Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2020
Abstract
The paper focuses on the possibilities and limits in the social ascension of middle class members and in particular follows transformation of the family business from a petty artisanal workshop to a wholesale company having several production factories on its own as exemplified on the entrepreneurial Beck family. Since three main representatives of the company were ennobled in the last year of the Austrian monarchy, the paper studies whether such social class mobility was possible an if so, under which condiditions.