Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen · 1899
Schullern’s 1899 review praises Schiff’s documentary research and historical method while questioning several pessimistic judgments about Austrian agrarian reform. Its central concern is how policy arguments can accommodate regional diversity, historically formed institutions, and the limitations of written evidence. Appreciation of the book’s scholarly achievement coexists with reservations grounded in practical experience.
Austria’s heterogeneous agrarian conditions make comprehensive research difficult. Differences in provincial history, law, population, and geography resist uniform treatment, while earlier political and scholarly neglect left gaps in knowledge. Rural indebtedness, falling grain prices, and worsening living conditions subsequently intensified demands for intervention. Schullern distinguishes direct investigation of agricultural conditions from critical examination of legislation, literature, and parliamentary proceedings. Schiff’s documentary synthesis supplies an important foundation, but cannot replace observation, particularly when written sources transmit partisan judgments.
Forest and pasture servitudes provide the clearest test of these principles. Drawing on legal practice in the Alpine provinces, Schullern stresses their importance for the viability and value of peasant holdings and defends the care and impartiality of administrators. He explicitly limits the geographical reach of his testimony:
Auf die Länder des eigentlichen Grossbesitzes erstrecken sich meine unmittelbaren Wahrnehmungen allerdings nicht.
English translation: My immediate observations, to be sure, do not extend to the lands of large landed property proper.
Schullern thus does not offer local experience as a universal counterexample. Instead, he questions whether Schiff’s unfavorable assessment adequately distinguishes regional circumstances. Changed production and transport conditions might make a settlement appear defective even when it had originally been equitable; complaints therefore require scrutiny rather than automatic acceptance. These reservations do not undermine his approval of Schiff’s conceptual analysis:
Die Eintheilung der Servituten nach ihrem Wesen und die Charakterisierung derselben und ihrer Bedeutung scheint mir durchaus correct zu sein.
English translation: The classification of servitudes according to their nature, and the characterization of them and of their significance, seems to me to be entirely correct.
Schullern also doubts whether combining servitude reform with land consolidation, following the Prussian model, would have helped mountainous districts. Such a combination might have delayed urgent settlements. Economically rational arrangements encounter historically rooted resistance, so consolidation’s desirability cannot establish the practicality of making it a condition of other reforms.
His discussion of communal agrarian institutions similarly balances analytical praise with caution about results. Identical institutional names can conceal different local forms and histories. Here his suspicion that Schiff is excessively pessimistic remains conjectural, since he lacks comparable firsthand experience. Historically developed institutions require gradual transformation. This does not excuse legal uncertainty or economic harm: he also asks whether shortsighted fiscal priorities have helped perpetuate confusion.
The remaining topics extend this attention to practical variation. Schullern appreciates the treatment of inefficient field arrangements but observes that terrain may prevent consolidation and dispersed settlement may obstruct improvements in cultivation. He welcomes the discussions of land improvement and protection of agricultural productivity. On hunting legislation, he acknowledges limited expertise while fearing that unrestricted hunting could encourage violence, impair cultivation, and weaken compensation for damage. His caution does not imply approval of expanding hunting grounds:
Selbstverständlich soll damit durchaus nicht gesagt sein, dass die vielfach zutage tretende Erweiterung der Jagdgebiete eine erfreuliche Erscheinung sei.
English translation: It goes without saying that this is by no means meant to say that the extension of hunting grounds, which comes to light in many places, is a gratifying phenomenon.
The concluding methodological appraisal explains why these disagreements remain compatible with high esteem. Schiff connects historical criticism with constructive policy and recognizes that economic measures must be judged relative to particular conditions. For Schullern, establishing those conditions requires scrutiny of subjective and partisan representations embedded in documentary sources. Policy also necessarily pursues a chosen goal; its normative orientation cannot simply be eliminated. Sound proposals must identify harms, explain their causes, and investigate developmental tendencies before prescribing remedies.
Schullern accepts the exclusion of the completed abolition of feudal burdens and reserves judgment on the project’s completeness until further volumes appear. His endorsement rests on its contribution to an evidentiary foundation for Austrian agrarian policy. The review’s distinctive argument is that documentary synthesis and economic reasoning gain practical authority through attention to local knowledge and the historical durability of institutions.
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