Karl-Theodor von Inama-Sternegg · 1894
Inama-Sternegg’s statistical journal article examines judicially enforced sales of Austrian real estate in 1891, turning an inquiry into civil justice into evidence about the economic structure of landed property. Its organizing distinction is between the number of forced sales and the values they represent: numerous small rural properties dominate the former, while fewer valuable properties account for a disproportionate share of proceeds. The article proceeds through property categories, auction-price classes, judicial districts, aggregate proceeds, and average prices, supported by extensive statistical tables.
Die Statistik der Civilrechtspflege bietet bisher kein Material, um die Realexecutionen nach ihrem Umfange und ihrer Bedeutung für den wirthschaftlichen Zustand des Realbesitzes zu beurteilen.
English translation: The statistics of civil justice have hitherto provided no material for assessing forced execution against real estate in terms of its extent and its significance for the economic condition of landed property.
The opening identifies an evidentiary gap rather than announcing a diagnosis of agricultural crisis. A special inquiry commissioned by the Ministry of Justice and processed by the Statistical Central Commission supplies the missing observations. Of 14,742 recorded cases, 653 were excluded because of insufficient specification or other problems, leaving 14,089 for analysis. These comprised 7,469 cases involving land alone and 6,620 involving properties with buildings. Comparing the latter with inhabited houses produces an approximate annual incidence of two per thousand. A separate comparison places total auction proceeds of 22.5 million gulden against an estimated real-estate value of 15.5 billion, yielding 1.45 per thousand. These are provisional measures with different denominators, not interchangeable estimates of the proportion of owners affected.
The central methodological move combines auction-price classes with property classifications derived from taxation. Land tax, house-class tax, and house-rent tax allow Inama-Sternegg to distinguish predominantly rural holdings from predominantly urban properties and, within the countryside, separate parcels from complete farms. These are practical statistical proxies: their economic meaning emerges through comparison, rather than from a direct census of agricultural establishments. Almost 92 percent of cases fall within the predominantly rural categories. Among land-only properties, arable fields account for 36.7 percent, other individual cultivation types for 31.1 percent, and mixed parcels for 32.2 percent. Regional differences therefore reflect both the composition of cultivation and the kinds of property subjected to execution.
Especially important is the distinction between selling individual parcels and selling entire peasant holdings. In Graz, Krakau, and Lemberg, executions involving agricultural properties more often concern whole farms; in Triest, Innsbruck, and Zara, separate parcels predominate. Wien, Prag, and Brünn occupy intermediate positions. The geographical pattern gives otherwise similar case totals different economic meanings, although the article does not establish the causes or subsequent consequences of these differences.
Price distributions sharpen the picture. More than 57 percent of cases lie in the lowest auction-price class, up to 500 gulden, and 81.5 percent involve properties worth no more than 2,000 gulden. Yet properties above 5,000 gulden generate 57.7 percent of aggregate proceeds. Predominantly rural categories still account for roughly two-thirds of proceeds, but urban rental properties become increasingly important in higher price classes. District comparisons prevent this contrast from becoming a simple rural–urban opposition: high-value sales in Wien depend particularly on rental properties, whereas a few valuable rural estates strongly influence the Galician results.
Average proceeds introduce a further distinction between the typical property and exceptional transactions. The national average is 1,604 gulden per case, compared with 463.4 for land alone, 2,468.2 for rural holdings, and 8,047.4 for purely urban houses. Inama-Sternegg nevertheless warns against treating the highest category averages as representative.
Die höchsten Durchschnittswerthe sind allerdings fast in allen Oberlandesgerichtssprengeln und Liegenschaftskategorien aus einer so geringen Anzahl von Fällen gewonnen, dass sie nicht geeignet sind, ein Bild von den typischen Werthgrössen der Liegenschaften zu geben, sondern höchstens symptomatische Bedeutung beanspruchen können.
English translation: Admittedly, in almost all higher regional court districts and property categories, the highest average values are derived from so few cases that they cannot provide a picture of typical property values, but can at most claim symptomatic significance.
This qualification governs his regional interpretation. A handful of unusually valuable sales can substantially alter an average; lower-end averages, he argues, more consistently disclose recurring geographical differences. Rural holdings have their highest general averages around Prag, Wien, and Innsbruck, while the Carpathian and Karst regions stand considerably lower. His analysis thus concerns the distribution and representativeness of values, not merely their ranking.
Die Executionsstatistik des Jahres 1891 gestattet also, abgesehen von ihrer unmittelbaren Bedeutung für die Beurteilung der Rechtspflege, wieder neue und werthvolle Einblicke in die Structur der Immobiliarwerthe und würde, in ähnlicher Weise fortgesetzt, zu einer trefflichen Ergänzung der bisher gewonnenen statistischen Aufstellungen über das schwer lösbare Werthproblem des österreichischen Realbesitzes werden können.
English translation: Thus, apart from its immediate significance for assessing the administration of justice, the execution statistics for 1891 provide further new and valuable insights into the structure of real-estate values and, if continued in a similar manner, could become an excellent supplement to existing statistical compilations concerning the difficult problem of valuing Austrian landed property.
The conclusion makes continued observation the condition of broader usefulness. Forced-sale statistics offer a supplementary route into property valuation, not a complete valuation system. Inama-Sternegg closes by linking their methodological implications to agricultural legislative memoranda while reserving fuller discussion for another occasion.
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