Kudlich, Hans

Born Oct. 23, 1823, in Lobenstein; died Nov. 11, 1917, in Hoboken, N.J. Austrian politician.

Kudlich was of peasant background. He graduated from the law school of the University of Vienna in 1848. He took part in the Uprising of March 1848 in Vienna. In June 1848 he was elected to the Austrian Reichstag, where he became the leader of the extreme left. On July 26 he proposed the immediate abolition of personal serf-type dependency of peasants and the obligations proceeding from it; in a form somewhat less beneficial for the peasants the bill became law on Sept. 7, 1848.

During the Uprising of October 1848 in Vienna, Kudlich, who basically advocated revolutionary democracy, made an unsuccessful attempt to organize the peasants’ aid to insurgent Vienna. In March 1849 he departed for Germany, where in May he joined an uprising in Pfalz. Sentenced to death in absentia by an Austrian court, Kudlich fled to Switzerland in the summer of 1849. From 1853 to the end of his life he lived in the USA. Kudlich’s memoirs are a valuable historical source.