# Nobles and Lords

We must mention at least a few of the characteristics of the nobles (nemes) and the lords because they basically determined the economic life of the peasantry, as some remnants of the feudal ties remained even after the serfs had been freed. Beginning with the Middle Ages, the nobility had also stratified considerably. The lowest layers, the so-called common nobles (köznemes), who, because they lacked property, were referred to as “nobles of seven plum trees”, in many cases possessed only a house and a little land, which, like the serfs, they cultivated themselves. They clung fiercely to their privileges, according to which they paid no taxes and could participate in the political life of the country. Their education and habits lay extremely close to, and in many cases were identical with, those of the peasantry. In outward appearance their broadcloth clothes and sword differentiated them from the serfs, whom they looked down upon and would not mix with. The middle strata of the nobility, the landowners, possessed independent estates, which were largely cultivated by the serfs who, in addition, also had to pay them shares of produce.

Their mansions, inside and out, imitated those of the high nobility, as did their traditions. The high nobles and high lords, often not even Hungarian in origin, usually did not live on their estates but spent the greater part of the year in their palaces in Vienna, Buda, Pozsony, or perhaps further west, and only infrequently came home to the estate run by stewards and overseers. Their culture or often even their language had not much in common with the Hungarians.

After the freeing of the serfs a good part of the lesser nobility blended into the peasantry, while a proportion tried to find a position as officials, as did those middle nobles who could no longer exist on the income of their estates. The estates of the high nobility, extending to many thousands and not infrequently to many tens of thousands of hectares, {75.} remained almost untouched until 1945 and were cultivated by the army of millions of farm labourers and rural agricultural labourers.

The relationship between the landlord and the peasantry was of an economic nature, based primarily on exploitation. We must also mention one of the cultural aspects of this relationship. The style of mansions and castles undoubtedly affected folk architecture, and often the same master erected both types of buildings (cf. p. 188). The wealthier peasants attempted to copy, albeit with a time lapse, the better agricultural equipment of the large estates. Certain elements of clothing, of weaving and embroidery arrived to the villages through acquaintance with their upper-class equivalents, and these contacts can be demonstrated even in the dissemination of poetic material, since servants and maids could transmit them easily. Similarly measurable is the influence of what we can attribute to upper-class culinary arts. Undoubtedly this was one channel through which certain European cultural elements reached the Hungarian peasantry.