EXPERTS IN THE BUREAU: PRIVATE CLERKS AND CAPITALISM IN THE LATE HABSBURG MONARCHY Mátyás Erdélyi A DISSERTATION in History Presented to the Faculties of the Central European University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Budapest, Hungary 2019 CEU eTD Collection Supervisor of Dissertation Karl Hall Susan Zimmermann CEU eTD Collection 10.14754/CEU.219.12 Copyright in the text of this dissertation rests with the Author. Copies by any process, either in full or in part, may be made only in accordance with the instructions given by the Author and lodged in the Central European University Library. Details may be obtained from the librarian. This page must form a part of any such copies made. Further copies made in accordance with such instructions may not be made without the written permission of the Author. I hereby declare that this dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions and no materials previously written and/or published by another person unless otherwise noted. CEU eTD Collection I 10.14754/CEU.219.12 Abstract The dissertation offers a social and intellectual history of private clerks employed in banking and insurance in the Habsburg Monarchy between the Gründerzeit of the 1850s and the aftermath of the Great War. It raises the question, how did the mindset, habitus, and ideology of private clerks become constitutive of the changes the modernizing society and economy of the Habsburg Monarchy went through in this period, and how can their understanding of modernity be contrasted to other answers offered to the “great transformation” of the nineteenth century. The dissertation relies on three clusters of theoretical and historiographical ideas to address Habsburg modernity from the perspective of private clerks: the conceptualization of capitalist modernity by Werner Sombart and Max Weber; the rise of numbers and the historical development of credibility in quantification; and the presupposition of a common Habsburg framework for the social and intellectual history of private clerks. Through the lens of this conceptual framework, the dissertation can bypass the shortcomings of modernization theories and the normativity of descriptions like “failed,” “uneven,” and “belated” modernization to produce a comprehensive account of the “great transformation” in Central Europe in its larger contexts. The development of financial capitalism in the Habsburg Monarchy produced its own cadre of professionals in the form of bookkeepers, correspondents, cashiers, and so forth. The need for specialized workforce brought about the emergence of vocational schooling on the secondary level beginning in the late 1850s. Their labor movements sought to improve the legal and financial situation of private employees; this involved the creation of firm social frontiers between the working classes and private clerks as well as the affirmation of their belonging to the Bildungsbürgertum. The activities of private clerk associations were closely entangled with the development of state interventionism that was often equally sought for and disapproved of by the social CEU eTD Collection group. Efforts at class formation challenged the capacity of the state to enforce civil and political rights against the power of economic elites. Social categories like nationality and gender intersected the development of the social group. Language differences were differently approached by dominant and minority ethnic groups in both halves of the Habsburg Monarchy. The numerical growth of female private clerks after the turn of the century coincided with their increasing discrimination on multiple levels. Women II 10.14754/CEU.219.12 were systematically discriminated in the educational system and entered the job market with a considerable disadvantage compared to men. Discrimination against women was equally practiced by employers and employee associations. Lastly, the experts and professionals that populate the universe of this thesis often turned to quantification and used “mechanical objectivity” to gain public credibility. In debates over old-age pensions, mathematicians were forced to share the “secret of actuarial calculations” with the public to gain credibility. Trust in numbers, though, was not the only way to create public credibility in capitalist endeavors. Credit cooperatives turned to the idea of community as a potential guarantee of financial solvency. CEU eTD Collection III 10.14754/CEU.219.12 Acknowledgment The completion of this dissertation has been made possible by the aid of many people during my doctoral studies. I would like to express my gratitude for the support of my supervisors, Karl Hall and Susan Zimmermann, who read and commented my drafts innumerable times and provided me with precious academic and intellectual advice over the years. I would like to thank CEU for generously funding my doctoral studies and the institutions that welcomed me during my doctoral research in Prague and Vienna. I spent two fruitful years at CEFRES in Prague and several months in Vienna at the IWM and at the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Vienna. My doctoral research was also supported by the NKFIH FK 128 978 research project (Knowledge, Landscape, Nation and Empire: Practices of Knowing and Transforming Landscape in Hungary and the Balkans, 1850–1945) at the former Academy of Sciences (MTA BTK TTI). I would like to thank in particular Claire Madl and Clara Royer for their friendship and intellectual engagement that made my stay more productive in Prague. I would like to thank Viktor Karády for his everlasting support of my academic endeavors that persisted even at times when I lost belief in my own work. My greatest gratitude goes to my family who tolerated the hardships of writing a doctoral dissertation, to my wife Ágó who sacrificed a lot to accompany me to Prague and to Vienna, and to my daughters Boróka and Kamilla who always welcomed me with pure joy and enthusiasm even after days and weeks spent abroad. CEU eTD Collection IV 10.14754/CEU.219.12 Contents Contents ........................................................................................................................ V Abbreviations ............................................................................................................. VII Tables ........................................................................................................................ VIII Illustrations .................................................................................................................. IX Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Economic Rationality and Capitalism............................................................................ 6 Trust, Quantification, and Calculability ....................................................................... 14 Empire, State, and Society ........................................................................................... 18 PART I Private Clerks in Society ............................................................................. 24 Chapter 1 Schooling Private Clerks ............................................................................ 24 1. The Beginnings of Trade Education ........................................................................ 27 2. Students of Secondary Trade Schools ...................................................................... 35 3. Trade Education of Women: A Contested Integration............................................. 42 4. Reform Initiatives: Adjustments to Practical Life ................................................... 52 5. Bildung, Over-Burdening, and the Privileges of The Trade School ........................ 61 6. Conclusions .............................................................................................................. 68 Chapter 2 Private Clerks and their Movements........................................................... 70 1. Private Clerks as a Social Group.............................................................................. 75 2. Legal Regulations .................................................................................................... 88 3. The Clerk-Company Relationship ........................................................................... 94 4. Private Clerk Organizations ................................................................................... 105 5. Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 122 Chapter 3 Old-Age Pensions: Differences ................................................................. 125 1. Delimiting the Social Group: The Old-Age Pension Law in Austria .................... 126 2. Legal Labyrinths: Company Funded Pension Institutes in Hungary ..................... 140 3. The Anatomy of an Actuarial Fraud ...................................................................... 148 4. Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 154 PART II The Hybrid Modernities of Private Clerks ............................................ 157 CEU eTD Collection Chapter 4 Nationalism and Clerks ............................................................................ 157 1. Economic Nationalism and the Financial Sector ..................................................