Austrian peasant emancipation (1848)
오스트리아 농노 해방 (1848)
The reform that, in the revolution of 1848, abolished the peasants' subjection and labour services to their lords in the Austrian Empire outside Hungary. Based on the motion of the Reichstag deputy Hans Kudlich of 26 July, it was announced by an imperial patent of 7 September, and the peasants bore redemption payments in exchange for their freedom (Grundentlastung).
In depth
From the eighteenth century the Robot Patent had required peasants to perform an annual quota of unpaid labour for their lords. In 1848 serfdom was abolished in Galicia on 17 April and in Bukovina on 1 July. In the Reichstag of 383 deputies from the Austrian lands without Hungary, which met on 22 July, Kudlich, the not yet 25-year-old son of peasants from Austrian Silesia, moved that "from now on the relationship of subjection, with all its rights and obligations, is abolished", earning the title of "liberator of the peasants".
The emancipation was not free. In exchange for personal freedom the peasants took on redemption obligations, paying a third of the set sum within twenty years, and all taxes were now paid in money to the state. The Reichstag was dissolved by force on 7 March 1849 and Kudlich fled abroad, but the emancipation was not reversed under neo-absolutism. In Hungary serfdom was abolished separately by the April Laws.