Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 7. (Budapest, 2012)
Recenziók
Abstracts 593 increased. Therefore cities asked more and more credits in order to pay for their taxes. Thus the level of indebtedness continuously increased, which was one of the features of the 18th century urban economy. The assigned Chamber commissioners were responsible for the collection of conscription and ensuring the billets. Therefore the commissioners continuously controlled the financial issues of the cities and took measures to improve the efficiency of the cities’ economy. For this reason city officials had to have some legal and economics knowledge, the amounts of their payments were centrally regulated and they made attempts to stop abuses. The amounts of urban taxes as well as the urban economy were controlled by modern principles in the first third of the 18th century. NÓRA G. ETÉNYI Aspects of Economy and Theory of the State in Hungarian Related 17lh Century German City Descriptions There is a huge amount of genuine information about the Hungarian towns in the 17th century German printings. The publishers reused these re-systematized data (which were supplemented with new ones) on occasion of actual Turkish wars and political conflicts. It is proved even locally that the citizens in the Holy Roman Empire applied the said knowledge. The authors of the chronicles of Augsburg, Nuremberg and Regensburg remarked upon the military, political and denominational crises concerned with Hungarian towns. Furthermore they collected and commented the reports, summaries and maps about Hungary. During the great war drove out the Turkish, the challenge that the fight against the Turkish meant, the huge expenditures and losses, moreover the recaptured territories’ economic and political values were discoursed as well. At the end of the 17th century the detailed descriptions about the Hungarian cities were published by not only those publishers (Endter, Loschge, Fürst, Felsecker, Koppmayer, Kühn, Fischer) which specialised for the said printings in Nuremberg, Augsburg, Ulm, Regensburg and Hamburg (Wiering), but even the elite bureaucrats related to the imperial court found crucial the itemized examination of the towns from the aspects of economy and theory of the state. The city descriptions (in various genres, entertaining even as an adventure story) gave genuine information concerning the Hungarian towns’ schools, built environment geographical, denominational, and ethnical conditions, the local traditions as well as the role of each town before Turkish rule. After the re-conquest of Hungary from the Turkish the German citizens moved from Nuremberg, Regensburg, Munich or Ulm and settled in Hungarian towns. The descriptions about Hungary published in a great number
