Page 181 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Innkeepers in Tyrol

employment.⁴ Innkeepers with larger businesses tended to be of consid-
erable wealth and belonged to the local elite. The fact that inns on main
roads were considered a good source of income is also reflected in the logic
of taxation. In a house tax list from 1634, the ‘noble inns on the main roads
and in the villages’ were taxed at a multiple of 25 gulden, while the ‘noble
farmhouse’ was taxed at four gulden (Stolz 1949, 208–9).
However, it is not possible to analyse inns as commercial enterpris-
es without considering social aspects. These include the choice of part-
ners and marriage patterns, but also family relationships and the lives of
children. These areas played an important role in the social position of
innkeeper families and their material basis, as well as in the division of
labour in everyday operations – and thus ultimately in the prosperity of
the inns. The question of what connections can be reconstructed between
inns as logistical and infrastructural hubs, the marriage and kinship re-
lationships and contexts of innkeeper families, and the requirements of
transport is the subject of a recently launched research project focusing on
the eighteenth century.⁵
On the basis of such family histories, it can be assumed that sons of
wealthy innkeepers diversified their range of entrepreneurial activities but
also moved into other fields, for example, academic ones. On the other
hand, inns as businesses cannot be studied in isolation from questions of
partner choice, marriage patterns and the organisation of kinship, as these
aspects played a significant role in the material foundations essential for
social standing and the division of labour required for everyday operation
– and thus ultimately for the potential and prosperity of inns.
No robust results are currently available on a broader basis. I am there-
fore going in search of clues and concentrating on initial evidence from
selected cases. In the first case, these sketches are based on more re-
cent research literature; in the other cases, I can draw on marriage- and
inheritance-related material from earlier research contexts: from a micro-
study on marriage in familial and local contexts in Innichen, a market town
in the South Tyrolean Puster Valley, not far from the turn-off to Trieste
and Venice, and from a study on marriage contracts located in the same

⁴ See the introduction to the special issue on pluriactivity by Mocarelli and Ongaro (2020,
18).
⁵ This is the erc Advanced Grant alpinnkonnect entitled ‘Agents of Logistics and In-
frastructure in Eighteenth-Century Alpine Transit Traffic’ (101142427), in which inns and
innkeepers play a key role. The project is based at the Department of Economic and Social
History at the University of Vienna and started in October 2024.

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