^{The News}
Dedicated to Austrian-Hungarian Burgenland Family History

This newsletter concerns:

1) THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER

2) HER NAME WAS EMILIE (by Patricia Rosa)

3) REMEMBERING THE PAST WHEN WE STILL HAD OUR JEWISH NEIGHBORS (by Meir Deutsch)

4) SERFDOM: RESTRICTIONS ON TRAVEL, ETC. (Part I)

5) HISTORICAL BB NEWSLETTER ARTICLES:
    - BURGENLAND COUNTIES (by Gerald Berghold)

6) ETHNIC EVENTS

7) BURGENLAND EMIGRANT OBITUARIES (courtesy of Bob Strauch)

Trans-Atlantic Germanic Genealogy Conference:

Hello Johnny, I have tremendous news regarding my family search. When I was in Pinkafeld and visited my grandparents grave, I left a message in a bottle with a label for anyone caring for the grave to read. I have now found my father's sister and cousins. I am so excited and wanted to share this with you. I thought it was worth trying and it worked.

Johnny passed the message along to me, saying he "thought that it was a very clever and imaginative approach in seeking possible relatives in the Heimat. I'd never even thought of it! I was wondering if you might like to include it in the upcoming newsletter. Our members never cease to amaze me with their creativity." Of course, I agreed, so here it is!

Burgenland-Related Research Survey: Although I sent a separate note concerning this, I wish to remind you about the Online Research Survey being undertaken as part of his Master’s thesis by Martin Schmall, a graduate student in Agriculture and Food Industry at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria. As I said in that note:

His survey concerns the impact of the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, also designated T-TIP) on the food retail sector of the economy. His survey is being conducted simultaneously in Austria and the United States. He asks that we please take time to fill out the survey (it takes at most 5 minutes).

If you are like me, you have not heard of the TTIP, but the survey also includes interesting questions about your preferences concerning foods, be they organic, genetically modified or pesticide free; the type of food stores you prefer; and the cost-versus-quality assessment you employ.

Here is the link to the survey: https://www.umfrageonline.com/s/TTIP-EN (“umfrage” is German for “survey”).

In trade, I have asked Martin to share a summary of his findings with the BB (when the survey is complete), as I’m sure any differences between Austrian and US views on these subjects will be interesting. Please consider supporting his research efforts by filling out the survey.

Although I ask you to fill out the survey based on your current knowledge, after you are done you can look up information about TTIP on the US Trade Representative government website https://ustr.gov/ttip. I'll also mention that TTIP is similar in nature to previous trade agreements NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership)... both of which are also mentioned on that government site.
 


St. Louis Online Genealogical Resources: Margaret Kaiser passed along information about genealogical resources (newspaper databases) relating to the St. Louis area:

Obituary Index - The St. Louis Public Library has made available an obituary index (http://www.slpl.org/slpl/gateways/article240117800.asp ). The records in the database are drawn from death notices, burial permits, and obituaries published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1880 to 1930, 1942 to 1945, 1960 to 1970, and 1992 to 2014. Search by last name, first name, and year of birth or death.

An addendum (http://www.rollanet.org/%7Ebdoerr/P-D/PD75-77.htm) to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch obituary index covers January 1975 to June 1977.

Death Index - The St. Louis County Library's web site also provides a database of deaths (http://www.slcl.org/content/index-deaths-saint-louis-globe-democrat) in Missouri and Illinois. Drawn from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and its predecessors, this index currently covers 1860 to 1861, 1880, 1881, and 1883. More years are being added as indexing is completed.

Email the History & Genealogy librarian (genealogy@slcl.org) with subject "Index to deaths in the Saint Louis Globe-Democrat" to request a copy of an article.

These links will be added to the BB Links page.



Mural at Coplay Sängerbund: In the previous newsletter, I included a few words from BB member Bob Schatz commenting on the mural found in the entrance to the Coplay Sängerbund in Coplay, PA. I also asked if any of you are aware of any similar work found in a US (or other) emigrant Burgenländer destination and, if so, to share an image and possibly some background information about it. To date, I have not heard from anyone concerning a similar Burgenland-related work... but my request remains open!



Beyond that, I asked for information about the origins and artist(s) behind the Sängerbund mural (shown above) and the meaning of the dates on the inscription.

Bob Strauch quickly replied, saying:

The mural of the Güssinger Schlossberg at the Coplay Sängerbund was painted by Sally Simitz of Coplay, wife of local musician Emil Simitz. It was done on the occasion of the club's 75th Anniversary in 1992 (hence the dates 1917 & 1992).

So now we know. Thanks, Bob!



Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales in the Hianzisch Dialect: Karin Ritter, of the Burgenländisches Volksliedwerk (Burgenland Folk Song), asked that I publish information about a new double-CD set containing 13 Brothers Grim fairy tales presented in the Hianzisch dialect. The double-CD was produced in cooperation with the Burgenländisch Hianzischen Gesellschaft in Oberschützen and is based on text from their 2015 book, "Dou woar amul...", which contains 27 of the best-known Brothers Grimm fairy tales, also presented in the Hianzisch dialect. The double-CD was motivated because many readers of the book reported that they had great problems reading the dialect, as Hianzisch is mostly a spoken, not written, dialect.

A link to information about the CD set on the Burgenländisches Volksliedwerk site is:
http://burgenland.volksliedwerk.at/pages/bakery/dou-woar-amul-250.php

[As always, the BB offers information about commercial endeavors for information only. We do not endorse any products and have not reviewed this offering (except to say that the link given is both correct and safe).]



War Memorials and Graves Resources: BB member Andreas Schoredits recently wrote to share information on two online resources related to War Memorials and War Graves.

The first site helps find the gravesites of fallen WW-II German and Austrian soldiers: http://www.volksbund.de/en/graebersuche.html.

The other website lists the fallen of both world wars, as compiled from monuments erected in graveyards: http://www.denkmalprojekt.org/en_search.htm. Andreas says "There is a lot of information... and includes all the villages in Burgenland."

I spent a few minutes on each site and will note that the first site requires that you fill out a registration form before it provides search results. This only needs be done once.

The second site provides two search engines, the Fluid Dynamics search engine and the Google search engine. However, the Fluid Dynamics engine does not appear to be functional... but Google's works fine. In addition, there is a direct link to Burgenland's war memorials: http://www.denkmalprojekt.org/covers_oe/burgenland.htm.



Julius Streicher Collection—Research Help Requested: Felix Gundacker, of www.GenTeam.eu, recently sent a note concerning WW-II looted books located in Nuremberg, specifically the Julius Streicher Collection, and requesting assistance in restoring the books in the library to their rightful owners or their descendants.

This is a collection of approximately 10,000 valuable books—the so-called “Stürmer or Streicher Library"—stolen during the war by the Nazis and now custodially administered by the Jewish Community (Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, IKG) Nuremberg. A goal of the IKG is to restore the books to their legitimate former owners or their rightful heirs. Such restitution is completely free of charge, even to the mailing of the books back to their rightful owners. Although many of the probable owners of the books have been identified, it has proven quite difficult to determine where they or their legitimate successors live now. Thus this request for help.

The current list of probable owners (i.e., robbery victims) or known successors (the list is not clear) can be found on the GenTeam site (no registration needed) here: Streicher Collection Owners. Other books still require initial provenance research and all books require reasonable documentation to ensure rightful ownership. Please look at the list and consider whether your family or acquaintances might be an owner. In addition, if family lore suggests your family might have been so victimized, please consider making contact (as described below).

Below is a letter from Magister Leibl Rosenberg, the representative of the city of Nuremberg for the collection of the IKG that explains more and asks that you contact him with any and all research findings and questions (at Leibl.rosenberg@stadtnuernberg.de).



Looted books Not Only from Austria in the Collection of the Jewish Community

On March 12, 1938, Nazi Germany brought Austria home into the Reich (realm) by annexing the country. With it began a terrible history of suffering for the victims of the Nazis: Jewish people, free masons, Sinti and Roma, priests and believers of diverse Christian denominations, representatives and exponents of the labor movement. They were disenfranchised, humiliated, persecuted, arrested, robbed, expelled, and assassinated. Favored objects of the new masters’ desires were the properties and cultural commodities of any kind: paintings, sculptures, images, manuscripts, writings, archival materials, art wares, tools and instruments, stocks, motor vehicles, furniture and usable items of any kind. One does not go wrong in the assumption that there had to have been about 600,000 art works and millions of publications confiscated from all over Europe.

A portion of the stolen books from 514 Austrian towns and other localities in Europe reached by still obscure ways into the ownership of the infamous Gauleiter (head of a Nazi administrative district) and so-called Frankenführer (Franconian leader) Julius Streicher in Nuremberg. Remnants of the books remain to this day in the collection of the Jewish Community-IKG (previously the collection was also known as the Stürmer or Streicher Library) in the Nuremberg city library at the Educational Campus. This collection of nearly 10,000 books is the property of the Jewish Community in Nuremberg and was given, years ago, on permanent loan to the city library. The IKG, owners and proprietors of the collection, saw and see themselves as custodians, and they have begun, with great effort, the tedious task of finding the former owners and the restitution of the writings to their legal successors. So far, more than 700 writings were returned to approximately 170 persons or entities in ten different countries. This work is done pro bono; therefore, it is done free of charge for the previous owners, their families and rightful owners, and the city of Nuremberg will pay the postage to forward restored works.

The research of the provenance references in the writings in 25 languages has resulted in over 2,200 former owners from localities in Europe and overseas. Three geographical focal areas have been crystallized: Nuremberg, Franconia; Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine; and Vienna, Austria.

The restitution of robbed cultural goods requires provenance research; in turn, it cannot be successfully made without family research. The acting representative of the city of Nuremberg for the Collection IKG therefore turns today, a good year after sending out the first search list, once more to the genealogists and historians from the staff and user circle at www.GenTeam.eu to request instructions, reference information, and research result for locating former owners and their heirs or legal successors. The list published here still contains some inaccuracies and misattributions, traces and fragments despite many of years of careful efforts to avoid errors. It is a matter of 879 former owners of 238 known cities throughout Europe. A list as this one, how could it be any different--a document of mass lootings that often lead to mass murders!

Many years, actually decades, have passed since this terrific raid; but it does not alter the iniquity and the suffering of the affected. Please examine whether you can shed some light in the dark, so that in this way the victims will befall just a little justice. The first Search List with Austrian victims of these robberies at GenTeam lead to the restitution of written works and to the clarification of dozens of former owners. For this and for the great and selfless helpfulness of our GenTeam friends is expressly and warmly thanked!

Leibl Rosenberg, M.A.
Representative of the City of Nuremberg for the Collection IKG
In der Stadtbibliothek im Bildungscampus Nürnberg
Egidienplatz 23, Zimmer 207
90403 Nürnberg
(0049)-(0)911-231-22588
Leibl.rosenberg@stadtnuernberg.de



Update for book "The Burgenländer Emigration to America": Here is this month's update on purchases of the English issue of the 3rd edition of Dr. Walter Dujmovits' book "Die Amerika-Wanderung Der Burgenländer."

Current total sales are 1095 copies, as interested people purchased 15 more books during these past two months.

As always, the book remains available for online purchase at a list price of $7.41 (which is the production charge for the book, as we purposely choose not to make a profit so we can avoid dealing with the income tax consequences and so you can obtain the book at as low a cost as possible!), plus tax & shipping. See the BB homepage for a link to the information / ordering page and for any current discounts (and there is at least one discount on price or shipping available most of the time... if not, wait a few days and there will be one!).

Burgenland Recipes: Eszter Tóth, of Vác, Hungary (who shared a Burgenland trip report with us in Newsletter #268), tells me that her grandfather wrote up the old recipes of his wife (her grandmother) in about 1917. Eszter shares one for "Dara Puding," saying "It was family legend that this recipe was coming with my great-grandmother, so maybe has Burgenland roots. Anyway I love it."

Dara is a Hungarian word for semolina = farina = Cream of Wheat, and the pudding is so named because Dara is the base ingredient for the pudding. As prepared in the recipe below, it is topped with a custard/milk sauce. On the web, you can find many variations on Dara Puding ...some recipes blend fruit into the pudding or top it with a fruit-based sauce. There are also fancy versions with a chocolate or caramel topping and simple versions with just a cinnamon or powdered sugar or cocoa dusting.

Although I looked, I could not find a Dara Puding pictured with the custard-sauce topping, so I was planning to show just the recipe itself... but when I mentioned this to Eszter, she decided to treat herself to the pudding and provided a series of photos of the preparation steps... I'll share them after the recipe, along with the comments she sent with the pictures.

But first, here is Eszter's custard-topped Dara Puding recipe, complete with grandfather's original hand-written instructions:

DARA PUDDING (from Eszter Tóth)



3/4 c. sugar       2 cups + 2 tablespoons milk
1/3 c. semolina

Caramelize 15 dekagrams [3/4 cup] of sugar until nicely brown. Blend in 1/2 liter [2 cups plus 2 tablespoons] milk and heat to a slow boil. Stir in 6 dekagrams [1/3 cup] semolina and cook until thickened. Rinse a mold [cake or pudding form] with cold water, pour in the pudding, and chill.

Now prepare a thick custard. Then, when the pudding has cooled, unmold it onto a deep platter and pour the custard on top.

Custard (Milk Sauce) topping:

3 egg yolks         3 Tbsp. sugar
dash of vanilla     a bit of flour
2 c. milk

Blend all ingredients together then stir over low heat until thickened to a smooth, dense liquid (1 minute of boil). In general, use as many egg yolks as tablespoons of sugar, a little vanilla, a little flour to thicken it, and just enough milk to make it a smooth, dense liquid (usually 1/2 liter of milk [about 2 cups] to 3 egg yolks).



Eszter's Pictures and Comments

Ingredients of the first step: milk, sugar and semolina



Use a deep pot for caramelization, because when you pour the milk—very, very slowly—it is similar to a volcano.
Don’t forget to make the form wet, just before you pour the pudding into it.




The result of the first step. It is just cooling now:












The ingredients of the second step: milk, egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, and flour



First, thoroughly mix the sugar, egg yolks and a little flour in the pot. Then add the milk and vanilla. Cook it until it boils for a minute. Stir it continuously!!!!






The results of the first two steps:



I tasted them, as you can see!








Enjoy your meal! (Jó étvágyat!)

Dara Puding; grandfather, who put down the recipe; grandmother, who made the original version; my afternoon coffee; AND my first taste of the Dara Puding!

Thank you, Tom, for this nice and sentimental afternoon!

[Ed note: That looks awfully good! ...but Eszter did not send me a slice like I asked! lol]



Given that the original recipe was not completely clear about all the steps in preparing this dish, I also consulted with my BB Hungarian translators, Julia Szent-Gyorgyi and Réka Kieß, who both assisted in completing the write-up. My thanks to them!

Réka tells me that this is "...an age-old recipe, one of the earliest and cheapest dessert recipes known in Hungary." She also says that "...this is only a variant of "Tejbegríz" (semolina in milk), which is prepared in a saucepan and eaten hot and creamy with cocoa or cinnamon topping on it. It is still a typical dish of nursery schools and people with problems of the digestive system."

She goes on to say that "...custard topping was mainly used by middle-class families, since vanilla was not an option for the poor. Tejbegríz was only made into a semolina pudding when there was a topping to go with it. Jam, marmalade, custard of any type, was something that only the higher classes could afford. Therefore, semolina pudding is not something that you would usually eat on a Sunday afternoon if you were from the lower-middle classes or even less fortunate. Dessert would rather be Tejbegríz or Rizskoch (Note: Hungarian word for rice is "rizs." This is then compounded with a German verb: "koch" [to cook]. This is how using etymology you can depict the original birth time of a recipe, especially around special cases like Burgenland.)"

I'll remind you readers that Réka has expertise in paleography, which is the study of ancient and historical handwriting.... Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing.

Thus it is not surprising that Réka considers and interprets the etymological background of words. In fact, she also speculates about the background of the writer of the recipe, saying:

"The writing and language of the recipe shows that the person putting it down was a literate, well-educated person. I have seen many types of writing and language use from this era and I can say that this person seems like a clerk or someone doing an office-based job."

This prompted me to ask Eszter Tóth if this was an accurate assessment of her grandfather and his occupation. In addition, I asked her about the "class" background of her great-grandparents and grandparents... that is, was their class background consistent with having a custard-topped semolina pudding (middle class or higher)? Here is what she says:

"My grandfather was an engineer, who worked with rivers, lakes and roads. He finished [his] University studies in Budapest in 1899, but he worked (when he put down the recipes) in Nagyszalonta [now Salonta, Romania], a small town near Nagyvárad / Oradea [, Romania]. In the family tree of my grandma, at least 6 generations were Bürgers [citizens], Lederers [leather workers], Fleischackers [butchers], Tuchmachers [cloth makers], Webers [weavers] and evangelical Teachers, Pastors and Superintendents (Bishops).

"So, ...they were middle class people. The engineer (my grandpa), the priest, the teacher and the rabbi played tarokk (a game with cards) on Sunday afternoons. They were the literate, well-educated persons in the small town.

"When I was a small child (in the 1950s), my family was very poor (in Budapest with my parents). But once a week we (the children) got Tejbegríz, with a small [bit of] sugar on top of it. After 1956 the situation was better. Then my mother made Dara Puding for us. And we thought, at that time, we were very rich and [that] Dara Puding was completely different from Tejbegríz. (Even in those days, the vanilla was sent by my grandma from Oradea, Romania.)"

Thus it should be quite apparent that Réka's assessment of the writing was spot-on accurate, as was her interpretation of the class distinctions between Dara Puding and Tejbegríz!

I hope you readers enjoyed the history/sociology lesson and will enjoy making Dara Puding for yourself!



Reminder: As mentioned a few newsletters ago, I no longer have a "regular" source for Burgenland recipes. As above, a few readers have shared favorite family recipes so I'm good for a few months, but then I'll be begging again! So, please consider sharing your favorite Burgenland recipes or recipe books with me so I can share them with the readership... and so our ethnic dishes do not get washed away by the ever flowing river of time and become lost to our future generations. Thanks!



Cartoon of the Month: This newsletter is dated Oct. 31, after all!
 
    
 

Editor: Meir Deutsch wrote the first draft of the following article back in July... and I have been holding it with intent to publish it when it seemed appropriate. The article honors Gentiles who have found it important to remember Burgenland's Jewish past, a past largely wiped out by the Nazi's during WW-II.

Unfortunately, one of his honorees, Gertraud Tometich, died September 13th, so I have chosen to publish Meir's article now as a partial eulogy about her. The organization she founded as part of her remembrance work, "wir erinnern - Begegnung mit dem Jüdischen Mattersburg" (We Remember - Encounter with Jewish Mattersburg), published the following "Remembrance" notice:

I translate this as:

In Remembrance of Woman

Mag. Gertraud Tometich

Chairwoman of the Association "We Remember - Encounter with Jewish Mattersburg"

Mag. Tometich was concerned about the Christian-Jewish dialogue.
She researched and documented the history of the Jewish Community of Mattersburg
in order not to let the memory of it fall into oblivion.
We will continue to lead the work of the Association in this sense.

Shaken and deeply sad
The Association Members
 

Thus, it appears that she will not be forgotten nor that her work will be lost. In a world where organizations (like ISIS) still strive to erase history and destroy people whose ways differ from their own, it is good that others wish to remember... largely in the hope, I suspect, that such remembrance will, even if just a little, keep good people from doing such terrible things again.



REMEMBERING THE PAST WHEN WE STILL HAD OUR JEWISH NEIGHBORS

Meir writes: The first thing done in Mattersburg was restoration of the former Jewish cemetery. As we know, the Jewish cemetery was the only one in Burgenland that was destroyed in WW-II; most of the tombstones were broken up. Some of the tombstones were used to cover part of the Wulka River, which runs in the town. The old cemetery was now a flat piece of land in the center of the town. A concerned gentile inhabitant, Walter Pagler, did not like the playing of football in the summer and ice skating in the winter on that plot. He established the "Verein Shalom" (it doesn't exist anymore), which placed identical stones, which resemble tombstones and were marked with the Shield of David (no names), all over the cemetery.


Broken up tombstones plastered on a wall without any order


The new, identical stones in the cemetery

Mag. Gertraud Tometich wrote a book, "Als im Burgenland noch das Schofarhorn ertönte" (When in Burgenland the Shofar Horn still Sounded), about her town's Jewish past. She has no command of Hebrew or the Hebrew Alphabet, but came to Jerusalem to visit Rabbi Akiva Ehrenfeld, the son of the last Rabbi of Mattersburg. Being a local, she had access to the many documents and pictures, some of which we can find in her book. The pictures in her book are of the best quality that I have seen.

After writing her book, she established the "Wir-Erinnern – Begegnung mit dem jüdischen Mattersburg” (We Remember – Encounter with Jewish Mattersburg), whose work is the remembrance of the time when there were still Jews in Mattersburg. Here is their webpage: http://www.wir-erinnern.at. I will not elaborate on the Verein's work; one can find such information on their web pages. There is a street named after Dr. Richard Bertzeller, who was the Jewish medical doctor and also author of a few books on Mattersburg. Lately there was a decision made by the municipality, initiated by Wir-Erinnen, to name a lane after Rabbi Samuel Ehrenfeld, the last Rabbi of the town. The lane is along the Wulka River.


Left: Ms. Gertraud Tometich with Dvora and Rabbi Yitzhak Ehrenfeld, grandson of the last Rabbi, on his visit to Mattersburg; Right: The lane named after the last Rabbi of Mattersburg

As Ms. Tometich is also lecturing to the school children in the town and to visitors who are interested in the Jewish life that was there, she asked me to build a slide show about Jewish life in their town that can be shown to pupils. I composed a slide show and sent a draft of it to her quite some time ago. She needs approval; therefore she contacted the Managing Director of the Literaturhaus in Mattersburg and asked him to contact the department to get the approval. She tells me that she approached him a few times, but up to now she did not get the approval. The slide show is a factual History, well documented; therefore I cannot guess why permission was not given up to now. Can someone explain to me what the reason can be? I asked Ms. Tometich if the school children are familiar with one of the most read of their (Austrian) writers – Stefan Zweig? She said that she remembers one of his books: The Chess Players. I recommended that she, and the schoolchildren, should read his last novel: "Die Welt von Gestern" (The World of Yesterday). It would give them a wider view of Austria.

Recently, there was another project concerning Mattersburg. This was done by a German student, Veronika Schmid, studying architecture in the Technical University in Vienna. Her Diploma work was on the Jewish Synagogue in Mattersburg. The synagogue's interior was looted and destroyed, and finally blown up in 1940. There is no architect's or floor plan and not many photos of the synagogue. There are no photos of the interior except the one toward east. There is none of the entrance hall or the women's gallery. Even knowing of these obstacles she took on the project and finished it. Besides others, she also approached me. I tried to assist her as much as I could.

You can see her project here: http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/PubDat_245009.pdf. Here are some pictures of her work:


VS Reconstruction of Mattersburg Synagogue:
  Left - Interior, facing East; Right - Main Entrance: left for men and right for ladies

There are many reconstructed synagogues at Beit Hatfutsot (The Museum of the Jewish People) in Tel Aviv. Below is a reconstructed Austrian synagogue, the "Turnertemple" in Vienna, from their collection:


New Synagogue Model introduced to Beit Hatfutsot’s worldly collection
 

■ First, all males aged at least 20 who met certain property requirements and spoke Magyar would vote in elections to the lower chamber (this meant about 7 percent of the total population: the upper house remained a hereditary house of lords).

■ Second, a similar electoral franchise law went into effect for the county and municipal governments.

■ Third, toleration was extended to all Christian sects (but not Judaism): that is, all such believers became eligible for all the rights of a citizen.

■ Fourth, peasant dues and servitude were abolished but the 635,000 peasant families received no immediate title to the land they worked. Landlords would receive compensation, details to be worked out later.

■ Fifth, taxation was extended to all, noble or not. The Catholic Church gave up its state-collected tithe.

■ Sixth, patrimonial courts on estates were abolished. All citizens became subject to the same system of courts, with a right to trial by jury.

■ Seventh, a national land bank for investment was set up.

■ Eighth, freedom of the press and of instruction in schools was established.

■ Ninth, a National Guard was created as an autonomous Hungarian armed force.

■ Tenth, administrative union with Transylvania was announced, pending confirmation by the separate Transylvanian Diet (which consented unanimously in May).

As noted above, these laws were the end-result of the ongoing popular movement for Hungarian nationalism and autonomy. Perhaps the best "gauge" of the degree of increasing ethnic nationalism in Hungary leading up to these April Laws was the legislated extension of the use of the Magyar language (generally supplanting Latin) in Hungarian-controlled territory:

-- in 1831, mastery of Hungarian (Magyar) became a requirement to pass the legal bar;
-- in 1838, it became the official language of laws passed in the Diet;
-- in 1839, it became the language of internal administrative memos, and was required of all priests;
-- in 1843, it became the official language of administration, replacing Latin;
-- in 1844, it became the official language of secondary education;
-- in 1848 (as part of the April Laws), it became a test for voters.

These language laws clearly discriminated against German, Slovak, Romanian and South Slav minorities in the western, northern, eastern and southern regions. While Magyars pursued autonomy for themselves, they ignored the same desires among these groups. Further, Jews remained second-class citizens, barred from holding any office.

As background, when the Hungarian Diet opened in March 1848, Lajos Kossuth, the leader of the lower house in the Diet, demanded a new constitutional relationship between the Austro-Hungarian crown and the Diet; it was easy to get the support of his lower chamber. Then, when news arrived about the successful (though short-lived) revolution in Vienna, the Palatine (the representative of the Habsburg monarch) joined the Hungarian national cause and secured the consent of the upper house (the nobles) for a responsible, separate Hungarian ministry. Fearing the revolution underway in Vienna, Emperor Ferdinand was too weak to block the change. Thus having secured autonomous power, the Diet then passed the ten sweeping April Laws.

I will note that the Diet voted later in April to depose the Habsburg dynasty, an act which Emperor Ferdinand could not ignore. With the help of the Russians, the Magyars were soundly defeated by the Hapsburgs in August 1849. One-hundred-fourteen captured officers were shot or hanged, others sent to prison, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was officially defunct.

However, the revolution had had wide support by ethnic Hungarians, the county and state legislature and executives, and the armed forces, so not every revolutionary measure could be retracted. Thus the Habsburg regime supported some reforms. These were:

■ To curry favor with the peasantry in Austria, the Habsburgs had already ended the remnants of serfdom through a March 1848 act of parliament. Like in Hungary, peasants received title to some land, while landlords retained title to the remainder and received state-paid compensation for lost dues. This was extended to Hungary.

■ Tariffs were abolished within the empire, thus creating a Customs Union, which ruined a few industries but helped far more. Nobles benefited by investing the compensation received for lands lost to emancipation, and many became rich through manufacturing.

■ The provincial Diets and separate regional bureaucracies were replaced by unified national institutions to curb separatism: this step also reduced the power of the nobility. The crown itself saw advantages in creating a single body that replaced the regional Diets with their special privileges, in a revival of centralism.

■ In place of historic, medieval constitutional laws, the empire embraced modern ideas of constitutional government, even if imposed from above.

After the defeat of 1849, Hungarian autonomy was abolished with the stroke of a pen. For purposes of taxation, commerce and administration, Austria and Hungary became a single centralized state. German replaced Latin and Hungarian as the language of official business. The crown sought allies among groups without revolutionary associations. These included the peasants, who emerged from 1848 grateful for their land; the "nouveau riche" made up of beneficiaries of the tariff reform, both enterprising aristocrats and urban capitalists; and harmless national minorities like the Polish nobility of Galicia, who preferred Austrian rule to that of Russia.

Thus, that is where things stood after the creation, short life time, and quick dissolution of the 1848 April Laws.

Now let us return back to 1514 to see when, why and what restrictions were applied to the rural peasantry.


 
The Dózsa Rebellion

György Dózsa (1470-1514) was a nobleman from Transylvania and a Székely man-at-arms during the wars against the Ottoman Empire, where he won a reputation for valor. The peasant's rebellion, which he led, occurred during the reign of King Vladislas II of Hungary (1490-1516), a time when royal power declined in favor of the magnates, who used their power to curtail the peasants’ freedom.

The rebellion arose after Hungarian chancellor, Tamás Bakócz, returned from the Holy See in early 1514 with a papal bull authorizing a crusade against the Ottomans. Dózsa was appointed to organize and direct the crusade so he gathered an army of some 40,000 peasants, wandering students, friars, and parish priests, all from the lowest-ranking groups of medieval society. By the time he had provided them with some military training, they began to air the grievances of their status, as no measures had been taken to supply them with food or clothing. As harvest-time approached, the landlords commanded them to return to reap the fields, and, on their refusing to do so, proceeded to maltreat their wives and families and set their armed retainers upon the local peasantry.

The volunteers became increasingly angry at this and the failure of the nobility to provide support and military leadership (the original and primary function of the nobility and the justification for its higher status in the society). The rebellious, anti-landlord sentiment of these "crusaders" became apparent during their march across the Great Hungarian Plain, so Bakócz cancelled the campaign. The movement was thus diverted from its original object, and the peasants and their leaders began a war of vengeance against the landlords. The rebellion spread quickly, principally in the central or purely Magyar provinces, where hundreds of manor houses and castles were burned and thousands of the gentry killed by impalement, crucifixion, and other methods.

In reaction, the papal bull was revoked, and King Vladislas II issued a proclamation commanding the peasantry to return to their homes under pain of death. By this time, the rising had attained the dimensions of a full revolution. Vladislas called out all the vassals of the kingdom and soldiers of fortune were hired to put down the revolt. Meanwhile, Dózsa had captured the city and fortress of Csanád and signaled his victory by impaling the bishop and the castellan. Subsequently, at Arad, the Lord Treasurer was seized and tortured to death. In general, however, Dózsa only executed particularly vicious or greedy noblemen. However, he was unable to consistently control his followers and many of them hunted down rivals.

During the course of the summer, Dózsa seized the fortresses of Arad, Lippa and Világos, thus providing himself with cannons and trained gunners. One of his bands advanced to within 25 kilometers of the capital but his ill-armed ploughmen were outmatched by the heavy cavalry of the nobles. Dózsa was finally routed by a large army at Temesvár and then captured. In retribution, he was condemned to sit on a heated iron throne with a heated iron crown on his head and a heated scepter in his hand (mocking at his ambition to be king). While he was suffering in this way, a procession of fellow rebels, including his younger brother, were led to his "throne" and required to eat his cooking flesh or be killed before him. Dózsa died on the throne while the rebels who obeyed were let go without further harm.

The revolt was repressed but some 70,000 peasants were tortured. György's execution and the brutal suppression of the peasants greatly aided the 1526 Ottoman invasion, as the Hungarians were no longer a politically united people.

Another consequence was the creation of new laws through an effort in the Hungarian Diet led by István Werboczy. The resulting Tripartitum elaborated the Doctrine of the Holy Crown but also greatly enhanced the status of nobility, erecting an impassable barrier between Hungarian nobility and peasantry until serfdom was fully abolished in 1848.


 
The Peasants, as Defined in Hungarian Law

Following the Dózsa rebellion of 1514, the peasantry were condemned to the status of 'perpetual rusticity’ [rusticity is defined as "the state or quality of, relating to, or living in the country, as distinguished from towns or cities; rural"]. By the laws of that year, the peasants’ status as the "personally free but legally dependent tenants of their lords" was confirmed. From then on, the peasants owed a set list of dues and services to a lord (be this the crown, the church or a nobleman) in return for their right to farm the land.

The initial law formalizing the status of peasants was Stephen Werboczy’s Tripartitum, a canon of Hungarian customary law produced in 1517. By being included in the Tripartitum, the terms of the 1514 laws were cemented in what would become the principal text of Hungarian law for almost three and a half centuries. However, by also expanding upon the rights associated with ‘perpetual rusticity,’ the Tripartitum guaranteed to the peasantry the right of hereditary tenure to the land. In other words, the peasants’ relationship both to their lords and to the land they farmed was established in written law. Nevertheless, the terms of the Tripartitum were vague and much remained customary and unwritten, the product of tacit agreement and use.

The next legal document affecting the peasants status was the 1767 Urbarium issued by the co-regents (from 1765 to 1780) of the Habsburg Monarchy, Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and his mother, Queen Maria Theresa. The Urbarium intended to supplant unwritten custom and varied local use with a set of written and uniform standards. It aimed to record and regulate the peasants’ holdings, and required registers to be kept to account for all peasant-farmed land and the obligations that derived there from. As a consequence, the peasants’ urbarial holdings—that land to which they possessed rights as they had been defined in the Tripartitum—became permanently separated from their lords’ dominical land. At the same time, the peasants’ obligations became tied to the size of their holding in an attempt to ensure that the peasants could subsist, pay taxes to the crown and meet their obligations to their lords.

By tasking county officials with overseeing the urbarial agreements and land registers, the Urbarium brought written law more firmly into lord-peasant relations through the persons of the county officials. Through these measures, the Urbarium was to supersede the irregularity and lack of uniformity inherent in existing customary arrangements. But, as an unintentional consequence, a third form of land emerged: the extra-urbarial land. The peasants possessed only ill-defined customary rights to the extra-urbarial land, established through local use and outside of those rights accounted for in written law. Thus, the Tripartitum had defined the rights associated with ‘rusticity’ and the Urbarium defined how far these rights extended onto the land. But the extent of rights to the land was revealed more by what the Urbarium did not include than what it did. I will return to this issue after discussing additional legal documents.

The July Decree of 1770 granted the peasants the right to justice through royal officials rather than their lords' courts. The Patent of 1772 granted them the right to appeal to the sovereign, and limited the robot (labor that lords could demand of their serfs) to three days a week and twelve hours a day (note that this "limit" exceeded what was considered customary in many locations, so caused difficulties for those peasants). The October Decree of 1773 capped the price of letters of release, which serfs could buy from their lords to gain their freedom.

Then, after his mother's death in 1780, Joseph II issued The Serfdom Patent (Leibeigenschaft Patent) in 1781, aimed at abolishing aspects of the traditional serfdom system of the Habsburg lands through the establishment of basic civil liberties for the serfs. This was in contrast to his contemporaries, Catherine the Great of Russia and Frederick the Great of Prussia, both of whom claimed to detest feudalism yet chose to appease their noble classes by strengthening the serfdom system during their years in power.

The Emperor's primary objection to feudalism was economic, as much of the Habsburg 18th century economy was based on agriculture. The nobles and clerics were traditionally exempt from taxes so the burden fell mainly on the peasants. But, after paying dues to the landlord, the serfs were unable to provide high tax revenues for Joseph's centralized state.

In theory, as noted above, the feudal system bound farmers to inherited pieces of land and subjected them to the absolute control of their landlord. The landlord was obligated to provide protection, in exchange for the serfs’ labor and goods. In practice, however, the degree to which the system was applied varied widely between regions and even manors within regions. The Serfdom Patent legally diminished the long-established mastery of the landlord throughout the Empire and allowed the serfs to independently choose marriage partners, pursue career choices, and move between estates.

Nonetheless, the Serfdom Patent was enforced inconsistently, if at all, among the various Habsburg lands. The nobility in Bohemia refused to enact its provisions, while the Transylvanian nobles simply chose not to notify the peasants in their region about this emancipation document. The Hungarian estates claimed that their peasants were not serfs, but “tenants in fee simple, who were fully informed as to their rights and duties by precise contracts” and continued to restrict these “tenants.” In contrast, the peasants of the German-speaking provinces were actually aided by the Patent. The 1781 Serfdom Patent allowed the serfs legal rights throughout the Habsburg Monarchy, though the document did not affect the financial dues and the physical corvée that the serfs legally owed to their landlords.

Joseph II continued to attempt to destroy the feudal system through laws such as his Tax Decree of 1789. This law would have modernized Habsburg society, allowing for the end of corvée and the beginnings of lower tax obligations. Although these latter reforms were withdrawn upon his death in 1790, the personal freedom of serfs remained guaranteed through the first half of the nineteenth century due to the consequences of the 1781 Serfdom Patent.


 
I now wish to return to the statement that "the extent of rights to the land was revealed more by what the [1767] Urbarium did not include than what it did."

Before the 1767 Urbarium, rights to the land were held in numerous and varied ways defined by local use and interpreted through customary arrangements. The Urbarium reclassified the land in two ways, as either urbarial or dominical, with a third, ‘extra-urbarial’ land, emerging by default, as these two classifications did not reflect all existing forms of use.

As use of this ‘extra-urbarial’ land was not regulated by law, prior custom persevered and played an important role in establishing the peasants’ rights and the terms of their relations to their lords. The ubiquity of custom, in turn, ensured that negotiation between lords and peasants to establish the peasants’ obligations and to define the peasants’ right to the land, with occasional reference to the courts, formed a central part of normal lord-peasant relations. In this way, lord-peasant relations and the peasants’ rights to the land found a way to accommodate what the peasants’ perceived to be just, reasonable or, at the very least, acceptable.

At this point, I'm going to share a long quote from  Dr. Robert Gray's thesis, "Land Reform and the Hungarian Peasantry, c. 1700-1848":

The Tripartitum and the Urbarium provided the main legal framework from which the reformers of the 1830s and 1840s worked as they sought to reconstruct Hungarian rural society. To achieve this end, the laws of the 1830s and the 1840s sought to make statute and custom more aligned with rights accounted for and recorded in written law. Through the debates at the diet, and the reforms that resulted from these debates, property rights and the peasants’ legal status were reinterpreted in a way that enabled the emancipation in 1848. At the ‘long diet’ of 1832/36, proposals were put forward for the voluntary redemption [buying out] of the peasants’ urbarial obligations, as a consequence of which the peasants’ urbarial holdings would become their permanent private property. Although these proposals were rejected in 1836, only to become law in 1840 and 1844, in the lengthy discussions the diet had asserted that the peasants’ rights to their urbarial holdings amounted to full property rights. Furthermore, when addressing the allocation of rights to the extra-urbarial lands, the diet established the principle that the peasants’ customary use of these lands amounted to property rights that had to be acknowledged in written law. Thus the diet provided means to convert customary use into statutory rights, and for peasants and lords to resolve disputes over rights to the land where these remained unclear. All that remained was to support the assertions made in 1836 with appropriate legislation, which occurred with the laws passed in 1840, enabling redemption agreements, and in 1844, granting full property rights to the peasantry.

This is apparent in the Urbarium, wherein distinctions were made between urbarial and dominical land that had not existed before, and the regulation of the peasants’ obligations did not account for the various local and customary practices. The matter has been further complicated as the terms of the Urbarium were subsequently adopted by historians to define the legal position of the Hungarian peasantry, often without reference to actual conditions. The failure of codification to adequately reflect customary practice and local conditions left many aspects of property rights and lord peasant relations open to doubt, and thus which could be exploited or played with by the peasantry or their lords through negotiation with their each other and petition to the courts. Indeed, it was precisely because the peasants’ rights remained rooted in customary practice not accounted for in written law that negotiations were able to play such a large role in establishing the terms of lord-peasant relations.

With few notable exceptions, historians have depicted the Hungarian peasantry in the era of ‘serfdom’ or ‘feudalism’, running from the Dózsa rebellion of 1514 to the emancipation of 1848, as suffering from ever-increasing exploitation by their noble landlords. The landlords, benefiting from political, economic, and social privileges, were able to squeeze the peasantry for all it was worth. Landlords could claim almost limitless rents or other services, relied on their serfs’ free "robot" labour to farm their estates, appropriated the peasants’ land without reproach, and acted as judge and executioner through the manorial and county courts. The peasant, having no legal existence and no established rights, could hope to seek no redress against the unchecked power of his lord aside from the occasional benevolent acts of the Crown. In light of this, the emancipation acts of 1848 become a moment of unrivalled historical importance, whereby nine million serfs (some eighty percent of the population) were liberated from seigneurial dependence [dependence on a feudal lord / the lord of a manor] and servile obligations, and were granted personal, political and economic freedom for the first time.

Such a view has often relied upon on the letter of the law and the opinions of the many critics of rural Hungarian society, without seeking to find how thoroughly the law was applied, or questioning the agenda of the critics. A case in point is the frequent citing of Gergely Berzeviczy, who produced one of the first "enlightened" attacks on Hungarian ‘feudalism’ in the late eighteenth century. Accepting without criticism the depiction of an oppressed and overburdened peasantry provided by Berzeviczy, a man who never hid his reform agenda, is bound to provide a coloured view of rural conditions. Equally, many attempts to analyse Hungarian rural conditions have turned to what incomplete statistical evidence is available, taken from urbarial agreements, censuses and land surveys. These accounts have emphasized the growing numbers of landless peasants and the expansion of noble demesnes [lands attached to a manor and retained for the owner’s own use], used to support the growing impoverishment and oppression of the Hungarian peasant. Taken together, these accounts show a peasantry that was largely powerless to react as ‘neo-serfdom’ became entrenched in Hungary from the late eighteenth century onwards, and fits into the common view of the lands east of the Elbe.

According to such accounts, Europe can be divided into East and West, along the line of the Elbe.

West of the river, the peasantry, although still unfree, were not ‘serfs’, for they owed dues and services in return for the land they farmed and not by virtue of being born under the jurisdiction of a given estate: a system known by the German term Grundherrschaft. It is often assumed that a peasant under Grundherrschaft owed dues in cash or kind but not labour, offering a further distinction between the ‘seigneurialism’ of the West and the ‘serfdom’ of the East.

To the east of the Elbe, peasants living under Gutsherrschaft owed dues and particularly limitless obligatory labour (the robot) to their lords due to their legal status, or by being born on a given estate. Thus, a peasant under Gutsherrschaft was, to quote Tim Blanning, ‘to all intent and purpose a serf’; a view reinforced since the peasant ‘could not leave, marry or choose his profession without the permission of his lord’. But it is often too simple to label the peasants east of the Elbe as ‘serfs’ and, by doing so, it becomes all too easy to ignore any rights they may have possessed or to allow the peasants any independence of action.

On the other hand, the distinction between Grundherrschaft and Gutsherrschaft, or ‘seigneurialism’ and ‘serfdom’, is of use when seeking to understand the legal position of the peasantry. A peasant under ‘seigneurialism’ owed dues and services to his lord in return for established rights, in particular the usufruct [the right to enjoy the use and advantages of another’s property short of the destruction or waste of its substance] of an area of land, recognized in customary or statute law: a peasant under ‘serfdom’, whilst capable of possessing such rights, owed dues and services merely by virtue of his legal status. As we shall see, according to this distinction the peasants of Hungary lived not under ‘serfdom’ but under ‘seigneurialism’. With this in mind, it thus becomes easier to search for and identify the peasants’ rights, and any negative preconceptions one associates with ‘serfdom’ can be left behind. A similar problem presents itself when one tries to translate jobbágyság, the legal position of the Hungarian peasantry prior to 1848, into English. More often than not, jobbágyság is rendered as ‘serfdom’, and the jobbágy (an individual living under jobbágyság) as a ‘serf’. But this does little to reveal the complex legal position of the Hungarian peasant, and it fails to reflect the rights that derived from being a jobbágy. Worse than this, by translating jobbágyság as serfdom the position of the Hungarian peasantry inevitably becomes associated with the negative connotations the latter term carries in English.

Dr. Gray's main argument in this quote is that to label the Hungarian peasant status as ‘serfdom’ misrepresents the reality of conditions, which were much closer to ‘seigneurialism’ than has previously been assumed.



I'm going to suspend this article here, with the intent of resuming it in the next newsletter. That follow-up article will consist almost solely of additional, selected quotes from Dr. Gray's thesis, wherein he gives more details on the historical status of Hungarian peasants over time, presents arguments based on Hungarian court cases that show the true relationship between the peasantry and the noble lords, and gives specific examples of peasant/lord relationships in Western Hungary. Until then...