Abstract
The relationship between the landowners and most of the agrarian population was significant for understanding living in the European countryside until the 19th century. Although these relationships were complex and had many aspects, the crucial role has the power of landowners.
In the region of Eastern Europe, serfdom developed. In Central Europe, the position of noble landowners was not so powerful but remained stable until the reforms of Joseph II.
These limited their power only to the economic part. The right to forced labour, traditionally called "robota", was still the most significant power of the landowners.
The forced labour remained in the Habsburg monarchy until the middle of the 19th century. During that time, more landowners voluntarily ended it and turned it into financial benefits.
In 1846 the big peasant uprising outbroke in Galicia. Over 1000 people, including members of an important Polish noble family Bogusz, were killed.
This uprising encouraged liberals in some lands to request reforms; even some conservative landowners were now willing to make changes. In 1847 young Czech lawyer Franz Brauner published his book Böhmische Bauerzustände.
In the book, he described his attitude to the relationship between landowners and peasants as a former landowner's bureaucrat and suggested his solutions. The book was successful, and its author got a gold medal for culture and science from Emperor Ferdinand V.
His reputation as an expert was widely acknowledged; therefore, during the revolution of 1848, he had a prominent voice in the act, which ended "robota". This paper argues his experience from Vlašim, where he became an important bureaucrat of Fürst Auersperg called "oberamtmann" and represented the landowner in many contacts with the common population.
This experience is put into the context of early Austrian liberalism represented by bourgeois societies such as Viennese Juridisch-Politischer Leseverein, with whose members he was in contact during his study of law in Vienna, and Prager Měšťanská beseda, in which Brauner was an important member and became a secretary for some time. The paper compares this experience with Brauner's position in his famous book and the act abolishing "robota" from 1848, which Brauner decisively influenced.
The paper also follows his polemic with Czech liberal journalist Karel Havlíček and argues the limits of Brauner's liberalism. This limit is illustrative of the form of liberalism in vormärz and during the revolution of 1848, which is crucial for the understanding of the history of Central Europe in the middle of the 19th century.