Eastern Galicia was Polish in origin, subsequently having lost their language and changed their faith due to the lack of churches and the actions of Greek Catholic priests. According to the organizers, out of 800 thousand immigrants from the local nobility in the whole of Interwar Poland in the 1930s, 300 thousand lived in the Carpathian region . Of these, only 20% were Roman Catholic confession, while half of them were Ukrainian-speaking. Therefore, one of the actions of the Polish government in the framework of polonization was the creation of the "Society of the local nobility" ( Polish. Związek Szlachty Zagrodowej ), which aims to educate, publish literature (including in Ukrainian, due to the general weak command of the Polish language among ordinary people members of this society) and other methods for repolonization of the local nobility. Due to the short period of work of this society, it did not succeed in achieving particular success. Nevertheless, during the population exchange, there was a case of the departure of the local nobility of the village of Baczyna to the Western regions of Poland. ^[6] .

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