International Conference: Mountain Entrepreneurs – Generations and Transformations (1740–1830)

University of Vienna, 14-15 September 2023

Organisers: Margareth Lanzinger, Jon Mathieu (Luzern), Juan Hernandez Franco (Murcia), Antonio Irigoyen (Murcia), and Ana Zabalza (Navarra)


Programme
Announcement

 Conference: Pass On. Generational transfers of wealth from the 16th to the 20th century

Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, 26–28 October 2023

Convenvers: Siglinde Clementi (Competence Centre for Regional History, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano)
Margareth Lanzinger (Department for Economic and Social History,
University of Vienna)
Florian Andretsch and Claudia Rapberger (FWF Project “Noble Siblings”,
Department for Economic and Social History, University of Vienna)

Programme Link

 International Workshop: Debt - the Good, the Bad and the Hidden. Bringing Family, Kin, Commerce and Consumption Debts Together

Vienna, Thu-Sat 15–17 September 2022

In this workshop we would like to address aspects concerning socio-economic practices around debts. We are particularly interested in opportunities and risks people took with secured and unsecured, short-term and long-term debts, and in the resulting balancing acts. First, we want to examine forms and logics of incurring debts, whether debts were formally or informally documented and if and how they were brokered. Regarding different kinds or agreements we will chart the effects of (life) annuities, mortgage debts, pledges and guarantees. Second, looking at specific stipulations we want to find out whether dates of repayments and/or interest rate payments were settled; whether universal or specific hypothecary securitization was common; whether lending was for investments, for consumption or repayment of other debts. Third, in terms of personal relationships we examine possibilities and problems connected with lending inside and outside family and kin. Finally, we ask what modes of repayment and/or restructuring of debt – via exchange, purchase, etc. – can be traced in the sources.

Particular focus will be placed on inheritance shares, marriage portions or dowries as debts and their effects: how were such family debts carried further and how were they transferred? Were they paid out and if so how? What consequences did they have compared to other debts? Who was liable for which debts? What gender-specific impact does this question have? It is our goal to look at family debt – often ‘hidden’ or underestimated in historiography – in conjunction with commercial and consumer debt.

Programme (PDF)

Conference report (H-Soz-Kult)

 Conference: Consumption of everyday goods in social spaces in the pre-modern period

6th Annual Conference of the Working Group: “Materielle Kultur und Konsum in der Vormoderne”"

Date: Thu-Sat 7-9 July 2022

Location: Alte Kapelle, Campus University of Vienna, Spitalgasse 2-4, 1090 Vienna

Languages: German and English

Organisation: Aris Kafantogias, Janine Maegraith (both Department for Economic and Social History), Henning Bovenkerk (Uni Münster), Manuel Mozer (Uni Tübingen)

Programme (pdf)

Conference report (H-Soz-Kult)

 

 Published recently:

Margareth Lanzinger (ed.)

"Formen des Kredits"

Special issue, Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 70, 1 (2022).

 Published recently:

Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith (eds.),

"Mobile Land"

Special issue, The History of the Family 27, 1 (2022).

 Published recently:

Siglinde Clementi and Margareth Lanzinger (eds.),

„Der letzte Wille“

Special issue of Historische Anthropologie 29, 3 (2021), with contributions from the project workshop „Der letzte Wille. Norm und Praxis des Testierens in der Neuzeit“ | „L'ultima volontà. Norma e pratica delle disposizioni testamentarie in età moderna“, in cooperation with the Competence Centre for Regional History, Free University of Bolzano, 19 October 2018.

Cover Historische Anthropologie - Themenheft

 Published recently:

 Benedetta Borello and Margareth Lanzinger (eds.),

„Open Kinship“

Special issue of Quaderni storici 165, 3 (2020), with contributions from the closing conference „Open Kinship? Social and Legal Practices from Gender Perspectives (1450–1900)“, University of Vienna, 26–28 September 2019.

Cover Quaderni Storici - Themenheft

 Conference: Kinship and Business. Law, Gender and Generational Perspectives (16th–20th Centuries)

Tagung: Verwandtschaft und Geschäft. Recht, Geschlecht und Generationperspektiven (16.–20. Jahrhundert) / Convegno: Parentela e impresa. Diritto, genere e prospettive generazionali (secc. XVI-XX)

Free University of Bolzano, 1618 September 2021

Organisers: Margareth Lanzinger (Institut für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, Universität Wien), Siglinde Clementi (Kompetenzzentrum für Regionalgeschichte, Freie Universität Bozen), Andrea Bonoldi (Dipartimento di Economia e Management, Università di Trento)

Conference programme

 Recently published

Margareth Lanzinger, Janine Maegraith, Siglinde Clementi, Ellinor Forster, und Christian Hagen (Hg.),

Negotiations of Gender and Property through Legal Regimes (14th-19th Century). Stipulating, Litigating, Mediating

This volume explores familial wealth arrangements and gendered property from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries in Italian, German and Austrian territories (including Florence, Trento, Tyrol, and Vienna), Nordic countries, Western Pyrenees, and England. Family property as capital in the form of houses, land, movables, financial assets, and rights were of great importance in the past. Arrangements of such property were characterised by a high degree of negotiating competence but likewise they entailed competition between the parties involved and were highly conflict prone. Fifteen contributors from Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK address different marital property regimes in relation to the practices and legal regulations of inheritance patterns with consideration to inter-familial negotiation, conflict, and resolution.

 Media Coverage

Austrian newspaper Die Presse (27 March 2021) covered the project under the title "Die Witwe hatte es nicht überall lustig". Alice Senarcles de Grancy talked to project leader Margareth Lanzinger about her research.

 Conference-Panel

Margareth Lanzinger (chair, organiser) and Janine Maegraith (speaker) participated in a panel on "Undivided Property among Brothers in the Early Modern Period" at the European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC) 2021 at Leiden University:

Panel ESSHC 2021: Undivided Property among Brothers in the Early Modern Period: Legal Norms and Social Practices. Four Case Studies in Comparison
Leiden University, 24.-27 März 2021
Chair: Margareth Lanzinger
Organisers: Margareth Lanzinger, Siglinde Clementi
Comment: Benedetta Borello

Siglinde Clementi, Undivided Property among Brothers – a Multifaceted Social Practice. The Case of Tyrolean Nobility in the Early Modern Period
Michaela Hohkamp, Brothers between Cooperation and Competition: Strategies and Politics of High Noble Houses within the HRE in Early Modern Times
Cinzia Lorandini, Between Business and Family Assets: Undivided Property among Brothers in Trentino (18th to 19th c.)
Janine Maegraith, Undivided Fraternal Property among the Peasantry in Early Modern Southern Tyrol. A Legal Hybrid?

 Collaboration project

"The Routledge History of the Domestic Sphere in Europe, 16th to 19th Century", edited by Margareth Lanzinger und Joachim Eibach was recently published. The book was the result of a collaboration with Eibach who led the SNF-Sinergia-Project "Doing House and Family. Material Culture, Social Space, and Knowledge in Transition (1700–1850)" together with Jon Mathieu, Sandro Guzzi-Heeb and Claudia Opitz.

 The Project is entering its next round

In August 2020 the next phase of the FWF-financed project (P33348-G) started: Project Description

 New Cooperation

Margareth Lanzinger is now a member of the DFG-network "Erbfälle und Eigentumsübertragungen" (Inheritances and Property Transfers). For more information regarding the network see: Link