Nobilities in Europe in the Twentieth Century

Book excerpt: 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. 0The 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.