Abstrakt
In the course of the past several decades, research on the nobility has undergone a noticeable transformation. Older, mostly genealogy-based studies have been replaced by scholarship that examines the way of life of the nobility, the transformation of their social status in the modern era, marriage alliances, and social and family policies, among other topics.
At the same time, new studies have appeared that examine the establishment and nature of new elites, the nobility policies of individual European states, as well as the nobility of Jewish faith. Archival research has revealed that during the period of 1789-1918 the Habsburg Hereditary Lands and later Austria as well undertook a total of 260 ennoblements of 233 people of Jewish faith, of which 24 were ennobled repeatedly (three people were ennobled as many as three times).
Twelve people out of this total were foreigners, of whom five were ennobled before 1848 and seven after that date. Notwithstanding the fact that noble titles had lost some of their glamour by the second half of the 19th century due to the frequency of ennoblements, they continued to exist as a symbol of having successfully climbed the social ladder, as well as of identification with the monarchy, the Emperor, and the governing system.
In view of rising ethnic tensions and sharpening conflicts among the various nationalities of the monarchy, accepting ennoblement for many people meant openly proclaiming their sympathy with the existing government. For these reasons, ennoblements were abolished shortly after the dissolution of the monarchy in successor states such as Czechoslovakia and Austria.