Seigneurial Administration in Lower Austria

This edition collects instructions, police ordinances (Policeyordnungen), decrees and related normative sources concerning the economic activities of landlords and subjects of the estates Feldsberg (today Valtice in the Czech Republic) and Wilfersdorf in the north-eastern corner of Lower Austria. A total of 121 sources are provided as a classical full-length edition with summaries of the edited sources (Regesten) and an index. These sources were produced in the administration of the estates of the Liechtensteins from the end of the sixteenth century up to 1815. All instructions in modern words job descriptions of these two estates, which were given to the seigneurial officers on entering into office, were edited. Although they build the most comprehensive part of the edition, a selection of decrees, orders, mandates etc. were edited as well. Due to decreasing numbers of instructions for individual officers with the end of the seventeenth century and a shift to economic instructions (Wirtschaftsinstruktionen), these additional sources complement the edited texts. While instructions and ordinances meant to organize the administration of the estates by indicating the ideal conception of the officers behavior and actions, decrees and mandates were often resulting from mismanagement. Therefore the latter sources ordered reforms and actions for improvements to its recipients, which were officers and subjects as well. The overview of both sources offers a deeper insight in the interplay between authorities and subjects. Within the editorial process a specific technique had to be developed in order to meet the challenges of the process of text production and to contextualise the sources in their historical correlations of origin. The technical difficulty was to bring together different versions of one instruction, as lots of old instructions were adapted and reused as a model for younger versions. The publication contributes to the research on seigneurial administration which is considered as one of the most underexposed topics among the Austrian administrative history. Furthermore the edited texts illustrate the social, cultural and economic microcosm created and imagined by the authorities and show how the landlords tried to dominate and control their subjects with the help of their administrative apparatus and through regulations.