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THE BURGENLAND BUNCH NEWS - No. 317 February 28, 2021, © 2021 by The Burgenland Bunch All rights reserved. Permission to copy excerpts granted if credit is provided. Editor: Thomas Steichen (email: tj.steichen@comcast.net) BB Home Page: the-burgenland-bunch.org BB Newsletter Archives: BB Newsletter BB Facebook Page: TheBurgenlandBunchOFFICIAL Our 25th year! The Burgenland Bunch Newsletter is issued monthly online. The BB was founded in 1997 by Gerald Berghold, who died in August 2008. |
| Current Status Of The BB: * Members: 3022 * Surname Entries: 8943 * Query Board Entries: 5858 * Staff Members: 13 |
This newsletter concerns: 1) THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER 2) HISTORICAL BB NEWSLETTER ARTICLES: - TERMS ZSELLÉR AND COLONI - REVISITED 3) ETHNIC EVENTS 4) BURGENLAND EMIGRANT OBITUARIES (courtesy of Bob Strauch) |
1) THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER (by Tom Steichen)  Still
wearing my mask... hope you are too! I noted last month that I was scheduled to receive my first Covid
vaccine shot on February 3rd. I'm pleased to report that the only effect of the first shot was mild soreness around the
injection site. Three weeks later, I received the second shot. Like many have reported, that shot resulted in flu-like aches
and pains in my muscles and joints starting about 16 hours later... but they lasted only eight hours (my wife reported no
effect from either shot!).I do remain concerned about the effectiveness of the current vaccines on the Covid variants, as the latest reports lean toward a lack of effectiveness. However, there are also reports that say that a single shot of the current vaccine is highly effective against the original virus, so that is good. There also are suggestions that a Covid vaccine may need to be an annual affair, much like the flu shot, so we can keep up on variants and boost immunity. Still, an annual shot is a small price to pay, so I'm sure I'll do that should it be called for; I hope you will too. Lastly, there are reports that the "regular" flu has been almost absent this year, with our social isolation and mask-wearing credited for that great decrease... so keep wearing your mask! This month's bits and pieces (Article 1) contains a note on population growth in Burgenland and Austria, a commentary on the "current" FamilySearch search page now being 10 years old, a look back on the Burgenland DNA Project, also 10 years old this past month, a report on a project to bring fiber optic broadband access to every community and home in Burgenland, a comment on the Eisenstadt Diocese's "Pastoral Care Rooms", and the monthly update on corona-virus happenings in Burgenland. I conclude with our regular tidbit features, the monthly BB Facebook report, book sales and a words-for-thought item. The remaining articles are our standard sections: Historical Newsletter Articles, (no) Ethnic Events and Emigrant Obituaries.  Burgenland with Highest 2020 Population % Growth in Austria: ORF News carried a story last month reporting the population change in Austria during 2020. That article, and the underlying Statistics Austria report it is based on, noted that Austria began 2021 with more than 8.93 million residents, which was a 0.36 percent increase over 2020. Burgenland was the federal state with the greatest percent growth in population, with a 0.54% increase, even higher than the Vienna area. In absolute terms, the Burgenland population increased by 1,604 residents, raising its total population to 296,040, and the Austrian population increased by 32,282 to 8,933,346 residents. For Austria, this was a smaller growth than in 2019 (42,289; 0.48%). General Director Tobias Thomas of Statistics Austria noted that the strongest growth was in eastern Austria, around Vienna and in northern Burgenland. Further, he noted that, like the previous year, the population growth was driven by people with non-Austrian citizenship; the population of Austrian citizens actually shrunk by 0.17% in 2020. Burgenland was no different as, among the 1,604 new Burgenländers, 1,567 had non-Austrian citizenship. Overall, more than 28,500 people now living in Burgenland are foreign nationals, so nearly 10% of the Burgenland population. Foreign nationals constitute more than 13% in the Neusiedl am See district, with Kittsee around 50%, Edelstal around 33% and Parndorf, Nickelsdorf, Pama and Deutsch Jahrndorf around 20%. So there is a strong tendency for foreign nationals to concentrate in the northeast corner of Neusiedl and of Burgenland. However, the population increased in all Burgenland districts in 2020, with the strongest increase (~1.5%) in the capital area of the Eisenstadt-Umgebung district. The communities of Klingenbach (~8%) and Steinbrunn (~6%) led that rise in Eisenstadt. There was far less growth in the southern districts of Jennersdorf, Güssing, Oberwart and Oberpullendorf. In Oberwart, for example, the increase was only 11 new residents. Returning to Austria as a whole, there was population growth in 2020 in 69 political districts and a decline in 24. The three biggest gains were in the districts of Bruck an der Leitha (1.76%) and Eisenstadt (1.47%), and in the city of Wiener Neustadt (1.43%), so in or on the border of Burgenland. In total, 1,531,262 people with foreign citizenship lived in Austria at the end of 2020, with the absolute number increasing by 45,039 people and the proportion increasing from 16.7% to 17.1% during 2020. At the same time, the number of Austrian citizens declined by 12,757 people (0.17%). More than four-fifths of the increase in foreign nationals was among females and citizens of the European Union; only around 18% were third-country nationals. The increase was strongest among German (8,774) and Romanian (8,329) nationals. FamilySearch.org Online Search Interface is Now Ten Years Old:  Where did all the time go?It seems quite strange to report that the current search interface at FamilySearch.org is ten years old... but it is. I know this because, while looking for an article worth reprinting as part of our "Historical BB Newsletter Articles" series, I came across what I had written about the new interface in February of 2011. My first paragraph read:
That also was when FamilySearch first required users to have a login and password to use their site... where
DID all the time go?
Over the years, Frank has issued reports providing answers to questions like those above... but the project remains open.
So, if you have interest in knowing more about ancient family roots, get in touch with Frank at
paukowits1@aol.com. He can provide details on what is involved. |
2) HISTORICAL BB NEWSLETTER ARTICLES Editor: This is part of our series designed to recycle interesting articles from the BB Newsletters of past years. The entry below is from 10 years ago and discusses a pair of common social status terms that appear in Burgenland records. From this, it is clear that there was confusion about their meaning in the early years of the BB. In reviewing our newsletters, I see that most of the early articles correctly explained them... but a few were wrong! It would not be until this 2011 article that the issue was fully sorted out. See for yourself:  THE BURGENLAND BUNCH NEWS No. 207 February 28, 2011 TERMS ZSELLÉR AND COLONI - REVISITED Back in November, an email discussion was held about the terms Zsellér and Coloni and the various related words used to describe peasants in Burgenland. Matt Boisen kicked it off and others joined in. Matt wrote: Speaking of the LDS films and land ownership, the differences between zsellérs, colonii, and other Hungarian/Latin? descriptions come up. This has probably been discussed many times, but I wanted to clarify this. One of my great great grandfathers was a "colonus", the other a "zsellér". The best I can understand is that these describe two land-owning peasant classes, based on "first come, first serve" and size/responsibility differences? "Colonus" is a larger farmer, from the first-settled families after the border wars, got better land that can support his family, whereas a "zsellér" owns just his house and maybe a garden plot but has to work out to make ends meet? Is that close to correct? I replied: I'll pull some discussion from archived newsletters on this Colonus vs. Zsellér terminology [Ed. note: Be warned; some of this information is wrong!]. NL 52B: Period before 1848 (Kommassierung) Tenant farmer: "agricola" (Latin), "paraszt", (Hungarian) Non-farmer: "söllner" (German), "colonus" (Latin) "napszámosno" (Hungarian-day laborer) Period after 1848 Farmer: "landwirt" (German) Non-farmer: "sollner" (German), "colonus" (Latin) "napszámosno" (Hungarian-day laborer) NL 54A: "Zsellér" is also Hungarian and is defined as a "cotter," a peasant or farm laborer who occupies a cottage and small holding of land in return for services. This person would work directly for the landowner on a purely "robot" basis. An English equivalent (also found in the US) is the person who gets the use of a house as well as pay on the farm of a yeoman or large estate in return for being a "hired man". Many also tilled garden plots for their own use. Within the BB, we have consistently called people with their own houses but little land by the German term Söllner. So, it looks like colonus and zsellér are essentially equal terms. Both would be day-laborers or craftsmen rather than land-owning farmers. Of course, before 1848, only nobility could "own" land. Some peasants (the agricola) had heritable rights to use of and profit from land, but not outright ownership of it. Only after 1848 could they own land (i.e., be a landwirt). [Ed note: Below is where we start correcting our errors!] Richard Potetz weighed in: I don't know much about the use of these headings, but maybe this will be useful. In the 1828 Hungarian census records for Neumarkt an der Raab, all heads of household were included under just one of three Latin headings: · Coloni = farmers (renting the land till 1848) · Inquilini = tenants · Subinquilini = subtenants I have attached a photo of the last page [Ed: not shown here] for Neumarkt a/d Raab because that gives the final tally for the village. There were 96 Coloni, 3 Inquilini, and 2 Subinquilini. I replied: This is interesting, Richard. Given the numbers from Neumarkt, it would be hard to argue that all these "Coloni" were craftsmen or day laborers... the tenant-farmer relationship was simply too well established in 1828 to expect that almost all in the village were day-laborers on someone else's property. I pulled the definition/explanation below from the web: Colonatus (Late Latin, from Latin colonus, “farmer”), a special form of production relationship between a large land-owner and the immediate producer, the colonus; the system was widely employed in the Roman Empire. Under the colonatus system, landed property was divided into a multitude of parcels given out for rent to coloni, who were either free or dependent on the landowner. The spread of the system was furthered by the limited production possibilities of the slaveholding system. The colonatus system presupposed a certain economic independence of the immediate producer, the colonus: he ran his own farm and therefore had an interest in the growth of the productivity of labor and in the careful and rational use of tools and the means of production. Two periods may be traced in the history of the colonatus. Initially, from the second century B.C. to the first century A.D., the colonus was an immediate producer who was juridically free and economically independent of the landowner and could use not only the labor of members of his own family in working his rented parcel but also the labor of slaves belonging to him. Thus, he was a kind of petty slaveholder. Because he was compelled to pay his rent in money, he was at the same time directly tied to the market. The low productivity of slave labor and the curtailment of the sources of additional slaves ruined a great many petty and middle slaveholding farmers. In the second period, which began in the second century A.D., the relations between the landowner and the colonus profoundly changed: the colonus was no longer a petty farmer and slaveholder but a direct producer lacking economic independence; the landowner became his patron and protector. The colonus was virtually bound to the estate, losing his direct links with the market. Rent was now defined as a share of the harvest (from one-fourth to one-third). The colonus also performed several nonmonetary obligations, including several days of plowing, weeding, and harvesting. During the fourth and fifth centuries, colonatus relations began to be regulated by Roman legislation, and their introduction in the empire became compulsory. Coloni were juridically bound to the land. According to the law of Emperor Anastasius (ruled 491–518), every farmer who worked on an estate for 30 years became a colonus regardless of his social or economic status. The colonus lost a number of the rights of a freeman: his rights to marry, to inherit, and to move freely were restricted, and he fell under the administrative jurisdiction of the landowner. Groups of the dependent rural population differing by origin, juridical status, and social position were merged in the fourth and fifth centuries into one estate having common rights and obligations; this estate occupied a position between slaves and freemen and anticipated the medieval serfs. The establishment of colonatus relations occurred not in the form of a rural idyll, as the French historian Fustel de Coulanges supposes, but in the circumstances of the bitter class struggle that engendered the social movements of the third to fifth centuries. [http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Colonatus] --- My only concern about the above is the time period wherein the term is defined (clearly, the tenant-farmer relationship in Burgenland was identical to the second-period form above). Our period of interest is nearly 1000 years later. Did the word's definition still hold or had the word changed meaning in the 1600 to mid-1800 period? I'm inclined to think the definition did hold and what was presented in NL 52B was a misinterpretation. Fritz, you were part of that 52B discussion... any comments? Matt replied: So, there must be a reason for the different terms, other than Latin vs. Hungarian. Felix Game (http://www.felix-game.ca/html_files/gfarmer2.html) has four divisions, in which zsellér = either inquilini or subinquilini, but otherwise there are distinct differences between the rest, based on some rather complex fractional formulas for service to the estate. And there's always that open-ended "what did they own and when?" question. Game states: Not counting the various social levels which existed outside the village, the population inside the village was made up almost entirely of people who made their living off the land. Yet not all were called 'farmer' because that word was reserved for a specific social level. Only those were called 'farmer' (Latin: colunus) who had taken possession of a type of land on which grain had to be grown, and which was subject to 1/9 or 1/10 tithe (Hungarian: úrbéri telek; Latin: constitutivum urbariale, agri sessionales). These 'farmers' in turn formed a hierarchy according to the amount of land they had taken in terms of "sessions" (session is derived from sessio; in Hungarian: hely). Thus there were 'whole farmers', 'half farmers', and 'quarter farmers'. By definition then, every other inhabitant of the village was not colunus but inquilinus (Hungarian: zsellér). My interest in this seemingly hair-splitting issue is that one of my ancestors was listed as a colonus, the other a zsellér. This colonus was able to support his daughter, her husband (a zsellér/subinquilini carpenter) and their family, and eventually give them money to emigrate. In family lore, he was considered "wealthy". This was, of course, in 1888, after the land reforms, but he was listed as a colonus in the church record of 1845. Fritz Königshofer jumped in: My apologies for not entering this discussion earlier, but with Thanksgiving approaching, time is pressing. I do agree that colonus corresponds to farmer/Bauer, while zsellér corresponds to inquilinus/Söllner. The latter were almost land-less and considered "poor people" as compared to farmers. They made a living by providing seasonal labor to farmers, and/or as cobblers or potters, etc. So it appears that we are in agreement that the Newsletter 52 definitions were in error. Coloni were land-holding farmers of substantially higher social and economic status than Zsellérs. Zsellérs were seasonal (day) laborers and craftsmen. |
3) ETHNIC EVENTS (none! ...blame the virus!) LEHIGH VALLEY, PA (none) NEW BRITAIN, CT (none) ST. LOUIS, MO (none) UPPER MIDWEST (none) |
4) BURGENLAND EMIGRANT OBITUARIES Gerhard Frenz  Gerhard Frenz, 77, of Beachwood, New
Jersey, passed away on January 31, 2021.Born in Königsdorf, Austria he moved to NYC in 1962. In 1970 he moved to Lakehurst, NJ, before settling to Beachwood in 2007. Mr. Frenz was a talented cabinet maker and part owner of Castle Woodcraft Custom Cabinetry and Kitchens company in Berkeley Township for many years. Gerhard was a true outdoorsman and very knowledgeable as a woodsman and hunter. He traveled many places to enjoy the great outdoors. He also was a devoted Yankee Fan. Mr. Frenz was predeceased by his mother Wilhelmine. Surviving is his wife of 57 years, Emma Frenz, his two sons Gerhard Frenz and his wife Tamia and Walter Frenz, two grandchildren Matthew and Hannah, along with many friends. The Funeral is under direction of Mastapeter Memorial Home of Bayville. Services are private with the Family. In lieu of flowers, donations in Gerhard's memory to either the American Diabetes Association (www.diabetes.org) or The American Kidney Foundation, (www.kidney.org), would be appreciated. Published in Asbury Park Press from Feb. 6 to Feb. 7, 2021 Paul Kraly Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is with
broken hearts and great sadness that we announce the passing of Paul on Monday, January 25, 2021, at Kipling Acres at the
age of 84. Born in Horitschon, Austria on June 29, 1936. He will be reunited in Heaven with his dear wife Paula and grandchild. Proud father to Anne-Marie (Max), Judy, Linda and Andrew (Gloria). Cherished grandfather to eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. During this current lockdown period the Province of Ontario is in, our family has decided to hold a Celebration Of Life in his memory at a later date when it is safe to do so. As an expression of sympathy, donations may be made to the Canadian Cancer Society or the Heart & Stroke Foundation. Published in Toronto Star on Jan. 29, 2021 |
| END OF NEWSLETTER (Even good things must end!) |
|
Burgenland Bunch Newsletter, copyright © 2021 by The Burgenland Bunch |
News
John
was a younger brother to Angelica; Katherina was apparently unrelated. But how and when they all traveled across the ocean
remained a mystery.
Burgenland DNA Project Now Ten
Years Old: It was 10 years ago this month that Frank Paukowits announced that he had launched a Burgenland
DNA project. At the time, it was a male-only Y-DNA project; since then it has incorporated mtDNA and autosomal DNA,
opening it to all interested persons. Frank wrote then:
Burgenland
recently established a new state-wide goal for fast fiber-optic broadband internet: all municipalities in Burgenland
should be supplied with fiber-optic access points by 2025; so they plan to invest a total of 30 million euros in an
initial expansion phase, with the money coming from state, federal and EU subsidies.
The pastoral care room
concept implementation has been underway in the Catholic church since at least 2014. In the Eisenstadt diocese, there will
be a total of 42 pastoral care rooms established by 2025. 
Corona
Virus in Burgenland: Burgenland has begun a Covid-19 vaccination effort. According to a February 13th report, the
Coronavirus Coordination Staff said that 6,215 people had received the Covid-19 vaccination, of which 4,728 people had
already received the second dose. Further, 98,545 people (almost 40 percent of those eligible for vaccination) had
registered for a Covid-19 vaccination using an electronic registration system. Registrants are being grouped by "need"
status and are notified by email when vaccine is available for their group. 
The
Facebook Bunch (from Vanessa Sandhu):
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."