Hans Kudlich


Johann "Hans" Kudlich was an Austrian political activist, Austrian legislator, American immigrant, writer, and physician.

Early life

Kudlich was born in Úvalno Lobenstein near Opava, the Czech Republic on October 23, 1823 in to a peasant family.

Political life

He is noted for being a leader of the revolutionary movement to end the feudal policies of the Austrian Empire under Ferdinand I of Austria. From the 1700s, the empire had enforced a decree known as the Robot Patent which required farmers to serve an annual quota of labor without compensation to the noble landowners. Kudlich was elected to the Austrian Reichstag in early 1848 at the age of 25. He introduced a bill to abolish forced servitude and the bill was approved by the legislature. He was popularly titled as the Bauernbefreier, meaning the liberator of peasant farmers from the involuntary servitude of serfdom.
The parliament was dissolved by force on March 7, 1849 when the rebellion that had briefly taken control of Vienna was crushed. Kudlich up to the time of the dissolution of the parliament had worked to rally support for the revolution. After the dissolution of the parliament he fled first to Germany and then to Switzerland.
After his political career, Kudlich obtained a medical degree in Berne and Zurich.
He left Switzerland in 1853, emigrated to the United States, and settled in Hoboken, New Jersey.
He worked as a medical doctor, and co-founded the Hoboken Academy in 1861, a German-American school.

Death

Kudlich died November 11, 1917 in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA. There is a memorial to him in Poysdorf, Austria. The memorial reads in part, "Dr. Hans Kudlich, peasant liberator, thanks to his memory, from the Austrian Silesian Hans Kudlich Committee, built in the year 2000".

Books by Hans Kudlich