Matthias Donabaum

Matthias Donabaum is a doctoral candidate at the Department for Economic and Social History at the University of Vienna. He studied history and economics at the University of Cambridge, the University of Vienna and the Vienna University of Economics and Business. From 2020 to 2023, he was a research assistant at the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Vienna in an FWF project on ‘The Role of Wealth in Defining and Constituting Kinship Spaces from 16th to the 18th Century’. In the winter semester 2022/23 he was also a visiting researcher at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, University of Cambridge. In 2023/24 he was Junior Fellow at the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies (IFK) and in 2024/25 IFK Fellow Abroad in Utrecht and Cambridge.

Research interests: economic and social history of the early modern period, kinship, family and marriage, wealth, property transfers and inheritance practices, the history of consumption and material culture, and quantitative methods.

Current research project: Wealth, kinship and credit. Lower Austria in the 18th century

The project investigates the interdependent relationship between wealth and kinship from a historical perspective, using the small town of Eggenburg and the neighbouring manor of Kattau in the eastern Waldviertel region during the 18th century. It is based on the hypothesis that it was not only kinship relationships that structured wealth transfers, but that wealth was also a medium that defined and structured kinship relationships. The specific forms of this relationship had an impact on various forms of inequality and on how land and credit markets functioned in pre-modern societies. For example, the regional differences in inheritance and property transfer practices in conjunction with marital property law had a serious impact on the property status of women and on the options available to the various groups of people involved.

Publications:

Orphans, Guardians, Institutions and the Market. Credit in Eighteenth-Century Lower Austria, in: Continuity and Change (forthcoming).
with Margareth Lanzinger, Bauern und Bäuerinnen. Rechtliche, sozioökonomische und geschlechtsspezifische Kontexte, in: Elisabeth Loinig, Tobias E. Hämmerle, Josef Löffler und Martin Scheutz (eds.), Niederösterreich im 18. Jahrhundert. Reform und Tradition (2024).
with Margareth Lanzinger, and Janine Maegraith, Eigentum und Besitz. Rechtsqualitäten von Grund und Boden im räumlichen Vergleich, in Sandro Guzzi-Heeb, Luigi Lorenzetti und Martin Stuber (eds.), Formen des Grundeigentums: Konzepte und Praktiken in ökonomischer, sozialer und ökologischer Perspektive = La propriété foncière et immobilière: modèles, pratiques, enjeux économiques, sociaux et écologiques (Zurich 2024) 97–113.
with Janine Maegraith, Verbriefung und Finanzierung von Erbteilen und Ehegütern. Rechtskontexte im Vergleich: Niederösterreich und südliches Tirol im 18. Jahrhundert, in: Themenheft Formen des Kredits, (=Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 70, 1 (2022), S. 21–40.