Nobilities in Europe in the Twentieth Century: Reconversion Strategies, Memory Culture, and Elite Formation

In this volume on the comparative study of nobility, historians,

sociologists and anthropologists focus on the different processes of

transformation that aristocratic elites in Europe went through during

the twentieth century. Readers will learn about nobles in northern

Europe (Sweden and Finland), southern Europe (Italy), western Europe

(France, Belgium, the Netherlands) and central Europe (Germany, Austria,

Poland and Hungary). However, because of the comparative structure of

the volume, readers will also sometimes encounter the nobility in

Britain, Russia and the Baltic areas. The authors discuss questions

like: how did noble men and women cope with the rise of totalitarian

regimes and with the dramatic periods of the Second World War and the

Cold War? What was the impact of the Fall of the Berlin Wall? And how

did nobles react to the loss of political and economic privileges? In

spite of all the variety and heterogeneity in wealth, power, prestige,

and public visibility of these nobilities, some remarkable general

trends and patterns emerge from the articles. The fourteen contributions

show how and why relatively many nobles succeeded in staying on top or

in transforming political and economic capital into cultural and

symbolic capital.