Nowadays employment in the civil service is often considered a well-nurtured, relatively well-paid position and a “safe” way to earn a living that is not overly stressful. In addition, a lucrative civil servant's pension is seen to ensure a leisurely retirement with medical insurance. However, this widespread assumption is based on misconceptions and obscures the reality of its conditions and circumstances. This article analyzes how the Habsburg state in the first half of the eighteenth century implemented modern concepts and ideas of social security and health in connection with public welfare and to support imperial officials. It focuses in particular on office-bearers employed in the Habsburg province Banat of Temeswar and their close relatives.Footnote 1
Since the middle of the eighteenth century, the Habsburg civil service law has undergone expansions and redefinitions. The pension act (Pensionsnormale) of 1771 and 1781 as well as the “pastoral letter” (Hirtenbrief) of Joseph II, issued in 1783, included labor law provisions that had widespread consequences for the professional and private living environment of Habsburg imperial officials.Footnote 2 At the same time as a greater emphasis was placed on high ethical and moral standards for civil servants’ behavior, innovative approaches regarding the care for civil servants and their relatives were systematically embodied in the law. The Alimentationsprinzip (alimentation principle) guaranteed lifelong security to officials even in the case of occupational disability, and the foundation of the professional civil service (Berufsbeamtentum) was born.Footnote 3 During the first half of the eighteenth century, civil service law was not codified in all its particulars, which provides an opportunity to study early iterations and the formation of Habsburg welfare policies.
The geographical setting of this article is the Banat of Temeswar, the former Ottoman Eyalet of Temeswar. After the conquest in 1716, the region was incorporated into the Habsburg composite state and installed as an imperial crown and chamber demesne under the direct rule of the emperor. In contrast to neighboring Hungary or Transylvania, the emperor was both landlord and territorial lord in one. The lack of local estates made this mode of governance possible and allowed for the implementation of administrative structures and ideas directly without any bureaucratic obstacles. These circumstances enabled the Viennese central authorities to recruit civil and military officials, and thereafter the Aulic War Council (Hofkriegsrat) and the Court Chamber (Hofkammer) were responsible for the region. The provincial government (Temeswarer Landesadministration) was headquartered in Temeswar. Civil service in the Banat was highly reliant on imperial officials with extraordinary skills who were willing to work in a mostly unfamiliar area, where they were confronted with a constant threat of war and other risks. The majority of the officials were not born in the Banat. For the most part, they had experience in the neighboring Habsburg provinces, even in military service, before they undertook their tasks in the Banat.Footnote 4
This article primarily focuses on with the living and work environments of a cluster of actors who occupied various roles as civil servants and were spread across the entirety of new province. This range covered both high-ranking officials—like the commanding general, administrative councils (Administrationsräte), or even the salt and mining inspector that have been equipped with potential influence—as well as the lower-ranking, support staff, including scribes, accountants, and translators. At that time, the local population in the Banat were excluded from holding an office due to the level of training that was necessary.Footnote 5
This article examines three main questions: How did the pension scheme and the healthcare of civil service staff function? Which facets of survivors’ benefits were put into practice? What kind of measures were taken in regard to life-threatening situations of its support staff and their families? These questions will be examined through the personal experiences and living conditions of state actors in the border region Banat with particular consideration given to geomedicinal aspects.
This study connects early modern administrative history with the study of social security. In doing so, it contributes to a growing body of scholarship on this topic, including Sicherheit in der Frühen Neuzeit. Norm—Praxis—Repräsentation, which reflects widespread interest in facets of early modern security concepts.Footnote 6 In his study on security as a sociological and sociopolitical problem, Franz-Xaver Kaufmann stresses that the theoretical concept of “social security” describes both the organization as well as the responsibilities of social security institutions. The task of such institutions is to provide different kinds of benefits for a defined group of recipients, as stipulated and required by the law.Footnote 7 Related topics, like survivors’ pensions, have occupied the attention of some scholars, but it is interesting to note that the number of studies that now exist on this subject concentrate on the disability pensions of soldiers and ecclesiastical care concepts.Footnote 8 Studies focusing on civil service officials are rare, and similarly examinations of the overall structure of social and health concepts within the Habsburg administrative bodies during the reign of Charles VI and Maria Theresa remain elusive.Footnote 9 As Eckart Conze outlined, the gradual emergence of territorial states provided the necessary foundation for the state to develop “security,” including a distinction between domestic and external security, and in a narrower sense care concepts as part of the domestic security.Footnote 10 The long-term establishment of officials as a distinct occupational group forced the state to assume responsibility for state personnel. Since the status of a Habsburg imperial civil servant was legally defined as one's main profession and thus the sole source of income, the state was more or less forced to establish welfare systems. Those schemes were intended to ensure the livelihoods of imperial officials and were linked with the prohibition of perquisites and professional training as preconditions of employment. Using these ideas as a foundation, this article brings new perspectives to the less researched and discussed history of public administration in early modern southeast Europe and sheds light on applied sociohistorical principles of social and healthcare schemes to the group of civil servants in the Banat of Temeswar and their close relatives in the period of 1716 to 1751–53.
Healthcare and Pension Schemes for Civil Servants: “Fighting the Bad Air”
The establishment of the Habsburg rule in the Banat compelled authorities to have a permanent interest in hygiene, healthcare, and sanitary topics. This is reflected in efforts to improve the drinking water supply in the city Temeswar, which functioned as the administrative and urban center for the peripheral province and was traversed by the river Bega. The development of the Bega created a marshy landscape around Temeswar, which reduced the drinking water quality of the administrative center. With the help of military engineers, the Landesadministration removed the sludge and constructed an innovative drainage system in the city to improve the hygienic standards for the imperial staff as well as its inhabitants.Footnote 11
According to contemporary accounts, the region was known as “tomb of the Germans.”Footnote 12 The origin of this ascription goes back to the three colonization waves during the eighteenth century that were initiated by the Viennese court under Charles VI, Maria Theresa, and Joseph II. The settlers were initially recruited from what is present-day Germany.Footnote 13 The climatic conditions of the Banat were responsible for this highly pragmatic decision. When the new arrivals entered Banatean soil, they were confronted with a continental climate of very hot summers and cold winters. These unusual circumstances as well as the increased susceptibility to malaria affected both the new inhabitants as well as the many imperial officials from abroad. “Marsh fever” diseases were especially common throughout the eighteenth century, owing to the widespread marshlands in parts of the region, where the malaria mosquitos had massive breeding grounds and hiding places.Footnote 14 The measurements concerning the limited water resources were seen as indication for an epidemic prophylaxis, which was ordered “from above” to protect people and to improve domestic security.Footnote 15
To hold an office in the Banat was, in terms of health, highly problematic. Descriptive phrases like “unhealthy climate” in connection with various kinds of complaints from officials illustrates the unfavorable living circumstances.Footnote 16 The outlined climatic conditions influenced the personnel management of the Habsburg monarchy in two ways: the day-to-day work of the staff and the increased personnel requirement that was caused by illness. From the protocol of the Neoacquistischen Subdelegation, an administrative body composed of civil and military councils located in Vienna and responsible for the agendas in the Banat, it can be seen that there was a lively discussion in Vienna concerning the critical influence of the climatic conditions in the Banat in October 1726. For authorities in Vienna, the problem was well known, leading the Neoacquistischen Subdelegation to state in their evaluation paper “that the people in that country are often ill, like the past year when two secretaries died, but officials, when one or another fall ill or even die, as replacement are missing.”Footnote 17
In fact, the quality of healthcare was of great importance to preserve the administrative stability in the newly acquired province. Proper medical care could be ensured by deploying well-educated medical professionals in the region. The death register of the fortress Temeswar offers an overview about employed surgeons and physicians. Since the conquest, military sanitary staff were present in the region, first as part of the military and later as a regular part of the Landesadministration.Footnote 18 Medical personnel had to be willing to travel long distances within the province to investigate possible cases of disease and to cure patients.Footnote 19 The first field hospital was established at the beginning of the 1720s. The later Protomedicus, or leading physician, of the Banat—Nikolaus Johann Edler de Dophin—had been employed in 1722 with a salary of 400 florins per year. He was responsible for the field hospital in Temeswar and medical care in the economically important, but secluded, mining areas of the Banat.Footnote 20 A public hospital (Bürgerspital) is documented in 1728, and between 1735 and 1737, the first general hospital—Hospital of the Brothers of Charity—was built and named after the religious order, which assumed responsibility for the nursing.Footnote 21 In a similar manner, pharmacies were established to guarantee the drug supply, the first of which were field pharmacies.Footnote 22 Almost concurrent with the foundation of the general hospital in 1737 was the opening of a pharmacy, Zum Granatapfel.Footnote 23 Quinine was especially much in demand for fighting the malarial “bad air.”
Due to these geomedical circumstances, the imperial officials were forced to find ways to improve their living conditions. Various documents bear witness to the need of the Banatean staff for a temporal or seasonal change of scenery for convalescence. Before leaving their work place, the imperial personnel formally applied for permission to travel. In written petitions addressed directly to the Viennese authorities, they described their life situations in detail.Footnote 24 The mentioned requests were closely intertwined with the wish for medical treatment, convalescence for health, or summer holidays. In terms of a medical treatment, a medical certificate was sent as a supplement to the formal application to emphasize the compelling necessity.Footnote 25 Imperial officials traveled to Vienna or used the local health facilities for convalescence. In December 1752, Canzlist Anton Schräml received the permission for a sanitary stay in Buda (Ofen).Footnote 26 The Hofdeputation in Banaticis, Transylvanicis et Illyricis (Hofdeputation) remarked that, according the permitted petition, “Schräml is suffering for five months from high fever and he seems to be fallen into a Hypochondriasis.”Footnote 27 The best-known local spa was in Herkulesbad (present-day Băile Herculane) with its sulfurous thermal water near the village Mehadia.Footnote 28 The ancient Roman spa was rediscovered, refurbished, and reopened in 1736 under the leadership of Governor and Commanding General Johann Andreas Graf von Hamilton (1679–1738).Footnote 29
In the mid-1740s, the Landesadministration relocated its office from Temeswar to Recaș during the summer months. The village is today known as a wine-growing region. Almost yearly, the Landesadministration reapplied for this seasonal change of location. The heat in Temeswar during the summer months was responsible for this request, which was initiated by the local administration.Footnote 30 Remarkably, those heat-related kinds of traveling were not financed by the state but were permitted with the proviso that the traveler neither neglect the administrative functioning of the province nor force the subjects into providing assistance for transport and other similar functions.Footnote 31 Individual applications were handled in a similar manner. Because employment included a residency requirement, officials needed to obtain permission to travel.Footnote 32 Most of them were permitted, provided that the requesting individual clearly guaranteed in advance that colleagues would complete all incoming tasks and that the administrative procedures would not be adversely affected in his absence.Footnote 33
Fragmentary Concepts of Pension Schemes for Imperial Officials
The development of the modern state pension system is linked with the establishment of disability pension concepts and must be discussed in the broader context of a state concept of retirement. As historian Bernd Wunder emphasized, the basis of the state pension scheme may be found in the caring of military invalids, initially to prevent begging among those jobless and destitute soldiers in periods of peace. These measurements were directed primarily by the state. In 1723, a court commission proposed the establishment of soldier hospitals and special companies of invalid soldiers. The first state-sponsored invalids’ home in the Habsburg monarchy was built between 1716 and 1717 in Pest in Hungary, but due to financial difficulties, the opening was delayed until 1729. In 1743 the institution housed approximately 1,400 men.Footnote 34 Being unfit for the military service opened the door for the Viennese Court to use the workforce of invalid soldiers or veterans in other ways, specifically in civil service and subsequently in administrative roles. In the Banat of Temeswar, several officials with a military background fulfilled civil administrative tasks.Footnote 35 During their military service, especially in the Ottoman wars, they were wounded and therefore unavailable for military purposes.Footnote 36 In such cases, civil service functioned as a sort of gathering place. Their acquired knowledge about the region, the people, and local habits predestined those former soldiers for a post in the civil service.Footnote 37
It became obvious that age was not the single criterion for leaving both civil and military service, and in this respect, old-age pension was clearly an exceptional phenomenon. Almost only high-ranking, well-situated, aristocratic, and redundant military men were funded with a further unspecified payment.Footnote 38 On the one hand, the Landesadministration in Temeswar requested frequent instructions about how the daily business should be organized, especially given the illness and age of particularly key personnel and, on the other hand, they self-interestedly used this phenomenon as pretext for any flaws with the work.Footnote 39 There is no indication that the salary was not paid in cases of illness, even if it did have far-reaching, adverse effects on the workflow of the Landesadministration. Age was also an issue among the members of the presidium in Temeswar because in absence of the governor, the oldest councilman was required to chair the meetings.Footnote 40 In 1748, first attempts were undertaken for a uniform pension scheme for officers and general staff. The amount was based on the military rank and not in terms of age or even the years of service.Footnote 41
The relationship between the state as employer and officials as employees, or rather civil servants, was characterized by a high degree of loyalty and faithfulness throughout life until the death. Those thoughts do not allow a concept of an age-related pension. Primarily it should be noted that the pension in civil service was linked with incapacity to work and proven loyalty of the official, but not exclusively with age.Footnote 42 Already in 1723, it was specified that disabled officials should get the entire salary.Footnote 43 An alternative way to achieve the pension provision was given by the personnel status of Quiszierung. The term, derived from the Latin “to rest,” described a procedure, which mostly was applied in the course of employment restructuring: the official had no post, but his salary continued to be paid. Both variants, Quiszierung as well as disability, were subsumed under the general keyword Jubilazion, which was used as a synonym for retirement.Footnote 44 These payments were not perceived as act of benevolence.Footnote 45 The most striking example concerning the custom of Quiszierung in our region of interest is the termination of employment of Governor and Commanding General Generalfeldwachtmeister Franz Anton Leopold Ponz Freiherr von Engelshofen (1692–1761). The position of Engelshofen had to be regulated in 1751–53 due to the structural transformation of the Landesadministration from a mixed civil- and military-oriented one into a purely civil one. A military man could not be the leader of the new organized civil administration in the Banat. The Viennese authorities came to the decision to provide Engelshofen with a lifelong pension in the amount of his paid annual salary of 3,000 florins.Footnote 46 The military man Engelshofen was one of the top earners among the Banatean imperial staff.Footnote 47
Facets of Survivors’ Benefits: Elements of Care for Widows and Orphans
The inclusion of gender and women's history in the administrative history of the eighteenth century is challenging because historians are quite often confronted with a lack of sources, which makes it difficult to find adequate answers to questions within this field. Looking for survivors’ benefits opens up the opportunity to gain insights into the plights of women, specifically the spouses of imperial officials during the first half of the eighteenth century in a border province of the Habsburg monarchy in southeast Europe. In the Banat of Temeswar, the departure from service was most often caused by the death of an official. The frequent occurrence of deaths is reflected both in obituaries written on the behalf of the Landesadministration in Temeswar, which were sent to the central authorities in Vienna, and in the well-documented administrative procedures in the event of death. When a death occurred, family members were faced with life-threatening conditions, as wives and children struggled with the absence of the family breadwinner. These circumstances require studying close kinship relations of civil servants because the relief of surviving dependents had to be organized by the competent authorities with great efforts.
With only a small percentage of the total administrative staff being born in the Banat, the majority of civil servants came from outside the region, mostly from within the Habsburg territory, which meant that they were often flexible and mobile. We can assume that a high percentage brought their family with them when they took an office in the Banat. Although those family members rarely emerge in the archives of the general administrative communication, this aspect radically changed with the death of a civil servant. From that point on, the relatives were affected by the influence of governmental bureaucracy as well as a disproportionate intrusion into their privacy by the state.
Families of deceased officials were accountable for the conduct of the deceased and were affected more significantly than others by state interventions after a bereavement, which is reflected in the complex procedures in the case of death. The Landesadministration performed the first step, specifically the securing of documents, files, wills, and invoices that were archived at the home or in the office of the deceased.Footnote 48 The family was urged to provide those documents, and a mixed civil and military commission, composed by local personnel, started with a careful analysis of the practiced bookkeeping. During this process, various questions could arise, which triggered a frequent exchange of information between central and provincial administration to clarify open questions. Often missing files or similar complications preoccupied the Buchhalterey, or accounting, staff in Vienna and raised uncomfortable issues, which delayed the examination. If the evaluation detected a deficit, the amount had to be balanced by private assets of the bereaved, which indicates that the imperial finance official in the Banat bore liability with his own assets. The Viennese authorities established a thoughtful modus operandi to protect the state and by extension the families of state officials. To prevent serious misconduct by high-ranking accounting employees, this well-educated staff was obliged to pay a deposit (Amtskaution) prior taking up a position, which was offset in the event of death.Footnote 49 The duration of processing depended on the work performance of the deceased individual as well as the investigation staff and the transparency of the private financial circumstances of the dead. Based on those results, the final amount was calculated and, if the veracity of the accounts (Rechnungsrichtigkeit) was proven, the time was right for the surviving dependents to assert a claim for possible supplements.Footnote 50 Relatives did not have a legally defined entitlement for state welfare benefits until 1749.Footnote 51 However, there were already several options available for widows and orphans, who were the principal surviving applicants to receive support by the state.
It is necessary to distinguish between allowances as onetime payments and allowances as annual payments. The annual staff report, the Status Personalis of the Landesadministration, included a section with a list of distributed annual allowances.Footnote 52 Under the terms Adjuta, Gnadengelder, or simply Pension, we can find an array of different allowance types that were distributed by the state. Until 1749, the situation of widows was unregulated, but the Haugwitz reforms under the rule of Maria Theresa led to the first concrete steps toward more legal security for the care of widows and orphans. Unfortunately, only relatives of officials with a higher rank than secretaries benefited from the new legal foundation. In our case, it would mean that this only affected the survivors of the governor and the councils of the provincial government in Temeswar, which were only three officials in the case of the Banat. It was specified that surviving dependents should get an annual pension, between one-fourth and one-third of the deceased's salary, if the dead was long in service, well recommended, and had children who did not possess sufficient means to support themselves.Footnote 53
In studying this period, it thus becomes clear that other forms of support must have been practiced prior to this first specific directive in 1749. We can also assume that annual allowances were extremely rare. During the period before 1749, there were merely a few individual cases, such as when a widow was awarded an annual pension for a longer period.Footnote 54 While in 1747, eleven widows of former officials and one orphan girl appeared under the term Adjuta, which basically meant a kind of benefit. In 1749, the designations were much more specific: beside the rubric Adjuta we can find the categories Gnadengeld and Pension, while Pension was divided in four classes after the date of the first permit.Footnote 55 In addition, the allowances of the category Pensions were paid annually but awarded for a certain period. Afterward a new request for a prolongation was necessary.Footnote 56 Among the twenty-two recipients of the year 1749 were thirteen widows and one orphan girl.Footnote 57 Interestingly, we cannot find an incisive change after the mentioned regulations in 1749, as the list of pension payments from 1751 shows. In this year, we can discern one additional pension: the widow of Philipp Seybert, who fulfilled the position as Gegenschreiber in Pančevo, achieved 96 florins a year.Footnote 58
However, much more frequent and more promising was an application for a onetime payment of support. An imperial resolution from the year 1721 recalls the principle of the Sterbquartal, which means a one-off payment to the survivors that amounted to one-quarter of the former paid salary of the official. Even though the wages were paid quarterly, this special payment achieved the name after the quarter during the official has died. All relatives of officials of the chamber received the full quarterly payment, but relatives of officials from other departments achieved the amount only until the date of death.Footnote 59 Although it seems that more or less all applying widows in the Banat adjudged the Sterbquartal, potential applicants still had to submit a written petition to the court in Vienna. The submitted petition was examined by the Buchhalterey and finally reported to the emperor. All these petitions required an individual decision. As Irene Kubiska-Scharl and Michael Pölzl determined, this procedure was accompanied by formal communication between petitioner and emperor, which was characterized by a rigid hierarchy and social disparity and expressed by the use of humble phrases in appeals by the applicant. Even though there existed no official guidelines, these petitions followed unwritten rules with respect to form, content, and linguistic criteria, which were apparently known among the surviving dependents of Banatean officials.Footnote 60 The conditions in the Banat mirror the circumstances at the Viennese court, as Kubiska-Scharl and Pölzl found in their study: widows tried to emphasize their pitiful state; they also referred to faithfulness, loyalty, and obedience of their late husband, his untimely death, and, when relevant, unprovided children. This tactic was used purposefully to achieve financial allowances to strengthen their economic position.Footnote 61 By proceeding in this way, the administrative units in Vienna, and in the final instance the sovereign, were confronted with an enormous number of applications. Subsequently, in 1753 a letter to the Landesadministration included the instruction to modify the formal criteria for applications for better processing. In particular, it criticized the “unformlichen auch öfters ungeziemend verfassten Bittschriften” (unseemly and often impertinently written petitions). To prevent abuse in the assessment of applications and the appropriation of benefits under false pretenses, a report of the local administration in Temeswar was demanded.Footnote 62
Like widows, mothers of deceased officials submitted their claims for the Sterbquartal. For example, Anna Susanna de Paullo's son Leopold Heuthaler was employed until his death as Concipist and Cameralactuar at the Landesadministration in Temeswar.Footnote 63 Anna Susanna de Paullo was legally proven to be the universal heir of her son when she petitioned for support. Finally, she achieved not only the Sterbquartal for the timespan between January and March 1729, which consisted in the amount of 125 florins, but also ex speciali gratia the Conductquartal, which was exclusively for heirs and for the extremely indigent and intended to cover funeral and medical expenses.Footnote 64 Anna Susanna de Paullo received this second one-time grant in a sum of 125 florins because Leopold Heuthaler's funeral expenses were still unpaid and the outstanding amount of 462 florins had to be paid by his mother. Despite this assistance, Anna Susanna de Paullo was liable for further outstanding 212 florins.Footnote 65
Due to normal preconditions, getting the Conductquartal was more difficult as the decision makers undertook a precise examination of the survivor's assets. In most cases, petitions regarding the Conductquartal were rejected on the basis of the petitioner's lack of indigence. As the following case study illustrates, entitlements for the Conductquartal were strictly scrutinized. In December 1750, Maximillian Edler von Rosendorf died.Footnote 66 From 1747 until his death, he worked as the civil administrative councilor in Temeswar. During his last months, he was seriously ill and therefore incapable of doing his job properly.Footnote 67 While his death was not a huge surprise, his wife faced an unexpected shock when her late husband had left the family with large debts. Those debts and the high medical costs brought much distress to widow Rosendorf. The widow received a Conductquartal of 500 florins, but the Sterbquartal, which she received as a result of the debts from the estate, should have been divided among the creditors of her late husband.Footnote 68 In July 1751 the widow was granted a pension of 650 florins annually, which was limited to three years.Footnote 69 When widow Rosendorf applied for a prolongation of her pension, which she had enjoyed for six years, the authorities demanded evidence regarding the educational status and the age of her stepsons, who were the councilor's children from a previous marriage.Footnote 70 After the confirmation of their attendance at school was given, her pension was prolonged for a third time for another three years.Footnote 71 It should be noted that remarriages during the eighteenth century were common and expected by society because they guaranteed security.Footnote 72 It was possible for widows to maintain the pension entitlement until a remarriage. The Landesadministration took up this aspect concerning the first-time application of two widows in 1747 to highlight their indigence in a pragmatic way toward the Hofdeputation in Vienna: “already too old that neither of them could hope to secure their livelihood by a new marriage.”Footnote 73
To fully understand the complexity of this issue, it is necessary to consider child care because the amount of the approved payment frequently related to parental custody. Soon after the death of her husband Salz- und Bergwerksinspector (Salt and Mining Inspector) Joseph Anton Mayerhofer Edler von Grienbühel in February 1720, after three years in service in the Banat, widow Theresia achieved a rare lifelong pensions.Footnote 74 She achieved 300 florins, but 150 florins of this annual payment was solely intended for her son Joseph until he would be able to provide for himself. Theresia Mayerhofer achieved this amount for more than twenty years, until her son assumed an office within the Aulic War Council (Hofkriegsrat) in 1741; on 1 January 1742 her pension payment was limited by half.Footnote 75 With the help of pension payment lists, attached to the already alluded Status Personalis, it is possible to refer to orphans as beneficiaries. In most cases, the surviving spouse of a former official assumed the responsibility for the child, but if this was not possible, other options had to be taken into consideration. A petition from 1749 revealed that orphans’ care was an important topic among the civil servants. The death of Eleonore Schubert in 1748, widow of the former leading district administrator (Oberverwalter) of the district Orschowa (Orșova) Johann Ferdinand Schubert, left her two daughters orphaned.Footnote 76 In the petition, Karl Heinrich Baron von Piacevics, the tutor of the children who was appointed as customs officer (Mauteinnehmer) in Temeswar, asked that the deceased widow's pension be transferred to the daughters. The petition was successful, but the payment was reduced from 96 to 72 florins.Footnote 77 Finally, it is remarkable that all kinds of benefits for surviving dependents were linked to the sovereign. The payments were described as personal donations of a charitable character. This aspect is clearly demonstrated if one looks at the change of sovereignty from Charles VI to Maria Theresa in 1740. All those who were previously granted allowances had to request a new application after the death of Charles.Footnote 78
Handling Life-Threatening Situations
While the death of an imperial official was not necessarily unforeseeable, other significant events were more unexpected, and these unpredictable problems created exceptional burdens. It usually did not make a difference for officials whether their circumstances were caused by their own fault or the fault of another. The composition of the Banatean bureaucratic apparatus varied, and aspects, like one's background and socioeconomic status, had an enormous impact on their way of life during their term of office. Not all civil servants could fall back on high wages, savings, or a rich inheritance. This diversity of the financial background among the Banatean staff influenced their way of life as well as the need for the security provided by the state. We can often find passages in the source material from Viennese authorities about the extraordinarily high wages in the Banat, but this perception must be contrasted with the frequently requested salary increases by the officials who were appointed in the Banat.Footnote 79
Sources also give insights into the risk factors that occurred during officials’ period of service in the Banat. Most of the applicants in the Banat received fixed annual salaries, including some material benefits. The local administration tried to provide proper accommodations for the staff. The housing situation created potential conflicts among the personnel in Temeswar. Appropriate accommodations were important for the external effect and reflected their representative function as well as their individual status within the hierarchal structure of the Banatean bureaucracy.Footnote 80 With the conquest of the region, it was mandated that administrative state personnel should be housed within the area of the so-called fortress (city center), but as time went by, the living space within the fortress walls became more crowded.Footnote 81 Around 1750 the housing situation in the city became precarious, and new officials received a payment to help cover residential costs, if a state accommodation was not available.Footnote 82 However, authorities emphasized that a state-financed accommodation for both the administering staff in the center of Temeswar as well as the distributed personnel in the districts of the province was purely an act of benevolence by the state.Footnote 83 The same procedure applied for the clergy.Footnote 84 Nevertheless, the court endeavored to provide adequate accommodations and assumed the responsibility for the maintenance of them.Footnote 85
A new regulation in 1740 caused an outcry among the administering personnel in the Banat. The Viennese Court demanded—yet again—that civil servants not use unpaid private services nor work in exchange for subjects’ products for their own end. The authorities in Vienna harshly condemned the practice of the exploitation of subjects and threatened the staff with serious consequences if they would infringe these directives. The Viennese authorities insisted on this claim because the regulation was enacted for the first time already in 1726. The serious accusations comprised in particular the free supply of agricultural products like productive livestock and seed. The instruction from 1726 included a further interesting aspect: the prohibition of unauthorized distributions of pensions or salary supplements by the Landesadministration in Temeswar. With this claim, the court made clear that all binding decisions had to be made solely by the court in Vienna.Footnote 86 In preparing for this regulation, the Landesadministration provided insights into the disbursed payments. A tabular list regarding the years 1739–40 revealed that officials across all provincial administrative bodies benefited.Footnote 87 The Landesadministration tried to highlight that officials relied on those benefits. They underlined once more the high medical costs in connection with the climatic circumstances, the difficult economic conditions after the Ottoman War (1736–39), and the bubonic plague outbreak (1738–40) in the region, which significantly complicated their administrative work.Footnote 88 Apparently, the Viennese Court ignored those arguments because, thereafter, besides the salary in cash, the tables only list advice for free accommodations, firewood, and provisions.Footnote 89
With the outbreak of the war and the plague, the administrative personnel of the Banat of Temeswar were undoubtedly facing exceptional challenges.Footnote 90 Most of them fled after the Ottoman army started their offensives on the Banatean soil. Interestingly, the allegiance of the Banatean officials had not been queried by the Viennese Court. The authorities in Vienna understood their fear of the hostile Ottoman troops and of the plague, which was brought into the Banat by military troops from Transylvania. The officials were punished for leaving their workplace without permission; what is particularly interesting and significant is that the salaries of the escaped civil servants were continuously paid. This occurred because the Viennese Court was determined to bring back the officials to the Banat and the payments remained unchanged as an incentive. In the majority of cases, the surviving staff eventually returned and were not exposed to any criminal penalties. The court relied on the support of those experienced employees during the following phase of onerous reconstruction.Footnote 91
The issues raised quite often dealt with financial affairs. In this respect, it is worth mentioning that attachments of salary were a common practice. In some cases, creditors asserted their rights directly to the authorities and requested the official to settle his debts before an attachment of earnings could be considered. An attachment of salary was a potential solution to limit the debt of the office-bearer step by step.Footnote 92 As already mentioned, the Amtskaution functioned as an instrument to prevent abuse of office.Footnote 93 The Amtskaution had to be deposited before taking an office and was primarily demanded from civil servants of the finance divisions (Rechnungsführer). For state officials, raising this security deposit presented extraordinary challenges. The average amount ranged from 1,000 florins to 5,000 florins for jobs in the Banat and potential candidates were often not able to raise the amount. Provinzial- und Salzeinnehmer Johann Georg Unger, well qualified but not wealthy, was not in the position to pay the required 3,000 florins in the year 1736.Footnote 94 With the support of his supervisor Administrative Council Johann Anton de Jean von Hansen (1686–1760), Unger requested a reduction of the deposit. The Court decided to reduce the amount to 1,000 florins. This acquiescence possibly suggested a lack of qualified candidates in the region, which required the state to make a compromise.Footnote 95 Further types of payments to support officials in precarious situations could include exceptional traveling costs, job-related additional efforts, temporary jobless phases, or cases of medical urgencies.Footnote 96
Financial subsidies were a practicable instrument of rapid assistance by the state. The central authorities tended to develop long-term and individual solutions for their officials and adhering relatives. For example, customs officer Franz Doborgaszi was assassinated during his service in April 1752. He left behind a widow and six children, of which four were minors. The widow petitioned for both of her adult sons to receive promotions as well as a pension for herself in the ordinary, bureaucratic formalized way. Her situation was discussed at the meeting of the Hofdeputation in Vienna. Referring to the thirty-four years of service of her late husband, the Hofdeputation determined that the widow should receive an annual pension of 100 florins (limited to three years), her son Jacob should be promoted from his position as Waldamtschreiber (civil servant responsible for the maintenance of the forest) to an Unterverwalter (civil servant employed in the district as submanager), and her younger son Joseph from a Postamtschreiber (civil servant employed at the post office) to a Canzlist at the Landesadministration in Temeswar. The motivation of the Hofdeputation to support the family was not entirely altruistic because the commission was interested in reducing the payment for the widow in the long run. The logic behind the decision to promote the sons was intertwined with the aspect of higher salaries, which gave them better financial opportunities to support their mother and their younger siblings.Footnote 97
Such a system was not immune to abuse, and misappropriation and self-interested actions were part of the nexus of state-based benefits and imperial officials. In 1729 a formal regulation already outlined one way that abuse of the system occurred. The problem arose around beneficiaries who resided for different reasons abroad: “besonders an entlegenen ohnbekanten Örtheren wohnhaft gewester Partheyen” (especially in regard to parties, who lived in remote areas). In the event of a death, benefits were often paid above the entitlement. Similar to salaries, benefits were paid quarterly, and if surviving dependents had failed to inform the authorities, it was difficult for the state to figure out when a beneficiary had died. Therefore the personal appearance and the signing of the receipt became obligatory, or in exceptional cases, it was possible to present the magistrate with a written confirmation that the beneficiary was still alive.Footnote 98
Conclusion and Outlook
Social care and support for civil service administrators included multiple facets of protection and support by the state, but we also have to think about the balance of mutual taking and giving between the state and its employees. Because holding an office became linked with a permanent position in civil service, the Habsburg monarchy was forced to deliberate on the question of provisions and support for their loyal personnel, who acted as their extended arm that spread over the entire monarchy. Over the course of the eighteenth century, an imperial civil servant gradually acquired a more professional status. Along with that emerged a “new” community of office-bearers, which increasingly acted as a counterbalance to the nobility, who previously occupied the foremost functions.Footnote 99
Building upon the work of Max Weber, we can assume that multiple elements of a permanent civil service in the case of the Banat can be traced back almost to the first half of the eighteenth century. Various elements are already tangible, including regular pay as basis of support, professional education as an employment criterion, early forms of performance evaluation, division of labor, official hierarchy of authority, written documentation, employment and promotion based on knowledge, and accordance with the rules.Footnote 100 In the same manner, the state overtook social responsibilities for staff in return for their loyal service, even before the ultimate heyday of Austrian centralization and the movement toward a modern administration system under Maria Theresa. Preliminary stages of governmental care have been mainly due to the outlined living conditions of great importance for the administratively employed staff in the Banat. Risky health circumstances and the constant threat of war made the provision of subsidies by the Viennese court for those officials in the border region necessary. Their working and private life was burdensome and plagued by a broad range of challenges caused by the remoteness of their workplace.
We can assume that even though some simplified administrative procedures had already been established at that time, the distribution of allowances can be characterized as unregulated. The applications were mostly case-by-case decisions and within the set of rules, namely the applicant had no right to support during the represented investigation period. The practice of case-by-case decisions was extremely difficult to manage by the competent authorities, with the consequence that simplification measures like summary applications were implemented for instance in the processing of survivors’ benefits under the rule of Maria Theresa. Therefore, researchers have to deal with a lack of a schemata.
However, all successful applications were accompanied by a personalized letter to the reigning monarch that included promises where personal concerns and intentions were described and entitlements duly substantiated. Governmental social care concepts originated from the need to provide soldiers or veterans and prevent begging among them. Thus, the intention to promote social care for civil servants in the Banat holds a self-serving function for the state. The state relied on the effective workforce of those civil servants. The paid-out allowance was often accompanied in the documents by reflections of how an acceptable balance of costs and benefits could be achieved, firstly for the state and secondly for the applicant. In such circumstances, the decision demanded an individually tailored way to evaluate the best alternative for state finance, especially since most benefits were financially supported, which ensured an immediate effect. By contrast, it is worth mentioning that, from the perspective of the Viennese court, allowances or support payments for officials and their relatives were recognized differently based on the condition of charity. As long as there was no right of provision in favor of dependents, the charitable element was paramount, and widows or orphans were entirely dependent on the goodwill of the emperor and his advisors in Vienna. In contrast, payments for high-ranked military staff were not understood as charitable allowances, which made constructions like the Quieszierung viable, especially if their family background was intertwined with noble birth and adhering claims.
As practicing civil service developed into a profession, a specific education criterion was required for appointments, and working for the state transformed into full-time employment, limiting the possibilities of alternative income-generating activities, especially after one left the service. These changing circumstances demanded the formation of a more specific care concept for bereaved people, which was implemented in the second half of the eighteenth century with the establishment of allowances that were linked with various criteria, including the length of the service period. Significantly, the right to a pension became coupled with previous service. These elements supported the gradual consolidation of regulations, which created legal certainty for imperial officials and their relatives.Footnote 101
Civil servants received state pension schemes slightly earlier than other professional groups like craft guilds, which often were focused on intragroup and self-organizing support mechanisms. For a comparison with the developments in other European realms at that time, we can refer to the work of historian Bernd Wunder, who wrote a paper in 1984 highlighting how security elements in France were based on military organization and implemented in the form of provisions for invalids already in the seventeenth century, which gave France a pioneering role in terms of state welfare and social security. However, support for civil officials is reduced to the group of “commis” and was linked with the concept of benevolence. He outlined that, by the virtue of venality of offices among “officiers,” provisions on the basis of old age or disability for service were not practiced during the Ancien Régime, with the exception of the “menus officiers domestiques” of the king, who were qualified for a pension with the character of mercy since the fifteenth century.Footnote 102 Finally, welfare concepts were all based on the concept of Christian charity and a sense of paternalism, followed by military considerations concerning invalids, and therefore led to comprehensive social and healthcare schemes for imperial staff. It seems important to enrich the research field of early modern administrative history as well as the history of social security with in-depth studies to close the still existing research gap and to open the possibilities for comparison in a broader European context.
