Kudlich, Dr. Hans, the Peasant Emancipator.—The name of Dr.Hans Kudlich has been coupled with that of Abraham Lincoln as “the great emancipator.” Through measures carried by him through the Austrian Parliament, attended with revolutionary outbreaks, violence and bloodshed—he himself being wounded in the struggle—14,000,000 Austrian peasants were finally relieved from serfdom. Dr.Kudlich fled to the United States in 1854 and died at Hoboken, N.J., November11, 1917, aged94.

He was born in Lohenstein, Austrian Silesia, October23, 1823. He studied jurisprudence at the University of Vienna and joined the students’ revolutionary movement, and, failing to secure consideration for a petition for the freedom of the press, of religion and of speech, he participated in the students’ revolt in1848 against Metternich. The government’s draft of a constitution affording no satisfaction, the Academic Legion and the workmen marched under arms and forced the suspension of the constitution and of the popular assembly. He was sent as delegate to the first Austrian Parliament when still under 25years of age after being severely wounded.

In his three-volume “Memoirs and Reviews,” published in Vienna in1873, he describes the peasant as simply without rights, bound to the soil—half serfs—ruled by nobles who were nearly free to do with them as they liked, compelled to work on their landlord’s estates without wages three days a week, boarding themselves and furnishing their own implements, horses, wagons, plows and other tools. Added to this were countless interests, money and titles, all of which were paid by the poor peasant to his rich master. The heirs of a peasant who died had to pay to the landlord 10per cent. of the realized value of the farm. On top of this the landlord was at the same time his own policeman and court of last resort, with power to incarcerate the peasant and even to condemn him to be flogged, while the suffering peasants were further subjected to the assessment of tithes by the church and to payment of taxes to the communes, road improvements and quartering of troops.

“In near-by Prussia,” he writes, “those oppressive measures had long been abolished. Looking across the border, the Austrian peasants of Silesia became still more clearly conscious of their degradations.”

His first parliamentary act was to introduce a bill to abolish involuntary servitude. It was debated six weeks in open session, but in the end a fully satisfactory law was passed and approved by the Emperor.

The bold course of the young parliamentarian created a sensation throughout Austria, and a colossal ovation to the “peasant emancipator” was instituted in Vienna, taking the form of a torchlight procession with twenty-four deputations of peasants from all parts of Austria participating.

A new revolutionary movement was soon inaugurated because of the course of the government toward Hungary. In the riots Count Latour, the Minister of War, was brutally murdered and the ungovernable populace scored a temporary victory until Vienna was invested and taken by Field Marshal Windischgraetz. Kudlich’s attempt to recruit a peasant legion to relieve Vienna ended dismally and led to his indictment for high treason. Parliament was forcibly dissolved and Kudlich fled to Germany, where he was joined by one of his confederates, Oswald Ottendorfer. The young revolutionist was received with open arms by the revolutionary party of Baden, and he was appointed secretary to the Minister of Justice, Fries. Here he made the acquaintance of his later friends, Carl Schurz and Franz Sigel. The revolution failed and Dr.Kudlich, with the remainder of Sigel’s Baden army, fled to Switzerland. Here he remained four years, studying medicine, but even here the long arm of the Austrian reactionary government reached him, and, being ordered by the Swiss government to leave the country, he came to the United States and at Hoboken established a lucrative practice. He was active in politics and an outspoken abolitionist before the Civil War, but never accepted an office.

Repeatedly he revisited his old home across the sea; first in1872, after the passage of the amnesty act of1867, on which occasion he was received with princely ovations in many cities. Everywhere pains were taken to commemorate his service as the peasant emancipator by monuments and other evidences of the respect and love with which he was regarded.