Enlightenment, Modernization, Professional Training

Abstract

Western historical narratives of the Enlightenment tend to depict the eighteenth-centuryaristocracy as a unique promoter of overall progress, whereas Hungarian historiography is moreinclined to appraise their role according to a deprecating approach based on the criticism of atraditional class system. However, it seems clear that a more balanced judgement of the Hungarianaristocracy should involve a complex analysis. In first place, it is to be decided whether erudite andfinancially well-off individuals existed, and if so, to what extent they were willing and capable ofcontributing to various forms of innovation, let alone social and cultural progress. For this reason, thispaper is designed to focus on the activities of Count György Festetics, a Transdanubian Hungarianaristocrat who was educated in the Theresianum, an elite Viennese training institute, but whosecareer prospects were thwarted at the end of the eighteenth century on account of his involvementwith the anti-Habsburg movement of Hungary’s lesser nobility on the death of Emperor Joseph II.This analysis seems justifiable, because Festetics’s decision to set up a farming college in Keszthelyclearly shows his commitment to progress, aiming at the adaptation of modern methods as wellas creating the institutional background for the dissemination of specialist knowledge among thevarious layers of contemporary society.