Bohemian Aristocracy and the "Ständestaat" in Austria, 1934-38

The aim of this thesis is to clarify the relationship of Czech nobility towards Austria, but also towards Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. That is because it's not possible to clarify the nobility's relationship with Austria without specifying its approach towards the Czechoslovak Republic. Since there was a plenty of noble families, more or less known, living on the territory of Czechoslovakia during the age of the First Republic, it was necessary to choose only some of them. This thesis focuses on the houses of Buquoy, Czernin of Chudenice and both ancestral lines of Schwarzenbergs (Hluboká-Krumlov branch and Zvíkov-Orlík branch). The objective of this thesis is to establish what kind of relationship did the noble families take towards the newly formed republics, and also to which extent did they deal with the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy, both based on an analysis of sources mainly of personal nature (correspondence and diaries). Their relationship ended up showing mainly in the late 1930's, when the families had to decide, whether they were going to stay loyal to the Czechoslovak Republic or whether they were going to side with the nazi Germany