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Solomon Haliță (1859–1926) 

Obrázek1

Image source: here.

Maxim Haliță (1826–1893) came from a border guards family in Sângeorz Băi (Sângeorzul Român, Oláhszentgyörgy). He started as a village teacher during the 1840s, then served in the 17th (2nd Romanian) Border Guards Regiment during the Revolution of 18481849. After the military border system in the area was decommissioned he started a career in local administration: village notary (1851–1872), clerk to the district sheriff’s office (1873–1873), district sheriff (1873–1875), royal head-postman (1875–1889). In 1852 he married Ileana Ciocan (adopted by the family Isipoaie), and fathered four children: Elisabeta (1853–1915), Axente (1856–1865), Solomon (1859–1926) and Alexandru (1862–1933). (more, here)

His children were part of the first generation of young people who benefited from financial support for their studies, provided by the Border Guards’ Funds, an institution created following the decommission of the military border. 

Elisabeta studied at the girls’ school in Năsăud (Naszód), then in Bistrița (Bistritz, Beszterce) and married Grigore Marica, a priest from Coșna – a nearby village. In 1879, her husband died after being accidentally wounded by her brother, Solomon Haliță (20 years old at the time), while returning from a hunting trip. As a consequence, Solomon vowed not to marry and have children, but to raise his three orphaned nephews, which he did, supporting them throughout their life. (more, here)

The youngest son, Alexander, studied Greek-Catholic Theology at Gherla (Szamosújvár) (1884–1888) and Letters at the Francis Joseph University in Cluj (Kolozsvár) (1888–1893). He was a teacher at the Highschool in Năsăud (1891–1911, 1920–1928), as well as parish priest of Năsăud and curate of Rodna (1911–1920). (more, here)

The best-known member of the family, however, was to become Solomon Haliță. He studied at the Highschool in Năsăud, where he distinguished himself and was also actively involved in the school’s literary societies (both the authorized and the secret ones). These societies were at the time a hotbed of Romanian nationalism and some of Haliță’s colleagues (Ioan Macavei (18591894), Corneliu Pop Păcurariu (18581904)) would later become journalists of the radical nationalist political newspaper “Tribuna”, and would spend time in prison for their articles. Haliță went on to study History and Philosophy, and Pedagogy at the University in Vienna, where he joined the Romanian Students’ Society “România Jună”, but also a smaller literary club called “Arborele” (The Tree), of only 17 members. The main objective of this club was to spread the cultural ideas from the Old Kingdom of Romania (in particular those of the “Junimea” Society) among the Romanians in Transylvania. (more, here) It is worth noting that more than half of its members later became public figures in the Romanian cultural and political milieu, and at least one of them (Septimiu Albini) linked up with Haliță’s former high school mates in the editorial office of “Tribuna”, and later also served time for press offences. (more, here)

After completing his studies in 1883, Haliță had difficulties finding a tenured teaching position back home, although, truth be told, he did not seem to have the patience to wait for an opening, as he emigrated very soon to Romania. In 1890 he renounced his Hungarian citizenship and became a citizen of the Kingdom of Romania. Between 1883 and 1919 he worked as a secondary school teacher in various towns, while at the same time building a bureaucratic career in the field of Public Education: 1889–1891, member of the General [i.e., National] Council of Instruction; 1896–1899, 1901–1904, 1907–1911, and 1914–1919 General Inspector of Schools. Much of his success was owed to the good relationship he developed with Spiru Haret, an important liberal reformer of education in early 20th century Romania. (more, here)

During the First World War, and especially during the retreat of the Romanian political authorities to Iași (1916–1918) Haliță developed even closer ties with representatives of the National Liberal Party, and in particular with Prime Minister, Ion I.C. Brătianu. Thus, he slowly shifted from being just an efficient and well-regarded bureaucrat in the field of Education to handling more sensitive political issues. In October 1918, he played the role of intercessor between the Romanian delegates from Transylvania and the Romanian government. He was then sent back to Transylvania to accompany Brătianu’s messages of political and military support and took part, in this capacity, at the Great National Assembly in Alba Iulia on 1 December 1918. (more, here) This privileged position explains his temporary appointment as prefect of Iași in 1919. (more, here)

Between 1920 and 1922 Haliță returned to Transylvania as General (i.e., Regional) Inspector of Schools. In 1922 he was appointed prefect of his home county, Năsăud (Bistrița-Năsăud after 1925), an office he held until the fall of the Liberal government in April 1926. It was the peak of his career, something nobody would have envisioned forty years earlier, when he had left the same county as an émigré due to not finding a tenured teaching position. He died a few months later, on 1 December 1926.

Solomon Haliță’s career highlights the opportunities for social mobility opened up by the financial support for education in the former Austrian military border area, due to the transformation of regimental funds into educational and scholarship funds. It also illustrates the constant migration of Romanian university graduates from Austria-Hungary to Romania, which populated the civil service of the latter with highly qualified personnel, at all levels and in all branches of activity. Last but not least, it shows how the combination between professionalism and personal relationships (also built along professional lines), helped maintain a high bureaucratic position despite the changes in government, and how political support helped the leap from the ministerial bureaucracy to the administrative and political elite.

 

Literature

Septimiu Albini, Direcția nouă în Ardeal. Constatări și amintiri, in vol. Lui Ion Bianu amintire. Din partea foștilor și actualilor funcționari ai Academiei Române la împlinirea a șasezeci de ani, București, 1916. (here)

Alexandru Dărăban, Maxim Haliță – locuitor de frunte din Sângeorgiul Român, în „Arhiva Someșană”, XV, 2017. (here)

Alexandru Dărăban (ed.), Solomon Haliță, om al epocii sale, Cluj–Napoca, Mega, 2015. (here)

Ironim Marţian, Figuri de dascăli năsăudeni şi bistriţeni, Editura Napoca Star, Cluj–Napoca, 2002.

Adrian Onofreiu, Ana Maria Băndean, Prefecții județului Bistrița–Năsăud (1919–1950; 1990–2014). Ipostaze, imagini, mărturii, Bistrița, Charmides, 2014.

Grigore Pletosu, Moarte prin puşcă, în „Telegraful Român”, XXVII, 1879, nr. 91, 7 august, p. 359. (here)

Mara Lőrinc of Felsőszálláspatak/Sălașu de Sus was born in 1823 in Székelyföldvár/ Războieni-Cetate (by then in the Székely seat of Aranyos/Arieș, Transylvania). 

Mara

His grandfather, bearing the same name, was assessor at the Royal Judicial Court of Transylvania. An uncle bearing the same name was officer during the Napoleonic Wars. His father, József, was provincial commissioner and later on royal judge of the respective seat, but the family also held land properties in Hunyad/Hunedoara county. He had seven children: six boys (Miklós, Lőrinc, Károly, Gábor, Sándor and György) and one girl (Ágnes, married to baron Kemény István)

Mara Lőrinc followed a military career, he graduated from the Imperial and Royal Technical Military Academy (k.u.k. Technische Militärakademie, further reading here) and served as Junior Lieutenant in the Székely Border Guards Regiment from Csíkszereda/Miercurea Ciuc. During the 1848–1849 Revolution he served as captain in the Hungarian Honvéd Army, together with other members of the extended family (e.g., here), for which he was initially sentenced to death, but later pardoned after four years of imprisonment at Olomouc/Olmütz. In the 1860s he entered political life, as district sheriff (szolgabíró) and county commissioner (alispán). As a follower of Tisza Kálmán’s (1830–1902) party, and after two unsuccessful candidacies he finally managed to obtain a parliamentary seat in 1875, in the constituency of Hátszeg/Hațeg (in which the family estates were situated), after his party’s coming to power. He represented the constituency between 1875 and 1886 (see here), and died in 1893.

 

Mara Lőrinc was an epitome of Tisza Kálmán’s “mamelukes” – as the supporters of the Hungarian Liberal Party were called at the time – and the literary works of Mikszáth Kálmán (1847–1910) shed some light on the intricacies of his relationship with the voters, most of them Romanian villagers. Mikszáth recounts that, when one of the opposition’s candidates Kaas Ivor (1842–1910) and his supporters (some local Armenian merchants and the family of the ex-Prime Minister Lónyay Menyhért (1822–1884) tried to bribe the voters by means of bank checks instead of the usual cash in hand, Mara’s electoral agents redeemed to the villagers the bank checks’ value in cash and with this, he won the elections by making use mostly of his opponent’s money and supported by the supposedly nationally entrenched Romanians. At the time (1881), the story made its way in the regional and central newspapers, which might be the original source of Mikszáth’s story. Three years later, on the eve of a new election, a delegation of Romanian voters came to see their representative. He greeted them and asked about their wishes and requests for the upcoming elections, only to find out that they were humbly asking him to provide… a counter-candidate. When the mesmerized deputy asked for the purpose of such a request, the villagers’ leader replied: “…well, to have some joy in the district.” The trope of the voters asking for a counter-candidate mainly for the purpose of raising the stake of the electoral bribe is rather frequent in the time’s literature and press, here however it was used for underlining the connection between a local patron and his pool of voters. In Mikszáth’s story, Mara granted them this wish too. Historical sources show that Mara went on for another mandate, with the counter-candidate (Kemény Miklós) only getting seven votes.

 

As all literary sources, Mikszáth’s story was probably built around a grain of truth, despite the author’s inevitable fictional contribution. The story sheds some light not only on the voting practices of the time, but also on the voters’ expectations (i.e. the electoral campaign as a moment of feast and joy) and on the paternalistic relations enhanced by political needs.

One of his sons, also bearing the name Lőrinc, was an architect. He was married to Berta Zalandak.

Another son, László Mara, was Lord Lieutenant of Hunyad County during the First World War. In this capacity, he intervened for the liberation of a Romanian lawyer and reserve officer named Gheorghe Dubleșiu, who was imprisoned due to his nationalist rhetoric. A few years later, under the Romanian rule, Gheorghe Dubleșiu would become Prefect (i.e., Lord Lieutenant) of the Hunyad County in 1920 and between 19221926.

 

Sources:

Press

“A Hon”, XIX, 1881, 6 July, no. 184.

“Magyar Polgár”, XV, 1881, 5 July, no. 150, p. 1;

 

Literature

Mikszáth Kálmán, “Összes műve. Cikkek és karcolatok (51–86. kötet). 1883 Parlamenti karcolatok (68. kötet). A t. házból [márc. 9.]. IV. A Mara Lőrinc emberei”, electronic edition on https://www.arcanum.hu; 

Lajos Kelemen, A felsőszálláspataki Marák családi krónikája, Genealógiai Füzetek, 1912, pp. 97-10;

József Szinnyei, “Magyar írók élete és munkái”, electronic edition on https://www.arcanum.hu.

At the end of the 18th century, this was not an unusual sight. On 27 July 1796 in a church in the South Bohemian town of Kdyně, the then thirty-seven-year-old Regional Commissioner Franz Merkl (1759–1829) and the eighteen-year-old daughter of an estate inspector Theresie Dalquen (1778–1868) stood side by side. Franz was not getting married for the first time, he was a widower, but apparently had no children from his first marriage. As a well-placed civil servant, he certainly made an interesting match for unmarried ladies and their parents. But the marriage of Franz and Therese was, after all, rather exceptional for its time. It produced ten children, all of whom lived to adulthood and most of whom died at a ripe old age. This was quite rare at a time when, on average, a quarter of the children born did not live to see their first birthday. Equally unusual was that nine out of the ten children were sons. Franz’s career also developed very promisingly, later he rose from a Regional Commissioner to Governor’s Councillor, and in 1811 he was knighted, a title which was subsequently also used by his sons. Franz died in Mladá Boleslav in 1829, his wife surviving him by almost 40 years.

Franz Merkl’s career was inextricably linked to the pre-March administrative system, in which Franz, the son of a Viennese tailor, achieved an extraordinary social rise. He was undoubtedly aware of the importance of a proper education in terms of social status, which was also reflected in the upbringing of his children. As many as four of his sons achieved important positions as senior civil servants, serving as District Administrators or District Captains. His fifth son advanced even further in his career, becoming the Land President of Silesia.

Like his father, the firstborn son Bernard (1797–1857), born on 29 June 1797 in Kout in Šumava, embarked on a successful career path by starting his career as a civil servant. At the age of 21, he started to work as a Trainee Official in the regional office in Mladá Boleslav and after 11 years he obtained the position of Supernumerary Regional Commissioner. Attaining this position provided him with sufficient means to look for a bride. On 16 August 1830 he married Agnes Römisch (1804–1855), daughter of the owner of the Malá Skála estate. Their marriage produced three children – the elder daughter and son unfortunately died in infancy, but the youngest, Jan Merkl (1847–1922), became chief engineer at the Vítkovice ironworks. In the following years Bernard rose up on the career ladder and achieved his first career peak in 1846 as a Regional Commissioner of Ist class. Unlike his father, who worked in various places, this phase of Bernard’s career was firmly tied to Mladá Boleslav. And it might well have remained so if it had not been for the revolution of 1848 and the associated changes in various spheres of life of the Austrian Monarchy. One of these changes consisted in the transformation of the political administration. In 1849, Bernard became a District Captain in Chotěboř, where after six years he reached the post of District Administrator. He died in office in 1857.   

The second-born son of Franz Merkl and his wife Theresie was also named Franz (1799–1878). He was born in his father’s following place of work – the town of Slaný.  We do not have much information about his life. He joined the army, where he attained the rank of captain, and died unmarried in Prague at the age of 79.

Their third son, Karel (1800–1870) was again born in Kout in Šumava. Like his brother Franz, he embarked on a career as a soldier and became a colonel in the Austrian army.  Karel also did not marry and died in Prague in 1870.

After the birth of their first three children, the Merkl family moved again to Slaný, where on 11 December 1801 the twins Edmund and Heinrich were born. Not only did the boys survive their birth, which in itself was a small miracle, but in adulthood they both became senior civil servants like their father. Heinrich Merkl (1801–1874), after studying law at the University of Vienna and Prague, obtained a post as a Trainee Official in the town of Jičín. Like his father, he held several different offices, but twenty years later it was again in Jičín that he became a Regional Commissioner. He reached the peak of his career in 1855 as district chief in Hradec Králové. Unlike his father, however, he did not marry and died before his sixty-first birthday in Prague.

Unlike Heinrich, his brother Edmund (1801–1862) married no less than four times. At the age of 22 he joined the regional office in České Budějovice as a Trainee Official. He did not even wait to be promoted before getting married for the first time – in 1831 he married Antonie Stulíková (1806–1835), the daughter of an innkeeper. However, four years later, Edmund became widowed. More than six years after he got married a second time, in 1842, to Vilemína Křepinská (1823–1945), the daughter of a postmaster. But even his second marriage did not last very long, as Vilemína died after three years. This time Edmund did not mourn for too long and the very next year he married for the third time, Amalie Pazourková (1826–1851), the daughter of a “Justiziar” from Plzeň, i.e. an official with legal education. The third marriage lasted for five years, until Amalie’s death in 1851. Eight years later, Edmund entered into his last marriage. The bride, Matilda Křepinská (1828–1868) was not only 26 years younger than her groom, she was also the younger sister of Edmund’s second wife, Vilemína. It is also not without interest that another of the sisters, Klementina Křepinská (*1831), married Alois Josef Mascha (1816–1888), who also served first as a district chief and in the 1870s held the post of District Captain in Chrudim. Merkel’s fourth marriage lasted the longest – ten years. However, neither Matilda survived her husband, dying six years before him, so Edmund died a four-time widower.   

Let us also look at the fate of Edmund’s other siblings.  On 10 March 1804, the Merkls had their sixth child, their only daughter Katerina (1804–1824). Of all her siblings, she died at the youngest age,  when she was only twenty, so she did not even have time to marry.

Her brother, August Merkl (1807–1883), was born on 14 May 1807 in another of his father’s places of work, the town of Mladá Boleslav. Like his father and some of his brothers, he embarked on a civil servant career, attaining the post of Land President in Silesia. He  married Adelheid (1818–1882) from the noble family of von Sturm zu Hirschfeld. They married in what is now Kolomyja, Ukraine, which in the 19th century was part of the Habsburg monarchy along with the whole of Galicia. The marriage produced two children, who were already born in Lvov. Daughter Therese (1838–1880) married Josef von Mensshengen (1830–1891), a Silesian Governmental Councillor, and son Bohuslav (1835–1904) became a military officer. He eventually died in Hvar, Croatia. As for August himself, at the end of his life he first lived in Vienna, but died in Innsbruck.

The eighth son, Friedrich (1808–1886), was born in Mladá Boleslav on 29 June 1808. The army became his destiny, he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Military Cross of Merit for his achievements. He too never married and died in Prague in 1886.

It was also in Mladá Boleslav where a year later – exactly on 5 November 1809 – another son of the Merkls, Albrecht (1809–1860), was born. He attained the rank of colonel in the General staff, but unlike his other brothers, he managed to combine military service with family life. He married Karoline Baumgärtner (1820–1891) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Their daughter Matylda (1848–1937) married Karl Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1838–1897), a historian who was professor at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the son of the famous composer. Compared to his brothers Albrecht died quite young – he died in Prague at the age of fifty.

The last child the Merkls had was Wilhelm (1815–1892), born on 1 October 1815 in Mladá Boleslav. Wilhelm also chose a career as a civil servant and worked his way up to become a District Captain in Jasło, a town in the southeast of present-day Poland. In the 19th century, however, the town was under the administration of the Austrian Empire, along with the whole of Galicia. Wilhelm found a bride among the Polish nobility and in 1848 he married Josefina Gruszczynska (1825–1878). Their sons also achieved important positions within the Austrian administration. Wilhelm died in 1892.

The story of the Merkl family is very interesting both demographically and socially. Their unusually favourable mortality condition applied not only in childhood; five of Franz Merkl‘s nine sons died after they had reached the age of seventy, which was also unusual at that time. At the same time, mostly all of the Merkl siblings had successful professional careers. Interestingly, they only took two paths – either they became civil servants like their father or they joined the army. Although Franz Merkl had acquired a noble title, he did not possess a family fortune from which at least one of his sons could live. Therefore, his descendants had to provide for their own financial needs. The family history of the Merkls also shows the immense size of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 19th century. Looking at today’s map, it would appear that the brothers were active in four different countries – the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland and Ukraine – but in fact all the time they were on the territory of the Austrian Empire.

At the end of the 18th century, this was not an unusual sight. On 27 July 1796 in a church in the South Bohemian town of Kdyně, the then thirty-seven-year-old Regional Commissioner Franz Merkl (1759–1829) and the eighteen-year-old daughter of an estate inspector Theresie Dalquen (1778–1868) stood side by side. Franz was not getting married for the first time, he was a widower, but apparently had no children from his first marriage. As a well-placed civil servant, he certainly made an interesting match for unmarried ladies and their parents. But the marriage of Franz and Therese was, after all, rather exceptional for its time. It produced ten children, all of whom lived to adulthood and most of whom died at a ripe old age. This was quite rare at a time when, on average, a quarter of the children born did not live to see their first birthday. Equally unusual was that nine out of the ten children were sons. Franz’s career also developed very promisingly, later he rose from a Regional Commissioner to Governor’s Councillor, and in 1811 he was knighted, a title which was subsequently also used by his sons. Franz died in Mladá Boleslav in 1829, his wife surviving him by almost 40 years.

Franz Merkl’s career was inextricably linked to the pre-March administrative system, in which Franz, the son of a Viennese tailor, achieved an extraordinary social rise. He was undoubtedly aware of the importance of a proper education in terms of social status, which was also reflected in the upbringing of his children. As many as four of his sons achieved important positions as senior civil servants, serving as District Administrators or District Captains. His fifth son advanced even further in his career, becoming the Land President of Silesia.

Like his father, the firstborn son Bernard (1797–1857), born on 29 June 1797 in Kout in Šumava, embarked on a successful career path by starting his career as a civil servant. At the age of 21, he started to work as a Trainee Official in the regional office in Mladá Boleslav and after 11 years he obtained the position of Supernumerary Regional Commissioner. Attaining this position provided him with sufficient means to look for a bride. On 16 August 1830 he married Agnes Römisch (1804–1855), daughter of the owner of the Malá Skála estate. Their marriage produced three children – the elder daughter and son unfortunately died in infancy, but the youngest, Jan Merkl (1847–1922), became chief engineer at the Vítkovice ironworks. In the following years Bernard rose up on the career ladder and achieved his first career peak in 1846 as a Regional Commissioner of Ist class. Unlike his father, who worked in various places, this phase of Bernard’s career was firmly tied to Mladá Boleslav. And it might well have remained so if it had not been for the revolution of 1848 and the associated changes in various spheres of life of the Austrian Monarchy. One of these changes consisted in the transformation of the political administration. In 1849, Bernard became a District Captain in Chotěboř, where after six years he reached the post of District Administrator. He died in office in 1857.   

The second-born son of Franz Merkl and his wife Theresie was also named Franz (1799–1878). He was born in his father’s following place of work – the town of Slaný.  We do not have much information about his life. He joined the army, where he attained the rank of captain, and died unmarried in Prague at the age of 79.

Their third son, Karel (1800–1870) was again born in Kout in Šumava. Like his brother Franz, he embarked on a career as a soldier and became a colonel in the Austrian army.  Karel also did not marry and died in Prague in 1870.

After the birth of their first three children, the Merkl family moved again to Slaný, where on 11 December 1801 the twins Edmund and Heinrich were born. Not only did the boys survive their birth, which in itself was a small miracle, but in adulthood they both became senior civil servants like their father. Heinrich Merkl (1801–1874), after studying law at the University of Vienna and Prague, obtained a post as a Trainee Official in the town of Jičín. Like his father, he held several different offices, but twenty years later it was again in Jičín that he became a Regional Commissioner. He reached the peak of his career in 1855 as district chief in Hradec Králové. Unlike his father, however, he did not marry and died before his sixty-first birthday in Prague.

Unlike Heinrich, his brother Edmund (1801–1862) married no less than four times. At the age of 22 he joined the regional office in České Budějovice as a Trainee Official. He did not even wait to be promoted before getting married for the first time – in 1831 he married Antonie Stulíková (1806–1835), the daughter of an innkeeper. However, four years later, Edmund became widowed. More than six years after he got married a second time, in 1842, to Vilemína Křepinská (1823–1945), the daughter of a postmaster. But even his second marriage did not last very long, as Vilemína died after three years. This time Edmund did not mourn for too long and the very next year he married for the third time, Amalie Pazourková (1826–1851), the daughter of a “Justiziar” from Plzeň, i.e. an official with legal education. The third marriage lasted for five years, until Amalie’s death in 1851. Eight years later, Edmund entered into his last marriage. The bride, Matilda Křepinská (1828–1868) was not only 26 years younger than her groom, she was also the younger sister of Edmund’s second wife, Vilemína. It is also not without interest that another of the sisters, Klementina Křepinská (*1831), married Alois Josef Mascha (1816–1888), who also served first as a district chief and in the 1870s held the post of District Captain in Chrudim. Merkel’s fourth marriage lasted the longest – ten years. However, neither Matilda survived her husband, dying six years before him, so Edmund died a four-time widower.   

Let us also look at the fate of Edmund’s other siblings.  On 10 March 1804, the Merkls had their sixth child, their only daughter Katerina (1804–1824). Of all her siblings, she died at the youngest age,  when she was only twenty, so she did not even have time to marry.

Her brother, August Merkl (1807–1883), was born on 14 May 1807 in another of his father’s places of work, the town of Mladá Boleslav. Like his father and some of his brothers, he embarked on a civil servant career, attaining the post of Land President in Silesia. He  married Adelheid (1818–1882) from the noble family of von Sturm zu Hirschfeld. They married in what is now Kolomyja, Ukraine, which in the 19th century was part of the Habsburg monarchy along with the whole of Galicia. The marriage produced two children, who were already born in Lvov. Daughter Therese (1838–1880) married Josef von Mensshengen (1830–1891), a Silesian Governmental Councillor, and son Bohuslav (1835–1904) became a military officer. He eventually died in Hvar, Croatia. As for August himself, at the end of his life he first lived in Vienna, but died in Innsbruck.

The eighth son, Friedrich (1808–1886), was born in Mladá Boleslav on 29 June 1808. The army became his destiny, he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Military Cross of Merit for his achievements. He too never married and died in Prague in 1886.

It was also in Mladá Boleslav where a year later – exactly on 5 November 1809 – another son of the Merkls, Albrecht (1809–1860), was born. He attained the rank of colonel in the General staff, but unlike his other brothers, he managed to combine military service with family life. He married Karoline Baumgärtner (1820–1891) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Their daughter Matylda (1848–1937) married Karl Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1838–1897), a historian who was professor at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the son of the famous composer. Compared to his brothers Albrecht died quite young – he died in Prague at the age of fifty.

The last child the Merkls had was Wilhelm (1815–1892), born on 1 October 1815 in Mladá Boleslav. Wilhelm also chose a career as a civil servant and worked his way up to become a District Captain in Jasło, a town in the southeast of present-day Poland. In the 19th century, however, the town was under the administration of the Austrian Empire, along with the whole of Galicia. Wilhelm found a bride among the Polish nobility and in 1848 he married Josefina Gruszczynska (1825–1878). Their sons also achieved important positions within the Austrian administration. Wilhelm died in 1892.

The story of the Merkl family is very interesting both demographically and socially. Their unusually favourable mortality condition applied not only in childhood; five of Franz Merkl‘s nine sons died after they had reached the age of seventy, which was also unusual at that time. At the same time, mostly all of the Merkl siblings had successful professional careers. Interestingly, they only took two paths – either they became civil servants like their father or they joined the army. Although Franz Merkl had acquired a noble title, he did not possess a family fortune from which at least one of his sons could live. Therefore, his descendants had to provide for their own financial needs. The family history of the Merkls also shows the immense size of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 19th century. Looking at today’s map, it would appear that the brothers were active in four different countries – the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland and Ukraine – but in fact all the time they were on the territory of the Austrian Empire.

Alexander_von_Mensdorff-PouillyCount Alexander Mensdorff-Pouilly, graphic from the portrait collection of the Austrian National Library 

The life of Alexander Mensdorff-Pouilly was fundamentally different from that of other officials. He came from an old aristocratic family, the Pouilly, which left their homeland during the French Revolution. Thus, Alexander’s father Emanuel (1777–1852) had to build a position for himself in a completely different environment. He opted for a military career in the service of the Austrian Emperor and, like his brother, decided to take the name Mensdorff, which was supposed to help him to better adapt in the German-speaking world. His marriage to Princess Sophie of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (1778–1835), who was of a substantially higher status, undoubtedly also helped him consolidate his position. Thanks to this marriage, Emmanuel and his descendants became related to a number of European noble families. Perhaps the most famous among his male cousins was Albert (1819–1861), husband of Queen Victoria of Britain (1819–1901), while the most famous female cousin was Queen Victoria herself. The loving union of Emmanuel and Sophie produced five sons, four of whom survived to adulthood – Hugo (1806–1847), Alphonse (1810–1894), Alexander (1813–1871) and Arthur (1817–1904). Their life trajectories show how varied the fates of 19th-century nobility could be.

erb_Mensdorff-Pouilly-Grafen-WappenCoat of arms of the family Mensdorff Pouilly

The eldest of the brothers, Hugo, was born in Coburg on August 24, 1806. Coburg was also the city where he grew up and received a private education. Emanuel wished to make military officers of his sons, and he succeeded. Hugo joined the army and became a cavalry officer. Although he was the eldest son and it was primarily him who was expected to ensure the continuation of the family, Hugo never married. He was no stranger to the company of women, but he did not meet a suitable partner from the upper classes. He preferred to remain alone rather than live in an unhappy marriage. During his military career, he won numerous awards and reached the rank of colonel. In 1847, however, his health began to fail. He was treated at a spa, first in Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) and then in Jeseník (Freiwaldau), where he succumbed to laryngitis at the age of only 41.  

The second-born Alphonse was born on 25 January 1810 in Coburg. His father intended a naval career for him. However, Alfonse refused and became an officer in the cavalry, where he attained the rank of colonel. A crucial issue for a man of his position was the choice of a bride. Alphonse seems to have had a lucky hand, since the woman he chose, Therese Dietrichstein (1823–1856), not only came from a good family, but there was also a mutual liking between them. The bride’s father, Franz Xaver of Dietrichstein (1774–1850), was initially not very enthusiastic about the match, hoping for a husband of a higher social position for his daughter. In the end, however, he agreed to their union. After Therese Dietrichstein became the heiress of the Moravian estate of Boskovice (Boskowitz), Alfons abandoned his military career and threw himself into the administration of the estate. For several years, during which they had four children, Alfonse and Therese lived a happy family life in Boskovice  In 1856, however, tragedy struck the family – Therese died of scarlet fever. Alfonse resisted remarriage for several years, but the death of his only male heir, Arthur, in 1862, made him reconsider this decision.

His second wife was Marie, Countess of Lamberg (1833–1876), with whom he also had four children. Unfortunately, the second marriage did not last very long either, since Marie died at the age of only 42. But Alfons finally lived to see his longed-for heirs. The elder of them, Alfons Vladimír (1864–1935), later took over Boskovice. Besides taking care of the estate, Adolf also devoted himself to politics. From 1861 he sat in the Moravian Provincial Assembly in Brno and in the following year he also became a life member of the upper chamber of the Austrian Imperial Council. However, he did not see much sense in the exercise of these functions and seems to have been more comfortable with activities at a local level – in 1864–1876 he was mayor of Boskovice and in 1888 he even became its honorary citizen. Alfons died in Boskovice at the ripe age of 84 and was buried in the family tomb in Nečtiny (Preitenstein), which he had built himself.

Alexander was born on August 4, 1813 in Coburg as the third among his siblings. Like his brothers, he grew up in Coburg, where he befriended members of the most prominent European families. From a young age, however, he also felt a sense of belonging to the Austrian state and decided to serve in its army. His military career began in 1829 when he became a cadet in an infantry regiment. Over the next 20 years he rose to the rank of major general. He then entered the diplomatic service and became Austrian ambassador in St. Petersburg. However, he lasted only a year in this position and then returned to the army. At the end of the 1850s it started to become clear that if he really wanted to live up to his family duties, military service alone would not be sufficient. So he began to look around for a suitable bride. According to family correspondence, members of the Mensdorff-Pouilly family considered the mutual affection of both fiancés a necessary condition for marriage. However, Alexander seems to have given up on this requirement.

In 1857 he married Alexandrina of Dietrichstein (1824–1906), the future heiress of the large Mikulov (Nikolsburg) estate in South Moravia. The husband and wife had to find their way to each other, which was difficult at first, as they did not live together. Eventually, however, they became close and their marriage was happy. Four children were born into it, three of whom lived to adulthood – Marie (1858–1889), wife of Count Hugo Kálnoky (1844–1928), Hugo (1858–1920), heir to the estate and husband of the Russian noblewoman Olga Dolgorukova (1873–1946), and Klotylda (1867–1943), wife of Albert Apponyi (1846–1933)

In 1859 Alexander became lieutenant field marshal and two years later Governor in Lvov, where he also served as Commanding General for Galicia and Bukovina. One of the highlights of Alexander’s career was undoubtedly the year 1864, when he was appointed Austrian Foreign Minister. During his tenure, however, Austria lost the Austro-Prussian War, and Alexander was subsequently relieved from his post. At the end of his life, he served as Czech governor in Prague. It was also in Prague that he died on 14 February 1871 and was buried in the family tomb in Mikulov.

MikulovThe castle in Mikulov today

The youngest Arthur, like his brothers, was born in Coburg, on 19 August 1817. He too became an officer in the army and for many years served the Austrian Emperor. However, when it became clear that he would get no further than the rank of major, he decided to leave active service in 1852. Instead, he turned to business. He tried his luck in coal mining but failed. Unfortunately, the income from his lands did not cover his expenses, so he was forced to borrow frequently from his family, including Queen Victoria. Neither was he very successful in his personal life. In 1853 he married Magdalena Kremz (1835–1899), a low-born circus rider, whom he had fallen in love with. His brothers and other relatives strongly criticized him for this decision and never fully accepted Magdalena in their midst. However, they did not reject Arthur himself and continued to help him. Arthur later came to regret his choice, since Magdalena really was not a good match for him, and in 1882 they divorced. Near the end of his life, Arthur found himself a matching brideCountess Bianca Adamovich de Csepin (1837–1912). After two years of marriage, Arthur died in Velenje, a town in what is now Slovenia.

Service in the army played an absolutely fundamental role in the lives of the four Mensdorff-Pouilly brothers. Along with their aristocratic origin, it enabled them to establish themselves socially and economically in Austrian society. The family’s marriage policy also helped them on their way to the top. It was thanks to his wife’s inheritance that Alphonse became a landowner. As for Alexander, although he himself did not participate in the running of the Mikulov estate, the profits from it allowed even him to lead an expensive life. His clerical career was rather a side effect of the military one, and his social status, abilities and character, which made him popular among the people, undoubtedly played a role in it.

 

Bibliography:

Švaříčková-Slabáková, Radmila: Rodinné strategie šlechty. Mensdorffové-Pouilly v 19. století. Praha: Argo, 2007.

Švaříčková-Slabáková, Radmila: Rod Mensdorff-Pouilly a boskovický velkostatek. In: Ott, Matěj, Markéta Malachová, and Roman Malach: Boskovice 1222–2022. Boskovice: město Boskovice ve spolupráci s Muzeem regionu Boskovicka, 2022.

Švaříčková-Slabáková, Radmila: Šlechtic – Příklad Huga Mensdorffa-Pouilly. In: Fasora, Lukáš, Jiří Hanuš, and Jiří Malíř. Člověk na Moravě 19. století. Brno: Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury, 2008.

Brichtová, Dobromila: Zámek Mikulov. Mikulov: Regionální muzeum v Mikulově, 2015.

Brichtová, Dobromila: Pod tvými ochrannými křídly. Od loretánského kostela k hrobce Dietrichsteinů v Mikulově. Mikulov: Turistické informační centrum, 2014.

Steiner, Petr: Hrabě Hugo Kálnoky de Köröspatak (1844–1928). Život a osudy šlechtice na konci 19. století. Časopis Matice moravské 141/1, 2022.

 

At the end of the 18th century, this was not an unusual sight. On 27 July 1796 in a church in the South Bohemian town of Kdyně, the then thirty-seven-year-old Regional Commissioner Franz Merkl (1759–1829) and the eighteen-year-old daughter of an estate inspector Theresie Dalquen (1778–1868) stood side by side. Franz was not getting married for the first time, he was a widower, but apparently had no children from his first marriage. As a well-placed civil servant, he certainly made an interesting match for unmarried ladies and their parents. But the marriage of Franz and Therese was, after all, rather exceptional for its time. It produced ten children, all of whom lived to adulthood and most of whom died at a ripe old age. This was quite rare at a time when, on average, a quarter of the children born did not live to see their first birthday. Equally unusual was that nine out of the ten children were sons. Franz’s career also developed very promisingly, later he rose from a Regional Commissioner to Governor’s Councillor, and in 1811 he was knighted, a title which was subsequently also used by his sons. Franz died in Mladá Boleslav in 1829, his wife surviving him by almost 40 years.

Franz Merkl’s career was inextricably linked to the pre-March administrative system, in which Franz, the son of a Viennese tailor, achieved an extraordinary social rise. He was undoubtedly aware of the importance of a proper education in terms of social status, which was also reflected in the upbringing of his children. As many as four of his sons achieved important positions as senior civil servants, serving as District Administrators or District Captains. His fifth son advanced even further in his career, becoming the Land President of Silesia.

Like his father, the firstborn son Bernard (1797–1857), born on 29 June 1797 in Kout in Šumava, embarked on a successful career path by starting his career as a civil servant. At the age of 21, he started to work as a Trainee Official in the regional office in Mladá Boleslav and after 11 years he obtained the position of Supernumerary Regional Commissioner. Attaining this position provided him with sufficient means to look for a bride. On 16 August 1830 he married Agnes Römisch (1804–1855), daughter of the owner of the Malá Skála estate. Their marriage produced three children – the elder daughter and son unfortunately died in infancy, but the youngest, Jan Merkl (1847–1922), became chief engineer at the Vítkovice ironworks. In the following years Bernard rose up on the career ladder and achieved his first career peak in 1846 as a Regional Commissioner of Ist class. Unlike his father, who worked in various places, this phase of Bernard’s career was firmly tied to Mladá Boleslav. And it might well have remained so if it had not been for the revolution of 1848 and the associated changes in various spheres of life of the Austrian Monarchy. One of these changes consisted in the transformation of the political administration. In 1849, Bernard became a District Captain in Chotěboř, where after six years he reached the post of District Administrator. He died in office in 1857.   

The second-born son of Franz Merkl and his wife Theresie was also named Franz (1799–1878). He was born in his father’s following place of work – the town of Slaný.  We do not have much information about his life. He joined the army, where he attained the rank of captain, and died unmarried in Prague at the age of 79.

Their third son, Karel (1800–1870) was again born in Kout in Šumava. Like his brother Franz, he embarked on a career as a soldier and became a colonel in the Austrian army.  Karel also did not marry and died in Prague in 1870.

After the birth of their first three children, the Merkl family moved again to Slaný, where on 11 December 1801 the twins Edmund and Heinrich were born. Not only did the boys survive their birth, which in itself was a small miracle, but in adulthood they both became senior civil servants like their father. Heinrich Merkl (1801–1874), after studying law at the University of Vienna and Prague, obtained a post as a Trainee Official in the town of Jičín. Like his father, he held several different offices, but twenty years later it was again in Jičín that he became a Regional Commissioner. He reached the peak of his career in 1855 as district chief in Hradec Králové. Unlike his father, however, he did not marry and died before his sixty-first birthday in Prague.

Unlike Heinrich, his brother Edmund (1801–1862) married no less than four times. At the age of 22 he joined the regional office in České Budějovice as a Trainee Official. He did not even wait to be promoted before getting married for the first time – in 1831 he married Antonie Stulíková (1806–1835), the daughter of an innkeeper. However, four years later, Edmund became widowed. More than six years after he got married a second time, in 1842, to Vilemína Křepinská (1823–1945), the daughter of a postmaster. But even his second marriage did not last very long, as Vilemína died after three years. This time Edmund did not mourn for too long and the very next year he married for the third time, Amalie Pazourková (1826–1851), the daughter of a “Justiziar” from Plzeň, i.e. an official with legal education. The third marriage lasted for five years, until Amalie’s death in 1851. Eight years later, Edmund entered into his last marriage. The bride, Matilda Křepinská (1828–1868) was not only 26 years younger than her groom, she was also the younger sister of Edmund’s second wife, Vilemína. It is also not without interest that another of the sisters, Klementina Křepinská (*1831), married Alois Josef Mascha (1816–1888), who also served first as a district chief and in the 1870s held the post of District Captain in Chrudim. Merkel’s fourth marriage lasted the longest – ten years. However, neither Matilda survived her husband, dying six years before him, so Edmund died a four-time widower.   

Let us also look at the fate of Edmund’s other siblings.  On 10 March 1804, the Merkls had their sixth child, their only daughter Katerina (1804–1824). Of all her siblings, she died at the youngest age,  when she was only twenty, so she did not even have time to marry.

Her brother, August Merkl (1807–1883), was born on 14 May 1807 in another of his father’s places of work, the town of Mladá Boleslav. Like his father and some of his brothers, he embarked on a civil servant career, attaining the post of Land President in Silesia. He  married Adelheid (1818–1882) from the noble family of von Sturm zu Hirschfeld. They married in what is now Kolomyja, Ukraine, which in the 19th century was part of the Habsburg monarchy along with the whole of Galicia. The marriage produced two children, who were already born in Lvov. Daughter Therese (1838–1880) married Josef von Mensshengen (1830–1891), a Silesian Governmental Councillor, and son Bohuslav (1835–1904) became a military officer. He eventually died in Hvar, Croatia. As for August himself, at the end of his life he first lived in Vienna, but died in Innsbruck.

The eighth son, Friedrich (1808–1886), was born in Mladá Boleslav on 29 June 1808. The army became his destiny, he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Military Cross of Merit for his achievements. He too never married and died in Prague in 1886.

It was also in Mladá Boleslav where a year later – exactly on 5 November 1809 – another son of the Merkls, Albrecht (1809–1860), was born. He attained the rank of colonel in the General staff, but unlike his other brothers, he managed to combine military service with family life. He married Karoline Baumgärtner (1820–1891) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Their daughter Matylda (1848–1937) married Karl Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1838–1897), a historian who was professor at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the son of the famous composer. Compared to his brothers Albrecht died quite young – he died in Prague at the age of fifty.

The last child the Merkls had was Wilhelm (1815–1892), born on 1 October 1815 in Mladá Boleslav. Wilhelm also chose a career as a civil servant and worked his way up to become a District Captain in Jasło, a town in the southeast of present-day Poland. In the 19th century, however, the town was under the administration of the Austrian Empire, along with the whole of Galicia. Wilhelm found a bride among the Polish nobility and in 1848 he married Josefina Gruszczynska (1825–1878). Their sons also achieved important positions within the Austrian administration. Wilhelm died in 1892.

The story of the Merkl family is very interesting both demographically and socially. Their unusually favourable mortality condition applied not only in childhood; five of Franz Merkl‘s nine sons died after they had reached the age of seventy, which was also unusual at that time. At the same time, mostly all of the Merkl siblings had successful professional careers. Interestingly, they only took two paths – either they became civil servants like their father or they joined the army. Although Franz Merkl had acquired a noble title, he did not possess a family fortune from which at least one of his sons could live. Therefore, his descendants had to provide for their own financial needs. The family history of the Merkls also shows the immense size of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 19th century. Looking at today’s map, it would appear that the brothers were active in four different countries – the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland and Ukraine – but in fact all the time they were on the territory of the Austrian Empire.

At the end of the 18th century, this was not an unusual sight. On 27 July 1796 in a church in the South Bohemian town of Kdyně, the then thirty-seven-year-old Regional Commissioner Franz Merkl (1759–1829) and the eighteen-year-old daughter of an estate inspector Theresie Dalquen (1778–1868) stood side by side. Franz was not getting married for the first time, he was a widower, but apparently had no children from his first marriage. As a well-placed civil servant, he certainly made an interesting match for unmarried ladies and their parents. But the marriage of Franz and Therese was, after all, rather exceptional for its time. It produced ten children, all of whom lived to adulthood and most of whom died at a ripe old age. This was quite rare at a time when, on average, a quarter of the children born did not live to see their first birthday. Equally unusual was that nine out of the ten children were sons. Franz’s career also developed very promisingly, later he rose from a Regional Commissioner to Governor’s Councillor, and in 1811 he was knighted, a title which was subsequently also used by his sons. Franz died in Mladá Boleslav in 1829, his wife surviving him by almost 40 years.

Franz Merkl’s career was inextricably linked to the pre-March administrative system, in which Franz, the son of a Viennese tailor, achieved an extraordinary social rise. He was undoubtedly aware of the importance of a proper education in terms of social status, which was also reflected in the upbringing of his children. As many as four of his sons achieved important positions as senior civil servants, serving as District Administrators or District Captains. His fifth son advanced even further in his career, becoming the Land President of Silesia.

Like his father, the firstborn son Bernard (1797–1857), born on 29 June 1797 in Kout in Šumava, embarked on a successful career path by starting his career as a civil servant. At the age of 21, he started to work as a Trainee Official in the regional office in Mladá Boleslav and after 11 years he obtained the position of Supernumerary Regional Commissioner. Attaining this position provided him with sufficient means to look for a bride. On 16 August 1830 he married Agnes Römisch (1804–1855), daughter of the owner of the Malá Skála estate. Their marriage produced three children – the elder daughter and son unfortunately died in infancy, but the youngest, Jan Merkl (1847–1922), became chief engineer at the Vítkovice ironworks. In the following years Bernard rose up on the career ladder and achieved his first career peak in 1846 as a Regional Commissioner of Ist class. Unlike his father, who worked in various places, this phase of Bernard’s career was firmly tied to Mladá Boleslav. And it might well have remained so if it had not been for the revolution of 1848 and the associated changes in various spheres of life of the Austrian Monarchy. One of these changes consisted in the transformation of the political administration. In 1849, Bernard became a District Captain in Chotěboř, where after six years he reached the post of District Administrator. He died in office in 1857.   

The second-born son of Franz Merkl and his wife Theresie was also named Franz (1799–1878). He was born in his father’s following place of work – the town of Slaný.  We do not have much information about his life. He joined the army, where he attained the rank of captain, and died unmarried in Prague at the age of 79.

Their third son, Karel (1800–1870) was again born in Kout in Šumava. Like his brother Franz, he embarked on a career as a soldier and became a colonel in the Austrian army.  Karel also did not marry and died in Prague in 1870.

After the birth of their first three children, the Merkl family moved again to Slaný, where on 11 December 1801 the twins Edmund and Heinrich were born. Not only did the boys survive their birth, which in itself was a small miracle, but in adulthood they both became senior civil servants like their father. Heinrich Merkl (1801–1874), after studying law at the University of Vienna and Prague, obtained a post as a Trainee Official in the town of Jičín. Like his father, he held several different offices, but twenty years later it was again in Jičín that he became a Regional Commissioner. He reached the peak of his career in 1855 as district chief in Hradec Králové. Unlike his father, however, he did not marry and died before his sixty-first birthday in Prague.

Unlike Heinrich, his brother Edmund (1801–1862) married no less than four times. At the age of 22 he joined the regional office in České Budějovice as a Trainee Official. He did not even wait to be promoted before getting married for the first time – in 1831 he married Antonie Stulíková (1806–1835), the daughter of an innkeeper. However, four years later, Edmund became widowed. More than six years after he got married a second time, in 1842, to Vilemína Křepinská (1823–1945), the daughter of a postmaster. But even his second marriage did not last very long, as Vilemína died after three years. This time Edmund did not mourn for too long and the very next year he married for the third time, Amalie Pazourková (1826–1851), the daughter of a “Justiziar” from Plzeň, i.e. an official with legal education. The third marriage lasted for five years, until Amalie’s death in 1851. Eight years later, Edmund entered into his last marriage. The bride, Matilda Křepinská (1828–1868) was not only 26 years younger than her groom, she was also the younger sister of Edmund’s second wife, Vilemína. It is also not without interest that another of the sisters, Klementina Křepinská (*1831), married Alois Josef Mascha (1816–1888), who also served first as a district chief and in the 1870s held the post of District Captain in Chrudim. Merkel’s fourth marriage lasted the longest – ten years. However, neither Matilda survived her husband, dying six years before him, so Edmund died a four-time widower.   

Let us also look at the fate of Edmund’s other siblings.  On 10 March 1804, the Merkls had their sixth child, their only daughter Katerina (1804–1824). Of all her siblings, she died at the youngest age,  when she was only twenty, so she did not even have time to marry.

Her brother, August Merkl (1807–1883), was born on 14 May 1807 in another of his father’s places of work, the town of Mladá Boleslav. Like his father and some of his brothers, he embarked on a civil servant career, attaining the post of Land President in Silesia. He  married Adelheid (1818–1882) from the noble family of von Sturm zu Hirschfeld. They married in what is now Kolomyja, Ukraine, which in the 19th century was part of the Habsburg monarchy along with the whole of Galicia. The marriage produced two children, who were already born in Lvov. Daughter Therese (1838–1880) married Josef von Mensshengen (1830–1891), a Silesian Governmental Councillor, and son Bohuslav (1835–1904) became a military officer. He eventually died in Hvar, Croatia. As for August himself, at the end of his life he first lived in Vienna, but died in Innsbruck.

The eighth son, Friedrich (1808–1886), was born in Mladá Boleslav on 29 June 1808. The army became his destiny, he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Military Cross of Merit for his achievements. He too never married and died in Prague in 1886.

It was also in Mladá Boleslav where a year later – exactly on 5 November 1809 – another son of the Merkls, Albrecht (1809–1860), was born. He attained the rank of colonel in the General staff, but unlike his other brothers, he managed to combine military service with family life. He married Karoline Baumgärtner (1820–1891) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Their daughter Matylda (1848–1937) married Karl Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1838–1897), a historian who was professor at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the son of the famous composer. Compared to his brothers Albrecht died quite young – he died in Prague at the age of fifty.

The last child the Merkls had was Wilhelm (1815–1892), born on 1 October 1815 in Mladá Boleslav. Wilhelm also chose a career as a civil servant and worked his way up to become a District Captain in Jasło, a town in the southeast of present-day Poland. In the 19th century, however, the town was under the administration of the Austrian Empire, along with the whole of Galicia. Wilhelm found a bride among the Polish nobility and in 1848 he married Josefina Gruszczynska (1825–1878). Their sons also achieved important positions within the Austrian administration. Wilhelm died in 1892.

The story of the Merkl family is very interesting both demographically and socially. Their unusually favourable mortality condition applied not only in childhood; five of Franz Merkl‘s nine sons died after they had reached the age of seventy, which was also unusual at that time. At the same time, mostly all of the Merkl siblings had successful professional careers. Interestingly, they only took two paths – either they became civil servants like their father or they joined the army. Although Franz Merkl had acquired a noble title, he did not possess a family fortune from which at least one of his sons could live. Therefore, his descendants had to provide for their own financial needs. The family history of the Merkls also shows the immense size of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 19th century. Looking at today’s map, it would appear that the brothers were active in four different countries – the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland and Ukraine – but in fact all the time they were on the territory of the Austrian Empire.

At the end of the 18th century, this was not an unusual sight. On 27 July 1796 in a church in the South Bohemian town of Kdyně, the then thirty-seven-year-old Regional Commissioner Franz Merkl (1759–1829) and the eighteen-year-old daughter of an estate inspector Theresie Dalquen (1778–1868) stood side by side. Franz was not getting married for the first time, he was a widower, but apparently had no children from his first marriage. As a well-placed civil servant, he certainly made an interesting match for unmarried ladies and their parents. But the marriage of Franz and Therese was, after all, rather exceptional for its time. It produced ten children, all of whom lived to adulthood and most of whom died at a ripe old age. This was quite rare at a time when, on average, a quarter of the children born did not live to see their first birthday. Equally unusual was that nine out of the ten children were sons. Franz’s career also developed very promisingly, later he rose from a Regional Commissioner to Governor’s Councillor, and in 1811 he was knighted, a title which was subsequently also used by his sons. Franz died in Mladá Boleslav in 1829, his wife surviving him by almost 40 years.

Franz Merkl’s career was inextricably linked to the pre-March administrative system, in which Franz, the son of a Viennese tailor, achieved an extraordinary social rise. He was undoubtedly aware of the importance of a proper education in terms of social status, which was also reflected in the upbringing of his children. As many as four of his sons achieved important positions as senior civil servants, serving as District Administrators or District Captains. His fifth son advanced even further in his career, becoming the Land President of Silesia.

Like his father, the firstborn son Bernard (1797–1857), born on 29 June 1797 in Kout in Šumava, embarked on a successful career path by starting his career as a civil servant. At the age of 21, he started to work as a Trainee Official in the regional office in Mladá Boleslav and after 11 years he obtained the position of Supernumerary Regional Commissioner. Attaining this position provided him with sufficient means to look for a bride. On 16 August 1830 he married Agnes Römisch (1804–1855), daughter of the owner of the Malá Skála estate. Their marriage produced three children – the elder daughter and son unfortunately died in infancy, but the youngest, Jan Merkl (1847–1922), became chief engineer at the Vítkovice ironworks. In the following years Bernard rose up on the career ladder and achieved his first career peak in 1846 as a Regional Commissioner of Ist class. Unlike his father, who worked in various places, this phase of Bernard’s career was firmly tied to Mladá Boleslav. And it might well have remained so if it had not been for the revolution of 1848 and the associated changes in various spheres of life of the Austrian Monarchy. One of these changes consisted in the transformation of the political administration. In 1849, Bernard became a District Captain in Chotěboř, where after six years he reached the post of District Administrator. He died in office in 1857.   

The second-born son of Franz Merkl and his wife Theresie was also named Franz (1799–1878). He was born in his father’s following place of work – the town of Slaný.  We do not have much information about his life. He joined the army, where he attained the rank of captain, and died unmarried in Prague at the age of 79.

Their third son, Karel (1800–1870) was again born in Kout in Šumava. Like his brother Franz, he embarked on a career as a soldier and became a colonel in the Austrian army.  Karel also did not marry and died in Prague in 1870.

After the birth of their first three children, the Merkl family moved again to Slaný, where on 11 December 1801 the twins Edmund and Heinrich were born. Not only did the boys survive their birth, which in itself was a small miracle, but in adulthood they both became senior civil servants like their father. Heinrich Merkl (1801–1874), after studying law at the University of Vienna and Prague, obtained a post as a Trainee Official in the town of Jičín. Like his father, he held several different offices, but twenty years later it was again in Jičín that he became a Regional Commissioner. He reached the peak of his career in 1855 as district chief in Hradec Králové. Unlike his father, however, he did not marry and died before his sixty-first birthday in Prague.

Unlike Heinrich, his brother Edmund (1801–1862) married no less than four times. At the age of 22 he joined the regional office in České Budějovice as a Trainee Official. He did not even wait to be promoted before getting married for the first time – in 1831 he married Antonie Stulíková (1806–1835), the daughter of an innkeeper. However, four years later, Edmund became widowed. More than six years after he got married a second time, in 1842, to Vilemína Křepinská (1823–1945), the daughter of a postmaster. But even his second marriage did not last very long, as Vilemína died after three years. This time Edmund did not mourn for too long and the very next year he married for the third time, Amalie Pazourková (1826–1851), the daughter of a “Justiziar” from Plzeň, i.e. an official with legal education. The third marriage lasted for five years, until Amalie’s death in 1851. Eight years later, Edmund entered into his last marriage. The bride, Matilda Křepinská (1828–1868) was not only 26 years younger than her groom, she was also the younger sister of Edmund’s second wife, Vilemína. It is also not without interest that another of the sisters, Klementina Křepinská (*1831), married Alois Josef Mascha (1816–1888), who also served first as a district chief and in the 1870s held the post of District Captain in Chrudim. Merkel’s fourth marriage lasted the longest – ten years. However, neither Matilda survived her husband, dying six years before him, so Edmund died a four-time widower.   

Let us also look at the fate of Edmund’s other siblings.  On 10 March 1804, the Merkls had their sixth child, their only daughter Katerina (1804–1824). Of all her siblings, she died at the youngest age,  when she was only twenty, so she did not even have time to marry.

Her brother, August Merkl (1807–1883), was born on 14 May 1807 in another of his father’s places of work, the town of Mladá Boleslav. Like his father and some of his brothers, he embarked on a civil servant career, attaining the post of Land President in Silesia. He  married Adelheid (1818–1882) from the noble family of von Sturm zu Hirschfeld. They married in what is now Kolomyja, Ukraine, which in the 19th century was part of the Habsburg monarchy along with the whole of Galicia. The marriage produced two children, who were already born in Lvov. Daughter Therese (1838–1880) married Josef von Mensshengen (1830–1891), a Silesian Governmental Councillor, and son Bohuslav (1835–1904) became a military officer. He eventually died in Hvar, Croatia. As for August himself, at the end of his life he first lived in Vienna, but died in Innsbruck.

The eighth son, Friedrich (1808–1886), was born in Mladá Boleslav on 29 June 1808. The army became his destiny, he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Military Cross of Merit for his achievements. He too never married and died in Prague in 1886.

It was also in Mladá Boleslav where a year later – exactly on 5 November 1809 – another son of the Merkls, Albrecht (1809–1860), was born. He attained the rank of colonel in the General staff, but unlike his other brothers, he managed to combine military service with family life. He married Karoline Baumgärtner (1820–1891) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Their daughter Matylda (1848–1937) married Karl Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1838–1897), a historian who was professor at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the son of the famous composer. Compared to his brothers Albrecht died quite young – he died in Prague at the age of fifty.

The last child the Merkls had was Wilhelm (1815–1892), born on 1 October 1815 in Mladá Boleslav. Wilhelm also chose a career as a civil servant and worked his way up to become a District Captain in Jasło, a town in the southeast of present-day Poland. In the 19th century, however, the town was under the administration of the Austrian Empire, along with the whole of Galicia. Wilhelm found a bride among the Polish nobility and in 1848 he married Josefina Gruszczynska (1825–1878). Their sons also achieved important positions within the Austrian administration. Wilhelm died in 1892.

The story of the Merkl family is very interesting both demographically and socially. Their unusually favourable mortality condition applied not only in childhood; five of Franz Merkl‘s nine sons died after they had reached the age of seventy, which was also unusual at that time. At the same time, mostly all of the Merkl siblings had successful professional careers. Interestingly, they only took two paths – either they became civil servants like their father or they joined the army. Although Franz Merkl had acquired a noble title, he did not possess a family fortune from which at least one of his sons could live. Therefore, his descendants had to provide for their own financial needs. The family history of the Merkls also shows the immense size of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 19th century. Looking at today’s map, it would appear that the brothers were active in four different countries – the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland and Ukraine – but in fact all the time they were on the territory of the Austrian Empire.

At the end of the 18th century, this was not an unusual sight. On 27 July 1796 in a church in the South Bohemian town of Kdyně, the then thirty-seven-year-old Regional Commissioner Franz Merkl (1759–1829) and the eighteen-year-old daughter of an estate inspector Theresie Dalquen (1778–1868) stood side by side. Franz was not getting married for the first time, he was a widower, but apparently had no children from his first marriage. As a well-placed civil servant, he certainly made an interesting match for unmarried ladies and their parents. But the marriage of Franz and Therese was, after all, rather exceptional for its time. It produced ten children, all of whom lived to adulthood and most of whom died at a ripe old age. This was quite rare at a time when, on average, a quarter of the children born did not live to see their first birthday. Equally unusual was that nine out of the ten children were sons. Franz’s career also developed very promisingly, later he rose from a Regional Commissioner to Governor’s Councillor, and in 1811 he was knighted, a title which was subsequently also used by his sons. Franz died in Mladá Boleslav in 1829, his wife surviving him by almost 40 years.

Franz Merkl’s career was inextricably linked to the pre-March administrative system, in which Franz, the son of a Viennese tailor, achieved an extraordinary social rise. He was undoubtedly aware of the importance of a proper education in terms of social status, which was also reflected in the upbringing of his children. As many as four of his sons achieved important positions as senior civil servants, serving as District Administrators or District Captains. His fifth son advanced even further in his career, becoming the Land President of Silesia.

Like his father, the firstborn son Bernard (1797–1857), born on 29 June 1797 in Kout in Šumava, embarked on a successful career path by starting his career as a civil servant. At the age of 21, he started to work as a Trainee Official in the regional office in Mladá Boleslav and after 11 years he obtained the position of Supernumerary Regional Commissioner. Attaining this position provided him with sufficient means to look for a bride. On 16 August 1830 he married Agnes Römisch (1804–1855), daughter of the owner of the Malá Skála estate. Their marriage produced three children – the elder daughter and son unfortunately died in infancy, but the youngest, Jan Merkl (1847–1922), became chief engineer at the Vítkovice ironworks. In the following years Bernard rose up on the career ladder and achieved his first career peak in 1846 as a Regional Commissioner of Ist class. Unlike his father, who worked in various places, this phase of Bernard’s career was firmly tied to Mladá Boleslav. And it might well have remained so if it had not been for the revolution of 1848 and the associated changes in various spheres of life of the Austrian Monarchy. One of these changes consisted in the transformation of the political administration. In 1849, Bernard became a District Captain in Chotěboř, where after six years he reached the post of District Administrator. He died in office in 1857.   

The second-born son of Franz Merkl and his wife Theresie was also named Franz (1799–1878). He was born in his father’s following place of work – the town of Slaný.  We do not have much information about his life. He joined the army, where he attained the rank of captain, and died unmarried in Prague at the age of 79.

Their third son, Karel (1800–1870) was again born in Kout in Šumava. Like his brother Franz, he embarked on a career as a soldier and became a colonel in the Austrian army.  Karel also did not marry and died in Prague in 1870.

After the birth of their first three children, the Merkl family moved again to Slaný, where on 11 December 1801 the twins Edmund and Heinrich were born. Not only did the boys survive their birth, which in itself was a small miracle, but in adulthood they both became senior civil servants like their father. Heinrich Merkl (1801–1874), after studying law at the University of Vienna and Prague, obtained a post as a Trainee Official in the town of Jičín. Like his father, he held several different offices, but twenty years later it was again in Jičín that he became a Regional Commissioner. He reached the peak of his career in 1855 as district chief in Hradec Králové. Unlike his father, however, he did not marry and died before his sixty-first birthday in Prague.

Unlike Heinrich, his brother Edmund (1801–1862) married no less than four times. At the age of 22 he joined the regional office in České Budějovice as a Trainee Official. He did not even wait to be promoted before getting married for the first time – in 1831 he married Antonie Stulíková (1806–1835), the daughter of an innkeeper. However, four years later, Edmund became widowed. More than six years after he got married a second time, in 1842, to Vilemína Křepinská (1823–1945), the daughter of a postmaster. But even his second marriage did not last very long, as Vilemína died after three years. This time Edmund did not mourn for too long and the very next year he married for the third time, Amalie Pazourková (1826–1851), the daughter of a “Justiziar” from Plzeň, i.e. an official with legal education. The third marriage lasted for five years, until Amalie’s death in 1851. Eight years later, Edmund entered into his last marriage. The bride, Matilda Křepinská (1828–1868) was not only 26 years younger than her groom, she was also the younger sister of Edmund’s second wife, Vilemína. It is also not without interest that another of the sisters, Klementina Křepinská (*1831), married Alois Josef Mascha (1816–1888), who also served first as a district chief and in the 1870s held the post of District Captain in Chrudim. Merkel’s fourth marriage lasted the longest – ten years. However, neither Matilda survived her husband, dying six years before him, so Edmund died a four-time widower.   

Let us also look at the fate of Edmund’s other siblings.  On 10 March 1804, the Merkls had their sixth child, their only daughter Katerina (1804–1824). Of all her siblings, she died at the youngest age,  when she was only twenty, so she did not even have time to marry.

Her brother, August Merkl (1807–1883), was born on 14 May 1807 in another of his father’s places of work, the town of Mladá Boleslav. Like his father and some of his brothers, he embarked on a civil servant career, attaining the post of Land President in Silesia. He  married Adelheid (1818–1882) from the noble family of von Sturm zu Hirschfeld. They married in what is now Kolomyja, Ukraine, which in the 19th century was part of the Habsburg monarchy along with the whole of Galicia. The marriage produced two children, who were already born in Lvov. Daughter Therese (1838–1880) married Josef von Mensshengen (1830–1891), a Silesian Governmental Councillor, and son Bohuslav (1835–1904) became a military officer. He eventually died in Hvar, Croatia. As for August himself, at the end of his life he first lived in Vienna, but died in Innsbruck.

The eighth son, Friedrich (1808–1886), was born in Mladá Boleslav on 29 June 1808. The army became his destiny, he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Military Cross of Merit for his achievements. He too never married and died in Prague in 1886.

It was also in Mladá Boleslav where a year later – exactly on 5 November 1809 – another son of the Merkls, Albrecht (1809–1860), was born. He attained the rank of colonel in the General staff, but unlike his other brothers, he managed to combine military service with family life. He married Karoline Baumgärtner (1820–1891) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Their daughter Matylda (1848–1937) married Karl Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1838–1897), a historian who was professor at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the son of the famous composer. Compared to his brothers Albrecht died quite young – he died in Prague at the age of fifty.

The last child the Merkls had was Wilhelm (1815–1892), born on 1 October 1815 in Mladá Boleslav. Wilhelm also chose a career as a civil servant and worked his way up to become a District Captain in Jasło, a town in the southeast of present-day Poland. In the 19th century, however, the town was under the administration of the Austrian Empire, along with the whole of Galicia. Wilhelm found a bride among the Polish nobility and in 1848 he married Josefina Gruszczynska (1825–1878). Their sons also achieved important positions within the Austrian administration. Wilhelm died in 1892.

The story of the Merkl family is very interesting both demographically and socially. Their unusually favourable mortality condition applied not only in childhood; five of Franz Merkl‘s nine sons died after they had reached the age of seventy, which was also unusual at that time. At the same time, mostly all of the Merkl siblings had successful professional careers. Interestingly, they only took two paths – either they became civil servants like their father or they joined the army. Although Franz Merkl had acquired a noble title, he did not possess a family fortune from which at least one of his sons could live. Therefore, his descendants had to provide for their own financial needs. The family history of the Merkls also shows the immense size of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 19th century. Looking at today’s map, it would appear that the brothers were active in four different countries – the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland and Ukraine – but in fact all the time they were on the territory of the Austrian Empire.

At the end of the 18th century, this was not an unusual sight. On 27 July 1796 in a church in the South Bohemian town of Kdyně, the then thirty-seven-year-old Regional Commissioner Franz Merkl (1759–1829) and the eighteen-year-old daughter of an estate inspector Theresie Dalquen (1778–1868) stood side by side. Franz was not getting married for the first time, he was a widower, but apparently had no children from his first marriage. As a well-placed civil servant, he certainly made an interesting match for unmarried ladies and their parents. But the marriage of Franz and Therese was, after all, rather exceptional for its time. It produced ten children, all of whom lived to adulthood and most of whom died at a ripe old age. This was quite rare at a time when, on average, a quarter of the children born did not live to see their first birthday. Equally unusual was that nine out of the ten children were sons. Franz’s career also developed very promisingly, later he rose from a Regional Commissioner to Governor’s Councillor, and in 1811 he was knighted, a title which was subsequently also used by his sons. Franz died in Mladá Boleslav in 1829, his wife surviving him by almost 40 years.

Franz Merkl’s career was inextricably linked to the pre-March administrative system, in which Franz, the son of a Viennese tailor, achieved an extraordinary social rise. He was undoubtedly aware of the importance of a proper education in terms of social status, which was also reflected in the upbringing of his children. As many as four of his sons achieved important positions as senior civil servants, serving as District Administrators or District Captains. His fifth son advanced even further in his career, becoming the Land President of Silesia.

Like his father, the firstborn son Bernard (1797–1857), born on 29 June 1797 in Kout in Šumava, embarked on a successful career path by starting his career as a civil servant. At the age of 21, he started to work as a Trainee Official in the regional office in Mladá Boleslav and after 11 years he obtained the position of Supernumerary Regional Commissioner. Attaining this position provided him with sufficient means to look for a bride. On 16 August 1830 he married Agnes Römisch (1804–1855), daughter of the owner of the Malá Skála estate. Their marriage produced three children – the elder daughter and son unfortunately died in infancy, but the youngest, Jan Merkl (1847–1922), became chief engineer at the Vítkovice ironworks. In the following years Bernard rose up on the career ladder and achieved his first career peak in 1846 as a Regional Commissioner of Ist class. Unlike his father, who worked in various places, this phase of Bernard’s career was firmly tied to Mladá Boleslav. And it might well have remained so if it had not been for the revolution of 1848 and the associated changes in various spheres of life of the Austrian Monarchy. One of these changes consisted in the transformation of the political administration. In 1849, Bernard became a District Captain in Chotěboř, where after six years he reached the post of District Administrator. He died in office in 1857.   

The second-born son of Franz Merkl and his wife Theresie was also named Franz (1799–1878). He was born in his father’s following place of work – the town of Slaný.  We do not have much information about his life. He joined the army, where he attained the rank of captain, and died unmarried in Prague at the age of 79.

Their third son, Karel (1800–1870) was again born in Kout in Šumava. Like his brother Franz, he embarked on a career as a soldier and became a colonel in the Austrian army.  Karel also did not marry and died in Prague in 1870.

After the birth of their first three children, the Merkl family moved again to Slaný, where on 11 December 1801 the twins Edmund and Heinrich were born. Not only did the boys survive their birth, which in itself was a small miracle, but in adulthood they both became senior civil servants like their father. Heinrich Merkl (1801–1874), after studying law at the University of Vienna and Prague, obtained a post as a Trainee Official in the town of Jičín. Like his father, he held several different offices, but twenty years later it was again in Jičín that he became a Regional Commissioner. He reached the peak of his career in 1855 as district chief in Hradec Králové. Unlike his father, however, he did not marry and died before his sixty-first birthday in Prague.

Unlike Heinrich, his brother Edmund (1801–1862) married no less than four times. At the age of 22 he joined the regional office in České Budějovice as a Trainee Official. He did not even wait to be promoted before getting married for the first time – in 1831 he married Antonie Stulíková (1806–1835), the daughter of an innkeeper. However, four years later, Edmund became widowed. More than six years after he got married a second time, in 1842, to Vilemína Křepinská (1823–1945), the daughter of a postmaster. But even his second marriage did not last very long, as Vilemína died after three years. This time Edmund did not mourn for too long and the very next year he married for the third time, Amalie Pazourková (1826–1851), the daughter of a “Justiziar” from Plzeň, i.e. an official with legal education. The third marriage lasted for five years, until Amalie’s death in 1851. Eight years later, Edmund entered into his last marriage. The bride, Matilda Křepinská (1828–1868) was not only 26 years younger than her groom, she was also the younger sister of Edmund’s second wife, Vilemína. It is also not without interest that another of the sisters, Klementina Křepinská (*1831), married Alois Josef Mascha (1816–1888), who also served first as a district chief and in the 1870s held the post of District Captain in Chrudim. Merkel’s fourth marriage lasted the longest – ten years. However, neither Matilda survived her husband, dying six years before him, so Edmund died a four-time widower.   

Let us also look at the fate of Edmund’s other siblings.  On 10 March 1804, the Merkls had their sixth child, their only daughter Katerina (1804–1824). Of all her siblings, she died at the youngest age,  when she was only twenty, so she did not even have time to marry.

Her brother, August Merkl (1807–1883), was born on 14 May 1807 in another of his father’s places of work, the town of Mladá Boleslav. Like his father and some of his brothers, he embarked on a civil servant career, attaining the post of Land President in Silesia. He  married Adelheid (1818–1882) from the noble family of von Sturm zu Hirschfeld. They married in what is now Kolomyja, Ukraine, which in the 19th century was part of the Habsburg monarchy along with the whole of Galicia. The marriage produced two children, who were already born in Lvov. Daughter Therese (1838–1880) married Josef von Mensshengen (1830–1891), a Silesian Governmental Councillor, and son Bohuslav (1835–1904) became a military officer. He eventually died in Hvar, Croatia. As for August himself, at the end of his life he first lived in Vienna, but died in Innsbruck.

The eighth son, Friedrich (1808–1886), was born in Mladá Boleslav on 29 June 1808. The army became his destiny, he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Military Cross of Merit for his achievements. He too never married and died in Prague in 1886.

It was also in Mladá Boleslav where a year later – exactly on 5 November 1809 – another son of the Merkls, Albrecht (1809–1860), was born. He attained the rank of colonel in the General staff, but unlike his other brothers, he managed to combine military service with family life. He married Karoline Baumgärtner (1820–1891) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Their daughter Matylda (1848–1937) married Karl Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1838–1897), a historian who was professor at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the son of the famous composer. Compared to his brothers Albrecht died quite young – he died in Prague at the age of fifty.

The last child the Merkls had was Wilhelm (1815–1892), born on 1 October 1815 in Mladá Boleslav. Wilhelm also chose a career as a civil servant and worked his way up to become a District Captain in Jasło, a town in the southeast of present-day Poland. In the 19th century, however, the town was under the administration of the Austrian Empire, along with the whole of Galicia. Wilhelm found a bride among the Polish nobility and in 1848 he married Josefina Gruszczynska (1825–1878). Their sons also achieved important positions within the Austrian administration. Wilhelm died in 1892.

The story of the Merkl family is very interesting both demographically and socially. Their unusually favourable mortality condition applied not only in childhood; five of Franz Merkl‘s nine sons died after they had reached the age of seventy, which was also unusual at that time. At the same time, mostly all of the Merkl siblings had successful professional careers. Interestingly, they only took two paths – either they became civil servants like their father or they joined the army. Although Franz Merkl had acquired a noble title, he did not possess a family fortune from which at least one of his sons could live. Therefore, his descendants had to provide for their own financial needs. The family history of the Merkls also shows the immense size of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 19th century. Looking at today’s map, it would appear that the brothers were active in four different countries – the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland and Ukraine – but in fact all the time they were on the territory of the Austrian Empire.

At the end of the 18th century, this was not an unusual sight. On 27 July 1796 in a church in the South Bohemian town of Kdyně, the then thirty-seven-year-old Regional Commissioner Franz Merkl (1759–1829) and the eighteen-year-old daughter of an estate inspector Theresie Dalquen (1778–1868) stood side by side. Franz was not getting married for the first time, he was a widower, but apparently had no children from his first marriage. As a well-placed civil servant, he certainly made an interesting match for unmarried ladies and their parents. But the marriage of Franz and Therese was, after all, rather exceptional for its time. It produced ten children, all of whom lived to adulthood and most of whom died at a ripe old age. This was quite rare at a time when, on average, a quarter of the children born did not live to see their first birthday. Equally unusual was that nine out of the ten children were sons. Franz’s career also developed very promisingly, later he rose from a Regional Commissioner to Governor’s Councillor, and in 1811 he was knighted, a title which was subsequently also used by his sons. Franz died in Mladá Boleslav in 1829, his wife surviving him by almost 40 years.

Franz Merkl’s career was inextricably linked to the pre-March administrative system, in which Franz, the son of a Viennese tailor, achieved an extraordinary social rise. He was undoubtedly aware of the importance of a proper education in terms of social status, which was also reflected in the upbringing of his children. As many as four of his sons achieved important positions as senior civil servants, serving as District Administrators or District Captains. His fifth son advanced even further in his career, becoming the Land President of Silesia.

Like his father, the firstborn son Bernard (1797–1857), born on 29 June 1797 in Kout in Šumava, embarked on a successful career path by starting his career as a civil servant. At the age of 21, he started to work as a Trainee Official in the regional office in Mladá Boleslav and after 11 years he obtained the position of Supernumerary Regional Commissioner. Attaining this position provided him with sufficient means to look for a bride. On 16 August 1830 he married Agnes Römisch (1804–1855), daughter of the owner of the Malá Skála estate. Their marriage produced three children – the elder daughter and son unfortunately died in infancy, but the youngest, Jan Merkl (1847–1922), became chief engineer at the Vítkovice ironworks. In the following years Bernard rose up on the career ladder and achieved his first career peak in 1846 as a Regional Commissioner of Ist class. Unlike his father, who worked in various places, this phase of Bernard’s career was firmly tied to Mladá Boleslav. And it might well have remained so if it had not been for the revolution of 1848 and the associated changes in various spheres of life of the Austrian Monarchy. One of these changes consisted in the transformation of the political administration. In 1849, Bernard became a District Captain in Chotěboř, where after six years he reached the post of District Administrator. He died in office in 1857.   

The second-born son of Franz Merkl and his wife Theresie was also named Franz (1799–1878). He was born in his father’s following place of work – the town of Slaný.  We do not have much information about his life. He joined the army, where he attained the rank of captain, and died unmarried in Prague at the age of 79.

Their third son, Karel (1800–1870) was again born in Kout in Šumava. Like his brother Franz, he embarked on a career as a soldier and became a colonel in the Austrian army.  Karel also did not marry and died in Prague in 1870.

After the birth of their first three children, the Merkl family moved again to Slaný, where on 11 December 1801 the twins Edmund and Heinrich were born. Not only did the boys survive their birth, which in itself was a small miracle, but in adulthood they both became senior civil servants like their father. Heinrich Merkl (1801–1874), after studying law at the University of Vienna and Prague, obtained a post as a Trainee Official in the town of Jičín. Like his father, he held several different offices, but twenty years later it was again in Jičín that he became a Regional Commissioner. He reached the peak of his career in 1855 as district chief in Hradec Králové. Unlike his father, however, he did not marry and died before his sixty-first birthday in Prague.

Unlike Heinrich, his brother Edmund (1801–1862) married no less than four times. At the age of 22 he joined the regional office in České Budějovice as a Trainee Official. He did not even wait to be promoted before getting married for the first time – in 1831 he married Antonie Stulíková (1806–1835), the daughter of an innkeeper. However, four years later, Edmund became widowed. More than six years after he got married a second time, in 1842, to Vilemína Křepinská (1823–1945), the daughter of a postmaster. But even his second marriage did not last very long, as Vilemína died after three years. This time Edmund did not mourn for too long and the very next year he married for the third time, Amalie Pazourková (1826–1851), the daughter of a “Justiziar” from Plzeň, i.e. an official with legal education. The third marriage lasted for five years, until Amalie’s death in 1851. Eight years later, Edmund entered into his last marriage. The bride, Matilda Křepinská (1828–1868) was not only 26 years younger than her groom, she was also the younger sister of Edmund’s second wife, Vilemína. It is also not without interest that another of the sisters, Klementina Křepinská (*1831), married Alois Josef Mascha (1816–1888), who also served first as a district chief and in the 1870s held the post of District Captain in Chrudim. Merkel’s fourth marriage lasted the longest – ten years. However, neither Matilda survived her husband, dying six years before him, so Edmund died a four-time widower.   

Let us also look at the fate of Edmund’s other siblings.  On 10 March 1804, the Merkls had their sixth child, their only daughter Katerina (1804–1824). Of all her siblings, she died at the youngest age,  when she was only twenty, so she did not even have time to marry.

Her brother, August Merkl (1807–1883), was born on 14 May 1807 in another of his father’s places of work, the town of Mladá Boleslav. Like his father and some of his brothers, he embarked on a civil servant career, attaining the post of Land President in Silesia. He  married Adelheid (1818–1882) from the noble family of von Sturm zu Hirschfeld. They married in what is now Kolomyja, Ukraine, which in the 19th century was part of the Habsburg monarchy along with the whole of Galicia. The marriage produced two children, who were already born in Lvov. Daughter Therese (1838–1880) married Josef von Mensshengen (1830–1891), a Silesian Governmental Councillor, and son Bohuslav (1835–1904) became a military officer. He eventually died in Hvar, Croatia. As for August himself, at the end of his life he first lived in Vienna, but died in Innsbruck.

The eighth son, Friedrich (1808–1886), was born in Mladá Boleslav on 29 June 1808. The army became his destiny, he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Military Cross of Merit for his achievements. He too never married and died in Prague in 1886.

It was also in Mladá Boleslav where a year later – exactly on 5 November 1809 – another son of the Merkls, Albrecht (1809–1860), was born. He attained the rank of colonel in the General staff, but unlike his other brothers, he managed to combine military service with family life. He married Karoline Baumgärtner (1820–1891) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Their daughter Matylda (1848–1937) married Karl Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1838–1897), a historian who was professor at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the son of the famous composer. Compared to his brothers Albrecht died quite young – he died in Prague at the age of fifty.

The last child the Merkls had was Wilhelm (1815–1892), born on 1 October 1815 in Mladá Boleslav. Wilhelm also chose a career as a civil servant and worked his way up to become a District Captain in Jasło, a town in the southeast of present-day Poland. In the 19th century, however, the town was under the administration of the Austrian Empire, along with the whole of Galicia. Wilhelm found a bride among the Polish nobility and in 1848 he married Josefina Gruszczynska (1825–1878). Their sons also achieved important positions within the Austrian administration. Wilhelm died in 1892.

The story of the Merkl family is very interesting both demographically and socially. Their unusually favourable mortality condition applied not only in childhood; five of Franz Merkl‘s nine sons died after they had reached the age of seventy, which was also unusual at that time. At the same time, mostly all of the Merkl siblings had successful professional careers. Interestingly, they only took two paths – either they became civil servants like their father or they joined the army. Although Franz Merkl had acquired a noble title, he did not possess a family fortune from which at least one of his sons could live. Therefore, his descendants had to provide for their own financial needs. The family history of the Merkls also shows the immense size of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 19th century. Looking at today’s map, it would appear that the brothers were active in four different countries – the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland and Ukraine – but in fact all the time they were on the territory of the Austrian Empire.

Though well-known in Transylvania during his time, Petru Meteș is almost unknown today, unlike his cousin, the historian Ștefan Meteș (1887–1977), or one of his sons, Mircea. Petru’s parents, Simion and Maria Meteș, were peasants from Geomal / Diomal in Alba de Jos / Alsó-Fehér County. They had at least six children who survived childhood: Petru (born in 1883, according to other sources: 1884 or 1886), Nistor (1893–1954), Octavian (?1943), Iuliana (born ca. 1898), Cornelia (born ca. 1899), and Ioan (born ca. 1901). Simion and Maria were wealthy enough to send Petru and Nistor to study at the Hungarian-language Bethlen College of Aiud/ Nagyenyed. 

Petru_MetesPetru Meteș, prefect of Cojocna (Cluj) county, Cosînzeana, VI, no. 1, 1922, p. 22 (https://dspace.bcucluj.ro/handle/123456789/1506)

Stefan Metes_1931

Ștefan Meteș, historian, MP, and member of the Iorga Cabinet as undersecretary (1931–1932), Anuarul parlamentar, 1931, Bucharest, 1932.

A studious pupil, Petru graduated from secondary school at Bethlen College. He continued his studies at the Franz Joseph University of Cluj / Kolozsvár, where he obtained a degree in Law and a PhD in Legal Science (1908). He did his law internship in Aiud, in the law office of the Hungarian lawyer Pál Szász, the son of József Szász, the főispan (prefect) of Alsó-Fehér County from 1910 to 1917. In 1910, Petru helped Pál Szász to be elected as a deputy in the constituency of Ighiu / Magyarigen – of which Geomal was a part – and whose population was predominantly Romanian. His close relationship with the Szász family helped him to be appointed honorary sheriff in 1910 (tiszteletbeli szolgabiró) and elected as a member of Alsó-Fehér County Congregation “on the Hungarian list” (i.e., on the governing party’s list). Furthermore, in June 1911, P. Meteș was admitted to the Cluj Bar as a lawyer in Aiud.

ClujMěsto Kluž/ Kolozsvár, pohlednice

Alongside his connections with the Hungarian milieu, Petru Meteș also integrated into the Romanian society of the time. This seems to have been due to a large degree to his first wife, Iustina Maria Filipan (born ca. 1891–1892, in Bistrița / Beszterce), the daughter of a physician in the district of Năsăud / Naszód. In addition, he joined the local branch of the most important Romanian Association (ASTRA), and was also involved in helping the Orthodox Church.

Everything changed in 1914. Petru was sent to the front line and taken captive by the Russians. In the summer of 1917, he was already a member of the Transylvanian and Bukovinian Volunteer Corps, created within the Romanian Army and made up of Romanian refugees from the Habsburg Monarchy and prisoners of war from the Russian camps. Captain Petru Meteș fought in Moldavia in the summer of 1917 and was later dispatched to Odessa, probably to ensure the security of Romanian refugees and dignitaries. The Bolsheviks under Christian Rakovsky (1873– 1941) imprisoned him there for a short period. Following his liberation, he was hired as one of the three secretaries of the Technical Advisory Board of the Justice Ministry in Chişinău, in Bessarabia, recently integrated into Romania. Following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary and after the Romanians took over local and regional power, he returned to Transylvania where he was appointed as First President of the Dumbrăveni / Erzsébetváros Court of Law and soon transferred to a similar position to the more important Court of Law in Brașov / Kronstadt. 

On 15 April 1920, judge Meteș was dispatched by the Ruling Council to fill in the office of prefect for Alba de Jos County. Six months later, Petru Meteș was transferred by the Averescu government and appointed Cojocna (Cluj) County prefect. On 1 January 1921, he was appointed full prefect, which implicitly meant his political involvement within the governing party (the People’s Party), which lacked leaders and members in Transylvania. Through this position, which gave him greater public visibility and enabled him to create a support network, Petru Meteș seems to have tried to find an entryway into politics. He succeeded in keeping the rank of prefect under the brief government of Take Ionescu (December 1921–January 1922) and in the first year of Ion I.C. Brătianu Cabinet. In February 1923, he chose to run for the Chamber of Deputies in the constituency of Ighiu in Alba County as the governmental (National Liberal Party) candidate. The opposition press fiercely attacked his candidacy, mentioning his “anti-Romanian” deeds before 1914. With the help of the local authorities, Petru Meteș won the elections. He served as deputy between 1923 and 1926. 

Regarding his personal life, the marriage with Iustina broke up in the mid-1920s. Petru Meteș’s second wife was Victoria Octavia Crișan (born in 1903), the sister of Eugenia, the wife of his brother Nistor. Petru had two children from his first marriage, Mircea Virgil (born in 1912) and Ofelia, nicknamed Lili (born in 1915), and two from his second one, Petre (born in 1927) and Doina (1929)

Although he did not hold any political offices at the national level after 1926, Petru Meteș remained a prominent figure of the Transylvanian Romanian elite due not only to his intense career as a lawyer, but also to his involvement in a Veterans movement and his work in the management committees of various forums of the Transylvanian Orthodox Church. He died in Cluj in January 1946.

Mircea Meteș followed his father’s example: holding a bachelor’s degree and a PhD in Law, he became a lawyer. In 1938, he married Olivia (1913–2001), the daughter of Adam Lula, an Orthodox priest, and the niece of Petru Groza (1884–1958), the Communist choice, in March 1945 for the role of Prime Minister. His relationship with Groza was the leading cause of his career after 1945. Mircea Meteș was hired as head of the Prime Minister’s Secretary Office in 1946. Furthermore, he was admitted to the Foreign Service and soon appointed member of the Romanian mission to Washington. Recalled to Bucharest in 1948, he chose not to return to his homeland and became an opponent of the Romanian government. As a result, his brother and sisters came to be in the cross hairs of the State Security and were under surveillance for a long time.

Bibliography:

The Archives of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives: files regarding Petru Meteș and his children (Mircea Meteș, Ofelia Zehan, Petru Meteș and Doina Păstrav), folders no.: FI 94683, FI 139103, I 558274, I 574868, SIE 0007226.

Ioan Ciupea, Virgiliu Țârău, Liberali clujeni. Destine în marea istorie, vol. 2. Medalioane, Mega, Cluj-Napoca, 2007, pp. 241-242.

Zoltán Györke, “Prefecții județului Cluj: analiză prosopografică”, in Anuarul Institutului de Istorie „George Barițiu” din Cluj-Napoca. Series Historica, LI, 2012, pp. 305–308. (https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=23237)

Paul Nistor, “Comrade Mircea Meteș: the first communist of the Romanian Legation in Washington (1946-1948)”, in Adrian Vițălaru, Ionuț Nistor, Adrian-Bogdan Ceobanu (eds.), Romanian Diplomacy in the 20th Century. Biographies, Institutional Pathways, International Challenges, Peter Lang, Berlin, 2021, pp. 330-341.

Though well-known in Transylvania during his time, Petru Meteș is almost unknown today, unlike his cousin, the historian Ștefan Meteș (1887–1977), or one of his sons, Mircea. Petru’s parents, Simion and Maria Meteș, were peasants from Geomal / Diomal in Alba de Jos / Alsó-Fehér County. They had at least six children who survived childhood: Petru (born in 1883, according to other sources: 1884 or 1886), Nistor (1893–1954), Octavian (?1943), Iuliana (born ca. 1898), Cornelia (born ca. 1899), and Ioan (born ca. 1901). Simion and Maria were wealthy enough to send Petru and Nistor to study at the Hungarian-language Bethlen College of Aiud/ Nagyenyed. 

Petru_MetesPetru Meteș, prefect of Cojocna (Cluj) county, Cosînzeana, VI, no. 1, 1922, p. 22 (https://dspace.bcucluj.ro/handle/123456789/1506)

Stefan Metes_1931

Ștefan Meteș, historian, MP, and member of the Iorga Cabinet as undersecretary (1931–1932), Anuarul parlamentar, 1931, Bucharest, 1932.

A studious pupil, Petru graduated from secondary school at Bethlen College. He continued his studies at the Franz Joseph University of Cluj / Kolozsvár, where he obtained a degree in Law and a PhD in Legal Science (1908). He did his law internship in Aiud, in the law office of the Hungarian lawyer Pál Szász, the son of József Szász, the főispan (prefect) of Alsó-Fehér County from 1910 to 1917. In 1910, Petru helped Pál Szász to be elected as a deputy in the constituency of Ighiu / Magyarigen – of which Geomal was a part – and whose population was predominantly Romanian. His close relationship with the Szász family helped him to be appointed honorary sheriff in 1910 (tiszteletbeli szolgabiró) and elected as a member of Alsó-Fehér County Congregation “on the Hungarian list” (i.e., on the governing party’s list). Furthermore, in June 1911, P. Meteș was admitted to the Cluj Bar as a lawyer in Aiud.

ClujMěsto Kluž/ Kolozsvár, pohlednice

Alongside his connections with the Hungarian milieu, Petru Meteș also integrated into the Romanian society of the time. This seems to have been due to a large degree to his first wife, Iustina Maria Filipan (born ca. 1891–1892, in Bistrița / Beszterce), the daughter of a physician in the district of Năsăud / Naszód. In addition, he joined the local branch of the most important Romanian Association (ASTRA), and was also involved in helping the Orthodox Church.

Everything changed in 1914. Petru was sent to the front line and taken captive by the Russians. In the summer of 1917, he was already a member of the Transylvanian and Bukovinian Volunteer Corps, created within the Romanian Army and made up of Romanian refugees from the Habsburg Monarchy and prisoners of war from the Russian camps. Captain Petru Meteș fought in Moldavia in the summer of 1917 and was later dispatched to Odessa, probably to ensure the security of Romanian refugees and dignitaries. The Bolsheviks under Christian Rakovsky (1873– 1941) imprisoned him there for a short period. Following his liberation, he was hired as one of the three secretaries of the Technical Advisory Board of the Justice Ministry in Chişinău, in Bessarabia, recently integrated into Romania. Following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary and after the Romanians took over local and regional power, he returned to Transylvania where he was appointed as First President of the Dumbrăveni / Erzsébetváros Court of Law and soon transferred to a similar position to the more important Court of Law in Brașov / Kronstadt. 

On 15 April 1920, judge Meteș was dispatched by the Ruling Council to fill in the office of prefect for Alba de Jos County. Six months later, Petru Meteș was transferred by the Averescu government and appointed Cojocna (Cluj) County prefect. On 1 January 1921, he was appointed full prefect, which implicitly meant his political involvement within the governing party (the People’s Party), which lacked leaders and members in Transylvania. Through this position, which gave him greater public visibility and enabled him to create a support network, Petru Meteș seems to have tried to find an entryway into politics. He succeeded in keeping the rank of prefect under the brief government of Take Ionescu (December 1921–January 1922) and in the first year of Ion I.C. Brătianu Cabinet. In February 1923, he chose to run for the Chamber of Deputies in the constituency of Ighiu in Alba County as the governmental (National Liberal Party) candidate. The opposition press fiercely attacked his candidacy, mentioning his “anti-Romanian” deeds before 1914. With the help of the local authorities, Petru Meteș won the elections. He served as deputy between 1923 and 1926. 

Regarding his personal life, the marriage with Iustina broke up in the mid-1920s. Petru Meteș’s second wife was Victoria Octavia Crișan (born in 1903), the sister of Eugenia, the wife of his brother Nistor. Petru had two children from his first marriage, Mircea Virgil (born in 1912) and Ofelia, nicknamed Lili (born in 1915), and two from his second one, Petre (born in 1927) and Doina (1929)

Although he did not hold any political offices at the national level after 1926, Petru Meteș remained a prominent figure of the Transylvanian Romanian elite due not only to his intense career as a lawyer, but also to his involvement in a Veterans movement and his work in the management committees of various forums of the Transylvanian Orthodox Church. He died in Cluj in January 1946.

Mircea Meteș followed his father’s example: holding a bachelor’s degree and a PhD in Law, he became a lawyer. In 1938, he married Olivia (1913–2001), the daughter of Adam Lula, an Orthodox priest, and the niece of Petru Groza (1884–1958), the Communist choice, in March 1945 for the role of Prime Minister. His relationship with Groza was the leading cause of his career after 1945. Mircea Meteș was hired as head of the Prime Minister’s Secretary Office in 1946. Furthermore, he was admitted to the Foreign Service and soon appointed member of the Romanian mission to Washington. Recalled to Bucharest in 1948, he chose not to return to his homeland and became an opponent of the Romanian government. As a result, his brother and sisters came to be in the cross hairs of the State Security and were under surveillance for a long time.

Bibliography:

The Archives of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives: files regarding Petru Meteș and his children (Mircea Meteș, Ofelia Zehan, Petru Meteș and Doina Păstrav), folders no.: FI 94683, FI 139103, I 558274, I 574868, SIE 0007226.

Ioan Ciupea, Virgiliu Țârău, Liberali clujeni. Destine în marea istorie, vol. 2. Medalioane, Mega, Cluj-Napoca, 2007, pp. 241-242.

Zoltán Györke, “Prefecții județului Cluj: analiză prosopografică”, in Anuarul Institutului de Istorie „George Barițiu” din Cluj-Napoca. Series Historica, LI, 2012, pp. 305–308. (https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=23237)

Paul Nistor, “Comrade Mircea Meteș: the first communist of the Romanian Legation in Washington (1946-1948)”, in Adrian Vițălaru, Ionuț Nistor, Adrian-Bogdan Ceobanu (eds.), Romanian Diplomacy in the 20th Century. Biographies, Institutional Pathways, International Challenges, Peter Lang, Berlin, 2021, pp. 330-341.

 

Petru Mihalyi of Apșa (1838–1914)

Petru Mihalyi (2)

In the summer of 1887, the Greek Catholic Bishop of Lugoj (Hu. Lugos), Victor Mihalyi of Apșa (1841–1918), received a letter addressed to him by his brother, Petru, in which the latter notified his sibling that he had been successful in his bid for a seat in Parliament. Moreover, Petru shared his plans for his sons’ educations, designed to ensure that the Mihalyi of Apșa family would endure as one of most influential families in the Maramureș (hu. Máramaros) county:

“I passed through the elections with less emotion than 3 years before. […] During these 5 years [acting as MP], if the good Lord should keep me, I will live to see two of my sons completing their academic studies, my young lady grown up, being entirely content with this success. Little Petru is a very talented boy, we would like to raise him at home until he reaches 10, and then, if he were to succeed me, I’d send him to some military institute.”

Petru Mihalyi of Apșa was the most longstanding Romanian Member of Parliament during the dualist period. According to his obituary, he was active in the Pest/Budapest Parliament over more than 40 years. He was born in 1838 in Ieud (hu. Jód), Maramureș (hu. Máramaros) county, in the house of his paternal grandfather, the Greek Catholic archpriest Ioan Mihalyi.

Mihalyi

The Mihalyi family was one of the most influential families in the same county, having been granted a noble title in the 15th century by the Hungarian King Vladislav I (I. Ulászló). Petru’s father, Gavrilă Mihalyi (1807–1875), was also a MP and county commissioner of Maramureș. Petru’s mother, Iuliana, neé Man (1813–1881), was the sister of Iosif Man (1816–1876), who served as the Lord Lieutenant of the same county between 1865 and 1876. One of Petru’s brothers, who we noted above, was the clergyman Victor Mihalyi of Apșa, the Greek Catholic Bishop of Lugoj, who would go on to reach the highest ecclesiastical office in this Church and serve as Metropolitan of Alba Iulia and Făgăraș, residing in Blaj (Hu. Balázsfalva). A third brother, Ioan (1844–1914), while also occupying various offices in the administration of Maramureș county in the family tradition, would establish himself as a man of culture and become a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy. One of Petru’s cousins, Basil Jurca (?–1920), also followed in his footsteps and repeatedly served as a deputy in the Budapest Parliament.

Petru Mihalyi studied at the Oradea (Hu. Nagyvárad) and Košice (Hu. Kassa) gymnasiums, afterwards pursuing university studies in Vienna. It was in the imperial capital that he became knowledgeable in law and economics, two fields that would prove highly useful in his subsequent career in administration and politics. At the beginning of the 1860s, after completing his studies in law, he entered the civil service of the Maramureș county, where he served as high sheriff (Oberstuhlrichter/Főszolgabíró). He won his first mandate as parliamentary deputy in 1865, at the young age of 27, running in the constituency of Șugatag (hu. Sugatag), on the lists of the Deák Party (hu. Deák-párt). Thus, he began his vast parliamentary activity, which encompassed 12 parliamentary cycles between 1865 and 1910, interrupted only once between 1881 and 1884. During this lengthy time frame, he represented only two constituencies: that of Șugatag (1865-1869; 1887-1910) and Vișeu (Hu. Visó) (1869-1881; 1884-1887), both located in the Maramureș county.

Nevertheless, he did not prove himself to be as steadfast in his political options, vacillating between the opposition party and the government. He was initially part of the Deák Party, after which he joined the Liberal Party (Hu. Szabadelvű Párt), both of which were governing political parties. After 1879 he was past of the Moderate Opposition (Hu. Mérsékelt Ellenzék) and then the National Party (Hu. Nemzeti Párt), but at the 1896 elections he opted to re-enter the Liberal Party, of which he remained an adherent until its dissolution in 1906. During his final parliamentary cycle as acting deputy, he supported the policies of the Constitutional Party (Hu. Alkotmánypárt). He completed his political career in 1910, when he decided to renounce his candidature in favour of ‘little Petru’, who he mentioned in his letter to his brother. Petru Mihalyi Junior (1880–1951) won the 1910 elections as a representative of the electoral constituency of Șugatag, serving as a governmental deputy until the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy in 1918. He thus continued the political tradition of the Mihalyi family, as he was also active in the Parliament of Greater Romania during the interwar period. During this time, he also occupied the office of prefect of Maramureș.

As opposed to his forerunners, Petru Mihalyi also focused on extending his family’s sphere of influence beyond its regional boundaries, of the Maramureș county. Following in his family’s footsteps, he employed deft strategies as essential means of attaining this purpose. Petru Mihalyi was married to Luiza Simon (1842–1904), the daughter of Florent Simon (1803–1873), one of the most well-viewed lawyers in Budapest. His youngest son, Petru Junior, was married to Iréne Kovássy (1886–?), the daughter of the district court judge Géza Kovássy (1856–1910) from Rodna (hu. Óradna), Bistrița-Năsăud (hu. Beszterce-Naszód) county. It is doubtless that, from the perspective of marital ties, the greatest accomplishment was the marriage contracted by Florentin, his eldest son and a lawyer, who wedded Karola Hieronymi. Karola was the daughter of the Hungarian politician Károly Hieronymi (1836–1911), who had served as Minister of Internal Affairs during the government of Sándor Wekerle (1848–1821) and as Minister of Transports during the governments led by Károly Khuen-Héderváry (1849–1918) and István Tisza (1861–1918).

While the reach of his family’s influence as well as his excellent qualities as a politician were essential in obtaining such a high number of parliamentary mandates, an important role in his political success was, as Petru Mihalyi himself so aptly said, the fact that “I am very delicate when it comes to my political reputation, which I bear with great consequence [,] though with little material success, but with some dignity and moral gratitude.” 

Petru Mihalyi - obituary_úmrtní oznámení

 

Bibliography :

  • Fabro Henrik and Ujlaki József, eds., Sturm-féle Országgyűlési Almanach 1906–1911, [“Sturm” Parliamentary Almanac 1906–1911] (Budapest: Wodianer Ferenc és Fiai, 1906), p. 174-175
  • Iudean Ovidiu-Emil, The Romanian Governmental Representatives in the Budapest Parliament (1881–1918) (Cluj-Napoca: Mega, 2016), p. 165-169.
  • Iuga de Săliște Vasile, Oameni de seamă ai Maramureșului. Dicționar 1700–2010, [Great people of Maramureș. Dictionary 1700–2010] (Cluj-Napoca: Societatea Culturală PRO Maramureș “Dragoș Vodă,” 2011), p. 727.
  • Toth Adalbert, Parteien und Reichstagswahlen in Ungarn 1848–1892 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1973), p. 286

 

Petru Mihalyi of Apșa (1838–1914)

Petru Mihalyi (2)

In the summer of 1887, the Greek Catholic Bishop of Lugoj (Hu. Lugos), Victor Mihalyi of Apșa (1841–1918), received a letter addressed to him by his brother, Petru, in which the latter notified his sibling that he had been successful in his bid for a seat in Parliament. Moreover, Petru shared his plans for his sons’ educations, designed to ensure that the Mihalyi of Apșa family would endure as one of most influential families in the Maramureș (hu. Máramaros) county:

“I passed through the elections with less emotion than 3 years before. […] During these 5 years [acting as MP], if the good Lord should keep me, I will live to see two of my sons completing their academic studies, my young lady grown up, being entirely content with this success. Little Petru is a very talented boy, we would like to raise him at home until he reaches 10, and then, if he were to succeed me, I’d send him to some military institute.”

Petru Mihalyi of Apșa was the most longstanding Romanian Member of Parliament during the dualist period. According to his obituary, he was active in the Pest/Budapest Parliament over more than 40 years. He was born in 1838 in Ieud (hu. Jód), Maramureș (hu. Máramaros) county, in the house of his paternal grandfather, the Greek Catholic archpriest Ioan Mihalyi.

Mihalyi

The Mihalyi family was one of the most influential families in the same county, having been granted a noble title in the 15th century by the Hungarian King Vladislav I (I. Ulászló). Petru’s father, Gavrilă Mihalyi (1807–1875), was also a MP and county commissioner of Maramureș. Petru’s mother, Iuliana, neé Man (1813–1881), was the sister of Iosif Man (1816–1876), who served as the Lord Lieutenant of the same county between 1865 and 1876. One of Petru’s brothers, who we noted above, was the clergyman Victor Mihalyi of Apșa, the Greek Catholic Bishop of Lugoj, who would go on to reach the highest ecclesiastical office in this Church and serve as Metropolitan of Alba Iulia and Făgăraș, residing in Blaj (Hu. Balázsfalva). A third brother, Ioan (1844–1914), while also occupying various offices in the administration of Maramureș county in the family tradition, would establish himself as a man of culture and become a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy. One of Petru’s cousins, Basil Jurca (?–1920), also followed in his footsteps and repeatedly served as a deputy in the Budapest Parliament.

Petru Mihalyi studied at the Oradea (Hu. Nagyvárad) and Košice (Hu. Kassa) gymnasiums, afterwards pursuing university studies in Vienna. It was in the imperial capital that he became knowledgeable in law and economics, two fields that would prove highly useful in his subsequent career in administration and politics. At the beginning of the 1860s, after completing his studies in law, he entered the civil service of the Maramureș county, where he served as high sheriff (Oberstuhlrichter/Főszolgabíró). He won his first mandate as parliamentary deputy in 1865, at the young age of 27, running in the constituency of Șugatag (hu. Sugatag), on the lists of the Deák Party (hu. Deák-párt). Thus, he began his vast parliamentary activity, which encompassed 12 parliamentary cycles between 1865 and 1910, interrupted only once between 1881 and 1884. During this lengthy time frame, he represented only two constituencies: that of Șugatag (1865-1869; 1887-1910) and Vișeu (Hu. Visó) (1869-1881; 1884-1887), both located in the Maramureș county.

Nevertheless, he did not prove himself to be as steadfast in his political options, vacillating between the opposition party and the government. He was initially part of the Deák Party, after which he joined the Liberal Party (Hu. Szabadelvű Párt), both of which were governing political parties. After 1879 he was past of the Moderate Opposition (Hu. Mérsékelt Ellenzék) and then the National Party (Hu. Nemzeti Párt), but at the 1896 elections he opted to re-enter the Liberal Party, of which he remained an adherent until its dissolution in 1906. During his final parliamentary cycle as acting deputy, he supported the policies of the Constitutional Party (Hu. Alkotmánypárt). He completed his political career in 1910, when he decided to renounce his candidature in favour of ‘little Petru’, who he mentioned in his letter to his brother. Petru Mihalyi Junior (1880–1951) won the 1910 elections as a representative of the electoral constituency of Șugatag, serving as a governmental deputy until the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy in 1918. He thus continued the political tradition of the Mihalyi family, as he was also active in the Parliament of Greater Romania during the interwar period. During this time, he also occupied the office of prefect of Maramureș.

As opposed to his forerunners, Petru Mihalyi also focused on extending his family’s sphere of influence beyond its regional boundaries, of the Maramureș county. Following in his family’s footsteps, he employed deft strategies as essential means of attaining this purpose. Petru Mihalyi was married to Luiza Simon (1842–1904), the daughter of Florent Simon (1803–1873), one of the most well-viewed lawyers in Budapest. His youngest son, Petru Junior, was married to Iréne Kovássy (1886–?), the daughter of the district court judge Géza Kovássy (1856–1910) from Rodna (hu. Óradna), Bistrița-Năsăud (hu. Beszterce-Naszód) county. It is doubtless that, from the perspective of marital ties, the greatest accomplishment was the marriage contracted by Florentin, his eldest son and a lawyer, who wedded Karola Hieronymi. Karola was the daughter of the Hungarian politician Károly Hieronymi (1836–1911), who had served as Minister of Internal Affairs during the government of Sándor Wekerle (1848–1821) and as Minister of Transports during the governments led by Károly Khuen-Héderváry (1849–1918) and István Tisza (1861–1918).

While the reach of his family’s influence as well as his excellent qualities as a politician were essential in obtaining such a high number of parliamentary mandates, an important role in his political success was, as Petru Mihalyi himself so aptly said, the fact that “I am very delicate when it comes to my political reputation, which I bear with great consequence [,] though with little material success, but with some dignity and moral gratitude.” 

Petru Mihalyi - obituary_úmrtní oznámení

 

Bibliography :

  • Fabro Henrik and Ujlaki József, eds., Sturm-féle Országgyűlési Almanach 1906–1911, [“Sturm” Parliamentary Almanac 1906–1911] (Budapest: Wodianer Ferenc és Fiai, 1906), p. 174-175
  • Iudean Ovidiu-Emil, The Romanian Governmental Representatives in the Budapest Parliament (1881–1918) (Cluj-Napoca: Mega, 2016), p. 165-169.
  • Iuga de Săliște Vasile, Oameni de seamă ai Maramureșului. Dicționar 1700–2010, [Great people of Maramureș. Dictionary 1700–2010] (Cluj-Napoca: Societatea Culturală PRO Maramureș “Dragoș Vodă,” 2011), p. 727.
  • Toth Adalbert, Parteien und Reichstagswahlen in Ungarn 1848–1892 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1973), p. 286

 

Petru Mihalyi of Apșa (1838–1914)

Petru Mihalyi (2)

In the summer of 1887, the Greek Catholic Bishop of Lugoj (Hu. Lugos), Victor Mihalyi of Apșa (1841–1918), received a letter addressed to him by his brother, Petru, in which the latter notified his sibling that he had been successful in his bid for a seat in Parliament. Moreover, Petru shared his plans for his sons’ educations, designed to ensure that the Mihalyi of Apșa family would endure as one of most influential families in the Maramureș (hu. Máramaros) county:

“I passed through the elections with less emotion than 3 years before. […] During these 5 years [acting as MP], if the good Lord should keep me, I will live to see two of my sons completing their academic studies, my young lady grown up, being entirely content with this success. Little Petru is a very talented boy, we would like to raise him at home until he reaches 10, and then, if he were to succeed me, I’d send him to some military institute.”

Petru Mihalyi of Apșa was the most longstanding Romanian Member of Parliament during the dualist period. According to his obituary, he was active in the Pest/Budapest Parliament over more than 40 years. He was born in 1838 in Ieud (hu. Jód), Maramureș (hu. Máramaros) county, in the house of his paternal grandfather, the Greek Catholic archpriest Ioan Mihalyi.

Mihalyi

The Mihalyi family was one of the most influential families in the same county, having been granted a noble title in the 15th century by the Hungarian King Vladislav I (I. Ulászló). Petru’s father, Gavrilă Mihalyi (1807–1875), was also a MP and county commissioner of Maramureș. Petru’s mother, Iuliana, neé Man (1813–1881), was the sister of Iosif Man (1816–1876), who served as the Lord Lieutenant of the same county between 1865 and 1876. One of Petru’s brothers, who we noted above, was the clergyman Victor Mihalyi of Apșa, the Greek Catholic Bishop of Lugoj, who would go on to reach the highest ecclesiastical office in this Church and serve as Metropolitan of Alba Iulia and Făgăraș, residing in Blaj (Hu. Balázsfalva). A third brother, Ioan (1844–1914), while also occupying various offices in the administration of Maramureș county in the family tradition, would establish himself as a man of culture and become a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy. One of Petru’s cousins, Basil Jurca (?–1920), also followed in his footsteps and repeatedly served as a deputy in the Budapest Parliament.

Petru Mihalyi studied at the Oradea (Hu. Nagyvárad) and Košice (Hu. Kassa) gymnasiums, afterwards pursuing university studies in Vienna. It was in the imperial capital that he became knowledgeable in law and economics, two fields that would prove highly useful in his subsequent career in administration and politics. At the beginning of the 1860s, after completing his studies in law, he entered the civil service of the Maramureș county, where he served as high sheriff (Oberstuhlrichter/Főszolgabíró). He won his first mandate as parliamentary deputy in 1865, at the young age of 27, running in the constituency of Șugatag (hu. Sugatag), on the lists of the Deák Party (hu. Deák-párt). Thus, he began his vast parliamentary activity, which encompassed 12 parliamentary cycles between 1865 and 1910, interrupted only once between 1881 and 1884. During this lengthy time frame, he represented only two constituencies: that of Șugatag (1865-1869; 1887-1910) and Vișeu (Hu. Visó) (1869-1881; 1884-1887), both located in the Maramureș county.

Nevertheless, he did not prove himself to be as steadfast in his political options, vacillating between the opposition party and the government. He was initially part of the Deák Party, after which he joined the Liberal Party (Hu. Szabadelvű Párt), both of which were governing political parties. After 1879 he was past of the Moderate Opposition (Hu. Mérsékelt Ellenzék) and then the National Party (Hu. Nemzeti Párt), but at the 1896 elections he opted to re-enter the Liberal Party, of which he remained an adherent until its dissolution in 1906. During his final parliamentary cycle as acting deputy, he supported the policies of the Constitutional Party (Hu. Alkotmánypárt). He completed his political career in 1910, when he decided to renounce his candidature in favour of ‘little Petru’, who he mentioned in his letter to his brother. Petru Mihalyi Junior (1880–1951) won the 1910 elections as a representative of the electoral constituency of Șugatag, serving as a governmental deputy until the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy in 1918. He thus continued the political tradition of the Mihalyi family, as he was also active in the Parliament of Greater Romania during the interwar period. During this time, he also occupied the office of prefect of Maramureș.

As opposed to his forerunners, Petru Mihalyi also focused on extending his family’s sphere of influence beyond its regional boundaries, of the Maramureș county. Following in his family’s footsteps, he employed deft strategies as essential means of attaining this purpose. Petru Mihalyi was married to Luiza Simon (1842–1904), the daughter of Florent Simon (1803–1873), one of the most well-viewed lawyers in Budapest. His youngest son, Petru Junior, was married to Iréne Kovássy (1886–?), the daughter of the district court judge Géza Kovássy (1856–1910) from Rodna (hu. Óradna), Bistrița-Năsăud (hu. Beszterce-Naszód) county. It is doubtless that, from the perspective of marital ties, the greatest accomplishment was the marriage contracted by Florentin, his eldest son and a lawyer, who wedded Karola Hieronymi. Karola was the daughter of the Hungarian politician Károly Hieronymi (1836–1911), who had served as Minister of Internal Affairs during the government of Sándor Wekerle (1848–1821) and as Minister of Transports during the governments led by Károly Khuen-Héderváry (1849–1918) and István Tisza (1861–1918).

While the reach of his family’s influence as well as his excellent qualities as a politician were essential in obtaining such a high number of parliamentary mandates, an important role in his political success was, as Petru Mihalyi himself so aptly said, the fact that “I am very delicate when it comes to my political reputation, which I bear with great consequence [,] though with little material success, but with some dignity and moral gratitude.” 

Petru Mihalyi - obituary_úmrtní oznámení

 

Bibliography :

  • Fabro Henrik and Ujlaki József, eds., Sturm-féle Országgyűlési Almanach 1906–1911, [“Sturm” Parliamentary Almanac 1906–1911] (Budapest: Wodianer Ferenc és Fiai, 1906), p. 174-175
  • Iudean Ovidiu-Emil, The Romanian Governmental Representatives in the Budapest Parliament (1881–1918) (Cluj-Napoca: Mega, 2016), p. 165-169.
  • Iuga de Săliște Vasile, Oameni de seamă ai Maramureșului. Dicționar 1700–2010, [Great people of Maramureș. Dictionary 1700–2010] (Cluj-Napoca: Societatea Culturală PRO Maramureș “Dragoș Vodă,” 2011), p. 727.
  • Toth Adalbert, Parteien und Reichstagswahlen in Ungarn 1848–1892 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1973), p. 286

In the second half of the 19th century, Georg Adolf Streer von Streeruwitz, the postmaster of the town of Stříbro (Mies) in West Bohemia, became one of the longest serving members of the Bohemian Diet. Although he boasted a knighthood, he did not belong among the many representatives of the newly ennobled clerical or military nobility; the Streeruwitzs traced their origins to the descendants of one of the participants in the crusade against the Hussites, dispersed during the Battle of Tachov. Their ancestral seat was at the fortress, and later castle, of Kopetzen, near Prostiboř in the Tachov region. The line from which Georg Adolf descended was linked to the nearby mining town of Stříbro. The deputy’s grandfather ended his successful career in the civil service as a court counsellor at the unified Czech-Austrian Chancellery in Vienna. As for his father Anton (1787–1855), he spent his youth in the early 19th century as an officer in various armies fighting against Napoleon, later took part in the fighting in Latin America under the leadership of Simon Bolívar and even joined the Greek uprising against the Ottoman Empire. In his old age he returned to his home town of Stříbro, where he took over the local hereditary post office. 

streeruwitzadolf

Picture from Wikipedia.

Postmasters belonged among traditional local notables. Although their profession was slowly dying out since, as the postal network developed, hereditary or contract postmasters in smaller settlements were replaced by state post offices, including postal employees at the level of civil servants, this was a relatively slow-going process, which affected Stříbro only at the very end of the 19th century. Until then, the local post office had been run by the Streeruwitz family as local burghers who received an exactly agreed amount from the state as remuneration for providing their neighbours with a connection to the world. After he returned from his journeys around the world, Anton married in 1815, but given his other adventures it seems likely that the first child that can be traced in the Stříbro parish registers was indeed the first child of that marriage, even though it was born only in 1820, five years after the wedding. After his first wife died in 1826, Anton married three more times; his son Georg Adolf, the future deputy, was born into his third marriage in 1828.

Eventually, children from three different marriages grew up side by side, since Anton’s second marriage lasted only a short time and the only son born into it died soon after birth. At least two of Anton’s sons followed in his footsteps and chose a military career: Johann Karl (1831–1903) embarked on the career of an artillery officer, reached the rank of colonel and in the end died unmarried in his hometown. Anton Emil’s (b. 1837) career was much more tortuous and he can safely be described as the black sheep of the family: after he was convicted of embezzling military funds, he was demoted and dismissed from the army. He wandered around Lower Austria as a beggar and appeared several times before the Vienna Regional Court accused of various thefts, which the newspapers did not fail to point out in connection with his publicly known brother, the deputy.

Two other sons of Anton’s were involved in mining, which had a long tradition in their native region, and, incidentally, one of their father’s wives was the daughter of a local mining official. Robert (b. 1835)  is listed in the Prague police application register as a mine administrator and editor of a specialist mining newspaper, while his brother Wilhelm Heinrich (1833–1916) seems to have inherited his father’s adventurous nature and decided to move to the United States after studying at the technical university in Prague. He first worked in the coal mines in Pennsylvania and in 1876 moved to Texas. Although he became a respected geologist and a member of numerous professional societies, he died in Houston in 1916 without funds and probably without descendants.

As for the other brothers, we have no documents about their fates, and it is therefore possible that the only successor of the family, who also took over the hereditary postmaster’s office, was Georg Adolf. The fact that he was respected and recognized in the town and its surroundings is evidenced not only by his repeated election as a member of the provincial assembly and later also of the Imperial Council, but also by the fact that for many years he held the office of mayor of the town of Stříbro as well as that of the district mayor of the entire self-governing district. Within a few decades, Adolf Streer von Streeruwitz had thus concentrated in his hands all the key administrative and representative offices in the city and the district. He had considerable influence on local affairs and through this combination of offices and functions he was clearly able to gain numerous advantages for his town, including the establishment of a state grammar school.

The father’s influence was also reflected in the careers and destinies of his children. Adolf’s eldest son Johann Alfred (b. 1856) took over the hereditary post office and became the mayor of Stříbro at the beginning of the 20th century, while his daughter Zdenka married a local politician and medical doctor Viktor Michl (1865–1927), who after the introduction of universal suffrage became member of the Austrian Imperial Council as a deputy for the German-speaking districts of West Bohemia. Adolf’s other sons, Ottokar Johann (1859–1927) and Ernest Joseph (1874–1952), chose a military career. Both became officers in the Austro-Hungarian army, but Ernest had to leave his promising military career due to a serious illness. It was only with the outbreak of the First World War that he voluntarily returned to the army and worked as a clerk at the Ministry of War. After the world conflict ended, he opted for (German)Austrian citizenship and remained in Vienna. Thanks to his involvement in industrial organisations, he was elected a member of the Austrian National Council for the Christian Social Party and in 1929 for a few months he even became Federal Chancellor of the interwar Austrian Republic.

The name Streeruwitz was associated with Stříbro until the end of the Second World War, when the memory of the former local elite vanished with the population that left. Today, only a grave by the wall of the cemetery in Stříbro commemorates them.

Lothar HÖBELT, Ernst von Streeruwitz 1874–1952. Ein österreichischer Bundeskanzler aus (West-)Böhmen, in: Bohemia Occidentalis Historica 3, 2017, 15–29. (https://dspace5.zcu.cz/bitstream/11025/34424/1/Hobelt.pdf)

Ernst von STREERUWITZ, Wie es war. Erinnerungen und Erlebnisse eines alten Österreichers, Wien 1934.

https://www.muzeum-stribro.cz/stare-stribro/rodaci-a-obcane-/streer-adolf-von-streeruwitz-134cs.html (accessed on 18 November 2022)

Elie Dăianu was a prominent member of the Romanian elite in Transylvania in the first half of the 20th century. Although he had a rich ecclesiastical, publishing, cultural and political activity, he received little attention from historians, remaining somewhat in an undeserved shadow. Elie Dăianu was born on 9 March 1868 in the village of Cut, Alba county. His parents, Iosif Dăianu and Ana Dăianu née Munteanu, were wealthy peasants (his father was a mayor).

Elie_Daianu_img7Elie Dăianu

Elie_Daianu_protopope Daianu his parents and his sister 1890

Dianu, his parents and his sister, 1890

Elie Dăianu began his studies at the village school, then continued them in Sibiu and Blaj, where he took his baccalaureate in 1888. Among his teachers in Blaj were famous Romanian scholars like Timotei Cipariu (1805–1887) and Ioan Micu Moldovan (1833–1915). Elie Dăianu then went to university in Graz and Budapest, graduating in Theology and Letters; he also obtained his doctorate in Budapest, also in Letters. Elie Dăianu was the only one of his brothers to pursue an intellectual career (he had three sisters and two brothers who remained peasants).

In 1897 Elie Dăianu married Ana Totoianu who came from a family of priests from Micești, Alba county, with whom he had two children, Ioachim Leo and Lucia Monica. Unfortunately, his wife died in 1900, shortly after the birth of his daughter (later, his son Ioachim Dăianu was to make a career as a diplomat, working in various places such as chargé d’affaires at the Romanian embassy in Riga, counsellor at the Romanian embassy in Moscow, Romanian consul general in Tirana etc.).

Elie Dăianu began his cultural and political carreer as a student. While in Budapest as a doctoral student in 1893, Dăianu was elected president of the “Petru Maior” Society, together with Iuliu Maniu (1873–1953) vice-president, Aurel Vlad (1875–1953), Octavian Beju, Octavian Vassu (1873–1935), Axente Banciu (1875–1959). In April 1894, together with Valer Moldovan (1875–1954), Ilie Cristea (1868–1939) (future Orthodox patriarch), Iuliu Maniu and Aurel Vlad, he participated in the Student Congress in Constanța, about which he wrote in the newspaper “Dreptatea”, under the pseudonym Edda; in May of the same year he was part of the press office of the Memorandum process, led by Dr. Vasile Lucaciu (1852–1922) and Septimiu Albini (1861–1919).

After finishing his studies, Elie Dăianu worked for a year (1895) as an editor at the newspaper Dreptatea in Timișoara, then, assigned by Ioan Rațiu (1828–1902), he became director of the “Tribuna” in Sibiu, which he directed between 1896 and 1900. For the next two years, until the summer of 1902, Elie Dăianu was professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology in Blaj. In August 1902 he was appointed priest and protopope of Cluj, a position he held until his retirement in 1930. At the same time, he carried out an intense cultural and political activity. In addition to articles on important current issues, he published writings and translations of literature, history, philosophy and poetry in numerous newspapers from Bucharest, Budapest, Cluj, Sibiu, Arad, Brașov etc; in 1903 he founded a new magazine in Cluj, “Răvașul”.

Elie Dăianu was an important member of the Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and Culture (ASTRA), founded in 1861 in Sibiu as the first central cultural institution of the Romanians of Transylvania, which played an important role in the cultural and political emancipation of the Romanian nation in Transylvania. Elie Dăianu was first a scholarship holder of ASTRA while he was a student in Blaj; later, he became involved in ASTRA’s activities, wrote educational brochures and books, held popular conferences, and even became a member of its Central Committee.

Before 1918, when Transylvania was still part of Hungary, the ideas expressed by Elie Dăianu in newspapers were considered provocative by the Hungarian authorities who sentenced him to one year in prison in Cluj and then to deportation to Sopron in Hungary. The end of the war and the union of Transylvania with Romania brought an end to Elie Dăianu’s exile.

He participated in the Great National Assembly in Alba Iulia as a delegate of the Cluj diocese; at the same time, he was the president of one of the electoral circles in Cluj that appointed delegates to this assembly. Later he joined the People’s Party, together with Octavian Goga (1888–1938) and Vasile Goldiș (1862–1934), being elected deputy in the Romanian Parliament in 1920 and vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies; the president was Duiliu Zamfirescu (1858–1922), former collaborator of his magazine “Răvașul” from Cluj. He was involved in politics until 1926, serving several terms as deputy and senator. At the same time, from 1921 to 1938, Elie Dăianu was a member of the Historical Monuments Commission - Section for Transylvania, which had the task of cataloguing and monitoring architectural and artistic monuments.

After his retirement, Elie Dăianu continued to publish articles on literature, history, theology, etc. In the last part of his life, he suffered material hardship due to the withdrawal of his pension by the communist regime on the pretext that he was a forest owner. In his later years he was supported by his son Ioachim, who was also living modestly after his diplomatic career was ended by the communist regime.

 

Sources:

 

Literature:

Valentin Orga, Din zile de detenție. Însemnările lui Elie Dăianu din anii 1917–1918, in “Revista Bistriţei”, XVII, 2003, P· 247–265.

Ilie Moise, Ilie Dăianu şi spiritul Blajului, in “Transilvania”, 5/2010, p. 73–78.

Gheorghe Naghi, Din însemnările inedite ale dr. Elie Dăianu (1917–1918), in “Ziridava”, XI, 1979, p. 1089–1097.

Robert Marcel Hart, Raluca Maria Viman, Un mare cărturar și publicist ardelean: Elie Dăianu (1868–1956), in “Caiete de Antropologie Istorică”, 2018, p. 42–50.

 

Press :

“Gazeta Transilvaniei” no 180/18 August 1902.

“Răvașul” no. 4/23 ianuarie 1904.

Mara Lőrinc of Felsőszálláspatak/Sălașu de Sus was born in 1823 in Székelyföldvár/ Războieni-Cetate (by then in the Székely seat of Aranyos/Arieș, Transylvania). 

Mara

His grandfather, bearing the same name, was assessor at the Royal Judicial Court of Transylvania. An uncle bearing the same name was officer during the Napoleonic Wars. His father, József, was provincial commissioner and later on royal judge of the respective seat, but the family also held land properties in Hunyad/Hunedoara county. He had seven children: six boys (Miklós, Lőrinc, Károly, Gábor, Sándor and György) and one girl (Ágnes, married to baron Kemény István)

Mara Lőrinc followed a military career, he graduated from the Imperial and Royal Technical Military Academy (k.u.k. Technische Militärakademie, further reading here) and served as Junior Lieutenant in the Székely Border Guards Regiment from Csíkszereda/Miercurea Ciuc. During the 1848–1849 Revolution he served as captain in the Hungarian Honvéd Army, together with other members of the extended family (e.g., here), for which he was initially sentenced to death, but later pardoned after four years of imprisonment at Olomouc/Olmütz. In the 1860s he entered political life, as district sheriff (szolgabíró) and county commissioner (alispán). As a follower of Tisza Kálmán’s (1830–1902) party, and after two unsuccessful candidacies he finally managed to obtain a parliamentary seat in 1875, in the constituency of Hátszeg/Hațeg (in which the family estates were situated), after his party’s coming to power. He represented the constituency between 1875 and 1886 (see here), and died in 1893.

 

Mara Lőrinc was an epitome of Tisza Kálmán’s “mamelukes” – as the supporters of the Hungarian Liberal Party were called at the time – and the literary works of Mikszáth Kálmán (1847–1910) shed some light on the intricacies of his relationship with the voters, most of them Romanian villagers. Mikszáth recounts that, when one of the opposition’s candidates Kaas Ivor (1842–1910) and his supporters (some local Armenian merchants and the family of the ex-Prime Minister Lónyay Menyhért (1822–1884) tried to bribe the voters by means of bank checks instead of the usual cash in hand, Mara’s electoral agents redeemed to the villagers the bank checks’ value in cash and with this, he won the elections by making use mostly of his opponent’s money and supported by the supposedly nationally entrenched Romanians. At the time (1881), the story made its way in the regional and central newspapers, which might be the original source of Mikszáth’s story. Three years later, on the eve of a new election, a delegation of Romanian voters came to see their representative. He greeted them and asked about their wishes and requests for the upcoming elections, only to find out that they were humbly asking him to provide… a counter-candidate. When the mesmerized deputy asked for the purpose of such a request, the villagers’ leader replied: “…well, to have some joy in the district.” The trope of the voters asking for a counter-candidate mainly for the purpose of raising the stake of the electoral bribe is rather frequent in the time’s literature and press, here however it was used for underlining the connection between a local patron and his pool of voters. In Mikszáth’s story, Mara granted them this wish too. Historical sources show that Mara went on for another mandate, with the counter-candidate (Kemény Miklós) only getting seven votes.

 

As all literary sources, Mikszáth’s story was probably built around a grain of truth, despite the author’s inevitable fictional contribution. The story sheds some light not only on the voting practices of the time, but also on the voters’ expectations (i.e. the electoral campaign as a moment of feast and joy) and on the paternalistic relations enhanced by political needs.

One of his sons, also bearing the name Lőrinc, was an architect. He was married to Berta Zalandak.

Another son, László Mara, was Lord Lieutenant of Hunyad County during the First World War. In this capacity, he intervened for the liberation of a Romanian lawyer and reserve officer named Gheorghe Dubleșiu, who was imprisoned due to his nationalist rhetoric. A few years later, under the Romanian rule, Gheorghe Dubleșiu would become Prefect (i.e., Lord Lieutenant) of the Hunyad County in 1920 and between 19221926.

 

Sources:

Press

“A Hon”, XIX, 1881, 6 July, no. 184.

“Magyar Polgár”, XV, 1881, 5 July, no. 150, p. 1;

 

Literature

Mikszáth Kálmán, “Összes műve. Cikkek és karcolatok (51–86. kötet). 1883 Parlamenti karcolatok (68. kötet). A t. házból [márc. 9.]. IV. A Mara Lőrinc emberei”, electronic edition on https://www.arcanum.hu; 

Lajos Kelemen, A felsőszálláspataki Marák családi krónikája, Genealógiai Füzetek, 1912, pp. 97-10;

József Szinnyei, “Magyar írók élete és munkái”, electronic edition on https://www.arcanum.hu.

Iosif Gall (1839–1912) – judge, deputy, philanthropist

Iosif Gall_1

Iosif Gall (Bistrița-Năsăud County Branch of the Romanian State Archives)

On Christmas Eve in 1870, the Metropolitan Bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Transylvania, Andrei Șaguna (1809–1876), wrote to a close friend about the marriage of one of the most valuable jurists of Dualist Hungary of that time, Dr. Iosif Gall:

"What do you know of Gall and his companionship or marriage? I have written to him that Dunca will give his daughter away now with [a dowry of] 12,000 fl. alongside anything that will be left after his death, to be divided into three parts, among his three daughters; and he will not answer me; and Dunca grows impatient, for he wants to know, will anything come of it or nothing? Some people are maddened by good fortune; I fear lest this fate has befallen Gall also."

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Iosif Gall (“Octavian Goga” Cluj County Library)

The Romanian high clergyman, an emblematic figure of the national movement in Transylvania, whose influence even reached the circles of the Viennese Court, was concerned with Iosif Gall's fate ever since the latter had been orphaned at the age of 12. Iosif's father, the Orthodox archpriest Grigore Gall (?–1851), had died in 1851, leaving his wife, Carolina (née Stan de Borosjenő) (1814–1904), a widow with four children.

With the support of Andrei, Baron of Șaguna, Iosif Gall had managed to attend secondary school in Cluj (Hu. Kolozsvár) and obtain a higher education at the Academy of Law in Sibiu (hu. Nagyszeben) and the University of Vienna. The metropolitan bishop's support – especially financial support, but not limited to material issues – was fully rewarded by the young Iosif Gall in 1860, when the student was awarded a doctorate in law at the university in the imperial capital.

After finishing his studies, Iosif Gall began his professional career, which progressed at a fast pace, in line with his legal skills and knowledge. In Vienna, for a year after obtaining his doctorate, he completed a compulsory legal traineeship to qualify as a lawyer. Immediately after the end of this period he was appointed as a trainee at the Transylvanian Court of Vienna. Due to his admirable activity, he was shortly afterwards promoted to a superior office within the same institution. In 1867, with the administrative changes brought by the Ausgleich, Iosif Gall was transferred to the Royal Hungarian Ministry of Justice. A year later, in 1868, he was transferred again to the Transylvanian supreme court, and with its dissolution to one of the higher courts in Budapest (Hu. Hétszemélyes Tábla), where he was assigned to the Transylvanian division. After only one year he was appointed report on the proceedings at the Court of Cassation, and in 1870, when he was only 32 years old, he became a judge at the King’s Bench in Budapest. Shortly afterwards he returned to the Court of Cassation as a counselor.

This period of his life, which was marked by outstanding achievements, also witnessed Andrei Șaguna’s efforts to see him settled from a personal perspective as well as a professional one. In 1871 Gall became engaged to Paulina Dunca, daughter of Paul Dunca (1800–1888) from Sibiu, a former government councilor and MP. The marriage between the two, however, never took place because of disputes between Iosif Gall and Paul Dunca, most probably concerning the young girl's dowry.

Eventually, eight years later, his professional fulfillment was matched by a personal one through his marriage to Ecaterina of Agora (?–1899), a widow who owned important possessions in Banat and Croatia. She had previously been wed to Ioan Dobran, from whom she had inherited an important estate. Ecaterina Gall de Agora came from an old family of Aromanian origin settled in Banat. She was also the owner of a large estate at Lucareț (Hu. Lukarec). In Budapest she enjoyed wide popularity and was considered one of the capital's greatest philanthropists thanks to the balls organized to support the Romanian students at the local university. Seen from the perspective of his wife's social status, Gall's marriage, but especially the break-up of the engagement with Paulina Dunca, shows that the young Romanian jurist had thought out his marriage strategy with the utmost pragmatism.

In fact, the results of this social ascent, which complemented his professional one, leveled the way for his career to divert towards politics. In 1881, Iosif Gall resigned from his post as an adviser to the Court of Cassation and gave up his pension, convinced that he could better serve his nation if he were to work in the political arena. On his retirement from the civil service, he was awarded the Order of the Iron Crown Class III and later the Order of Franz Joseph in the rank of Grand Officer.

In the same year he filed his candidacy for the parliamentary deputy of the Recaș (Hu. Rékas) constituency, Temes county, as a supporter of the government program. After winning the elections, he represented this electoral constituency throughout the whole parliamentary cycle 1881–1884. During this period, he was a member of the Parliament's Justice Committee and its rapporteur. In the elections of 1884, he stood again and managed to win another mandate as a Member of Parliament. The 1884–1887 parliamentary cycle was the last of his career in the Lower House of the Hungarian Parliament, as in May 1887 he was appointed lifetime member of the House of Magnates, the Upper House of the Budapest Parliament.  He served in this capacity until the end of his life.

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Iosif Gall’s as a magnate (Ovidiu Emil Iudean’s personal archive)

One of the most important political endeavors of Iosif Gall's career was the founding of the Romanian Moderate Party, together with the Orthodox Metropolitan bishop Miron Romanul (1828–1898). The organization of the Moderate conference in Budapest in March 1884 and his financial support for the Viitorul [The Future] gazette, the press organ of the newly founded party, are just two of the reasons for his full involvement in this political project. Despite the failure of the moderates, Gall remained convinced of the need for the Romanian nation in Hungary to adopt a moderate course of cooperation with the Hungarian government to achieve social, cultural and ecclesiastical development.

Iosif Gall died in Budapest on the night of October 17/30 to 18/31, 1912. He was buried in Cluj on October 21/November 3 in the presence of his family and a large public. As he had no direct heirs, in his will he left a large part of his estate, about 600,000 crowns, to set up two foundations, both under the name "Agora-Gall", for cultural and philanthropic purposes. Each of the two was to be administered separately, one by the Romanian Orthodox Church in Transylvania and the other by the Serbian Orthodox Church, residing in Karlovci.

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Iosif Gall’s obiturary (Bistrița-Năsăud County Branch of the Romanian State Archives)

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Iosif Gall’s grave (Ovidiu Emil Iudean’s personal archive)

Owing to this last grand gesture, as well as all his legal, social-cultural and political activity, his biographer, T. V. Păcățian (1852–1941), rightfully called him "The Lucareț Maecena".

 

 

 

Bibliography:

Păcăţian Teodor V., Iudean Ovidiu Emil, Un mecenat român – dr. Iosif Gall (Cluj-Napoca : Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2012)

Iudean Ovidiu Emil, The Romanian governmental representatives in the Budapest Parliament (1881–1918). Cluj-Napoca : Mega, 2016

Berényi Maria, Personalităţi marcante în istoria şi cultura românilor din Ungaria (secolul XIX) (Giula: Institutul de Cercetări al Românilor din Ungaria, 2013)

Traian Moșoiu (1868–1932), officer, deputy and senator

01_Mosoiu_Traian

 Traian Moșoiu was a Romanian career officer and politician, one of the best-known personalities of interwar Romania. Traian Moșoiu was born on 2 July 1868 in Tohanul Nou, a village in Brașov County, Transylvania, which at that time was part of Hungary. His father, Moise Moșoiu (1830–1905), was a wealthy and ambitious peasant. He gained prosperity primarily from sheep farming but also became involved in local politics, serving as the mayor of Tohanul Nou and as a county councillor in Brașov. Traian Moșoiu’s mother, Ana née Răduțoiu (1845–1896), also hailed from a prosperous peasant family in Tohanul Nou.

Traian Moșoiu had six siblings: Ioan (1862–1945)Aron (1866–1889)Aurelian (1872–1946)Maria (1878–??)Aneta (1881–1900), and Paulina (1886–??). All the Moșoiu children received a quality education and entered into advantageous marriages. The sons that survived to adulthood, Ioan, Traian, and Aurelian, pursued notable careers, including serving as members of Parliament. In 1897 Traian Moșoiu married teacher Maria Fortunescu, who came from a wealthy family in southern Romania. Her brother, lawyer Constantin Fortunescu, served multiple terms in the Romanian Parliament and held the position of prefect before the Great Union of 1918. Traian and Maria Moșoiu had two children: Tiberiu (1898–1953) and Mariana (1903–??).

Traian Moșoiu began his education in his native village and continued at the Romanian Gymnasium in Brasov. Subsequently, he attended military studies in Budapest at the Royal Hungarian Ludovica Defense Academy and in Vienna at the Theresian Military Academy, graduating in 1890. After graduation, he was assigned to a military unit in Sibiu. However, due to his nationalist views advocating for the rights of Romanians in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, he faced conflicts with his superiors and was even sentenced to prison. Realising that he had no future in the imperial army, he secured his release from prison on bail with his father’s help and clandestinely crossed the border into Romania. In 1893, he enlisted in the Romanian army as a second lieutenant, marking the start of a military career that would see him rise to the rank of major general.

Traian Moșoiu gained widespread fame and admiration during the First World War for his leadership and victories on the battlefield, commanding infantry divisions. Consequently, he was elevated to the rank of general and was decorated with numerous awards, the most distinguished being the French Legion of Honor, conferred upon him by general Henri Berthelot (1861–1931). In 1919, General Moșoiu spearheaded the Romanian army offensive in Transylvania, driving out the Hungarian Red Army from the north-west of the territory. His triumphant entry into Oradea (Bihor County), a pivotal city in the region, strengthened his status as a national hero. Under his leadership, the army advanced to Budapest, where General Moșoiu was appointed Commander of the Budapest Military Garrison and Military Governor of the Hungarian territories west of the Tisa River.

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Traian Moșoiu during the First World War

At the end of 1919, Traian Moșoiu gave up his military career, entering the reserves, to embark on a prolific political career with the National Liberal Party. Several factors influenced this shift. On the one hand, general Moșoiu’s reputation was intrinsically linked to his wartime triumphs; the subsequent peace post-1919 curtailed avenues for similar military distinctions. On the other hand, in the evolving landscape of Romania, shaped by the seminal Great Union of 1918, the political arena presented a dynamic and promising domain for an individual of Moșoiu’s aspirations and prominence. The general had the advantage of a solid image capital, being popular not only among the elite but also among the masses, because in the public consciousness he was considered the hero who liberated Transylvania from Hungarian domination. Moșoiu was regarded as a man of simple origins who had risen in his career through his own efforts, who had not forgotten the social class to which he belonged by birth; apparently humble and approachable, he was revered as a leader who endured the tribulations of military campaigns alongside his troops.  There were even several poems in circulation at the time praising the general’s heroism.

03_Mosoiu Queen Mary (1)Traian Moșoiu and Queen Mary of Romania, wife of Ferdinand I of Romania

In his political tenure, Traian Moșoiu served as a member of parliament, both as a deputy and later as a senator, between 1922 and 1927. He held ministerial roles in Liberal governments led by Ion I. C. Brătianu (1864–1927), specifically as Minister of Communications (1922–1923) and Minister of Public Works (1923–1926). For almost a decade, he led the Bihor County organization of the National Liberal Party. However, his political journey was not without controversies. Accusations of nepotism frequently arose as his brothers and brothers-in-law ascended to prominent roles – deputies, senators, and prefects – and collaborated closely with Moșoiu on various legislative and economic initiatives. His son succeeded him as the leader of the Bihor Liberal county organization and also became a deputy in Parliament.

Traian Moșoiu passed away on 30 July 1932 in Bucharest. To this day, he remains one of the most revered figures instrumental in the formation of Greater Romania.

 

 

References:

 

Cristina Liana Pușcaș, General Traian Moșoiu, Muzeul Orașului Oradea, Oradea, 2019.

Marius Boromiz (ed.), Versuri uitate din Marele Război. Cântece și doine cătănești, Ed. Armanis, Sibiu, 2020.

Gheorghe Calcan, Generalul Traian Moșoiu în epocă și în posteritate, Editura Universității “Petrol–Gaze”, Ploiești, 2006.

Sandu Popii, “Cântecul lui Moșoiu”, Unirea poporului, no. 29, 1919, p. 1.