Vaganten ohne Lyrik. Nichtseßhaftigkeit im Österreich des aufgeklärten Absolutismus

This research tries to answer the following two main issues: 1. What were the causes for the increase of "non- settledness" or the enhanced discourse an this topic and how did state and society deal with this phenomenon? 2. How did vagabonds organize their existence, which social and communicative forms determined their lives and which strategies of survival and living did they follow? All in all the research is an checking and modification of this population segment in reference to the above thesis, which are well known in literature: the thesis of social disciplination and the thesis of subculture. Ad 1.: Wandering poverty is caused by various facors, as there are narrow relations between economical and demographical connections, social moral concepts, the development of a law system as well as socio-political measures. Frequently, only the encounter of external conditions and personal problems led to the transgression to another way of life. During the phase of proto-industrialisation the structural background of the "problem of non- settledness" was created by the rapid reproduction of the crises-prove section of the population living near the subsistence level. Apart from external incidents, as war or starration, settled existences were threatened also by individual incidents such as the loss of relatives or incomes, illness and so on. Biographical cracks could also result from lapses as theft or adultery, which often resulted in banning and the destruction of social networks. Another central problem which the state could not cope with was the supply of those in need and the dismissed servants and soldiers. Ad 2.: The second part of the research aims at the "inner world" of the vagabonds. It tries to reconstruct the dimensions of nationalization, everbody life, state of health, mental mould, economical protection of life, and many more. Except some common ground the research shows that one can neither speak of a specific way "nonn-settled" see themselves, nor of their own and independent norms and moral concepts, and of a group identity. Apart from this, variety in cultural intersection between settled and non-settled is partly portrayed. Mainly small groups often basing on a family core but having only little inner connection were examined for their social behaviour. Against the thesis of outsiders and society there was widespread acceptance for non-settled existences on the side of the settled population seeing those as a "necessary evil" and not having generally a hostile attitude towards them. Acceptance formed also on undispensible social network, on which one could fall back upon in special emergencies. Vagabonds earned their living through a specific economy basing on a combination of marginal possibilities of profit-earning which consisted of daily-waage-work, begging, and hawking. The tracing for this "speechles population" ended therefore in a multitude of hints containing meaningful and conscious in their world of living.