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

This newsletter concerns:

1) THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER

2) THE YEAR IN REVIEW: ORGANIZATION

3) THE YEAR IN REVIEW: NEWSLETTER

4) ETHNIC EVENTS

5) BURGENLAND EMIGRANT OBITUARIES (courtesy of Bob Strauch)

Although we had two months exceeding 8,000 unique Visitors this year, we only averaged 6,936 visitors/month for the year (about 228 per day), and this was actually a large decrease compared to 2018 in average visitors/month (down 1,518/month ≈ 50/day). I suspect that much of the drop is a "hangover" caused by the issues leading up to a change in our newsletter-notification software, the loss of email addresses during the changeover, and the fact that the new system is much quicker to drop an email address (for nonfunctionality) than the prior software. Overall, there was no noticeable trend apparent during the year, as the extremes were just two months apart, lowest in September but highest in November.

As for Computer Operating Systems, our visitors continue to predominantly use Windows-based computers (59% on average, but down 3% from 2018), with the Linux (Unix) and "Other" operating systems still trailing quite distantly (but gaining 1 and 2%, respectively, compared to last year).

Usage of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) Web Browser finally halted its slide into oblivion, remaining "steady" at 2% after holding shares of 2+%, 4%, 8%, 19%, 41% and over 50% in prior years. Other browsers varied in share a little but not enough to say there was a real trend.



About the BB Staff: As I have noted many times, the BB staff is a fluid collection of individuals who, over varying tenures, voluntarily give back to our community a bit of what they have learned while on their personal journey of family-history discovery.

During this past year, we lost two staff members: Gerald Antal Gamauf and Emmerich Koller; and gained one, David Hofer.

Gerald Gamauf retired effective January 2019 from the BB Members Editor role, which he had held for 10 months, with me replacing him in the task of keeping those pages up-to-date.

In a little twist, we welcomed David Hofer to the BB staff in February, 2019, at which time he took over the BB Surnames and Villages Editor role, a task I had been doing. Thus I merely swapped one role for another (but I would be happy to have a new volunteer take that role from me!)

Emmerich Koller, our BB Hungarian Editor, retired in June 2019 after being a contributor on the BB staff for just shy of ten years. We thank both Gerald and Emmerich for the part of themselves they gave to this endeavor and also David for what he is giving now.

Over time, 35 different individuals have served on the BB staff (though Hannes Graf has the distinction of serving over two separate intervals, thus being both the 16th and 29th sequential staff members and having retired twice!).

In order of joining the staff, these are the current 13 staff members: Tom Steichen, Klaus Gerger, Bob Strauch, Margaret Kaiser, John Lavendoski, Frank Paukowits, Alan Varga, Wilhelm Schmidt, Terry McWilliams, Johnny Santana, Patrick Kovacs and Vanessa Sandhu, and David Hofer.

In order of retirement from the staff, these are our 23 retirees: Ernest Chrisbacher, Albert Schuch, Hap Anderson, Bill Rudy, Frank Teklits, Dale Knebel, Gerry Berghold, Anna Kresh, Hannes Graf (1st time), Charles Wardell, Heidi Hermann, Bob Unger, Maureen Tighe-Brown, Ron Markland, Barbara Raabe, Hannes Graf (2nd time), Matt Boisen, Steve Geosits, Mary Reilly, Tom Glatz, Rachel Rein, Fritz Königshofer, Gerald Antal Gamauf and Emmerich Koller.

In addition, we remain blessed to have ongoing assistance of additional individuals who, though not on the formal staff, still provide regular service to the organization and its members. Current such individuals include Réka Kiesz, Julia Szent-Gyorgyi, and the leadership of the BB Facebook page.

I'll close this section by saying that the BB would not exist without the giving, knowledgeable people named in the above lists! My sincere thanks go to all our BB staff members and supporters, both former and current.



BB Website Events: Here are the more significant items from 2019:

►House Number Translation Lists: 2019 was a decent year for adding to our translation lists. Burgenland has been transitioning from the old house number system to a modern street and number format. The old house numbers were called Konskriptions-nummern (conscription numbers) and the new numbers, which start over on each named street, are known as Orientierungs-nummern (orientation numbers). Generally, the available vital records list the conscription number; if you want to know where a house is now, you need to translate to the new nomenclature, thus these lists.
  ■ In February, we announced a new house number translation list for Neusiedl bei Güssing, which came as a gift from Christian Ofenböck, now of Graz, Austria, but who grew up in Neusiedl.
  ■ In March, Christian provided two more house number translation lists, these for Eltendorf and Zahling.
  ■ In November, former staff member Hannes Graf provided an additional translation list for Tadten. We already had a list for Tadten but his list adds a few houses and provides slightly different names for a few houses (likely inheritances within a family).
  ■ This month (see above), Martin Wolf of Mühlgraben provided a "double" translation list for Mühlgraben. Read the note above for the details.

►FamilySearch Digital Records Corrections: Our "FamilySearch (FS) Microfilms and Digital Collections" (at the-burgenland-bunch.org/LDS/LDS.htm) continued to be refined as we made needed additions or edits for a number of villages. These include:
  ■ Civil records for the village of Dürnbach (corrected to add recording location Schachendorf beginning in 1907);
  ■ Catholic records for Tobaj (the parish changed during 1874 from Deutsch Tschantschendorf to Güssing);
  ■ Civil records for Neustift bei Güssing, Krottendorf and Heugraben (recording districts changed for 1907-1908);
  ■ Catholic records for Eisenzicken (added parish Sankt Martin in der Wart for Croatian-speakers before 1863).

►Update to BB FamilySearch FS Films Pages: Given that the Eisenstadt Catholic Diocese was getting close to making available online digital images of many of their earliest vital records (i.e., records from before ~1827), we updated the BB FamilySearch (FS) Films pages to identify when Catholic records start in each recording location and, if not a recording location, to identify where vital information was recorded for each village.

►Vital Record Transcriptions on the BB Site: During 2019 we were pleased to add a number of vital record transcriptions to out collection.
  ■ BB Member Margaret Roosdahl provided a transcription of the available Catholic church records of the Sankt Nikolaus parish for the 1828 to 1895 period. Margaret contributed a similar transcription in 2018 for the Sankt Michael parish.
  ■ We also added a partial transcription of the Deutsch Schützen Catholic church records, which was provided by BB member Susan O’Meara, from Michigan.
  ■ BB Member Charles von Breitenbach was responsible for instigating the addition of Steingraben records (in the Gerersdorf bei Güssing Catholic parish and civil recording district) to our collection. The transcription, by Charles and me, includes all Steingraben-related birth, death and marriage records for Steingraben for years 1828 to 1920; it does not include records for the other villages in the Gerersdorf parish or recording district.

►Members, Surnames and Villages Re-Synced: BB Surnames and Villages Editor, David Hofer, prompted a project to get all of our member-related pages back into sync. What that means is that any member mentioned on one of these pages is referred to similarly on each of the other pages and all email-address errors are fixed. David and I worked on this project over a six-week period, putting in a lot of hours overall, making us both quite happy when it was finally completed!

►Burgenland Recipes: In our monthly recipe section, we linked our "recipe box" image to a "sortable list" pointing to all past food-related articles and recipes published in the newsletter. The list is here: recipes sortable list.

►Lehigh Valley / East Coast Burgenland Bunch: We were pleased to announce in 2019 the formation of a new affiliated BB group led by Vanessa Sandhu; the Lehigh Valley / East Coast Burgenland Bunch joins our other affiliates in St. Paul and St. Louis as face-to-face entities in the BB family.

►"The Burgenländer Emigration to America" (by Dr. Walter Dujmovits): As expected following the outstanding 2014 first-year sales of 763 copies of the book, the sales rate slowed but with a still encouraging 189 copies purchased in 2015, 163 in 2016, 111 in 2017, 129 in 2018 and now 105 in 2019. Current total sales is 1467 copies.

As you may recall, the BB sells the book at its wholesale production cost of just $7.41 (plus any tax & shipping), as our goal is wide circulation rather than profit (we earn absolutely nothing from book sales but you get an inexpensive opportunity to learn about the forces that led your ancestors to leave their homeland).

The book is the definitive history of the emigration of Burgenländers to the Americas, written by the leading authority on the subject. The BB remains pleased to have been instrumental in bringing this material to English-reading audiences and we recommend that you treat yourself to a copy, if you have not done so already... call it a late Christmas present for yourself!