VISITING AUTHOR/EDITOR ARTICLE JANUARY 2009 My Trip to Bukin By Donald May (A Forwarded From Trenton Donauschwaben
I
never knew the nationality of my father’s family, the May family. My dad,
Leonard May, vaguely knew we were “Austro-Hungarian.” He said his father
rarely talked about the “Old Country” he had left when he was nine in 1903.
When my dad, Leonard, (born in 1916) asked his dad, Joseph May, he said,
“We’re Americans. That’s all you need to know.” My father knew that his
dad spoke “Plutt Deutsch” or “Low German” and signed his name with an X.
From time to time he talked about the Carpathian Mountains. Those few details
were all I knew until 1980. At
age 64, my dad became fascinated with genealogy. He learned that the Mormons had
old Catholic Church records from Europe. At a family gathering, Leonard asked
his oldest living relative, his 90 year old Aunt Rose if she knew the name of
the town where his father and my grandfather, Joseph, was born. She knew it was
a village called “Bukin.” Dad’s research began. He found Bukin on an old
map of Hungary. He saw on later maps it was named Dunobokeny. He found the
Catholic church records of Bukin, Hungary,. preserved on microfilm by the
archives of the Church of Latter Day Saints. They sent those archives from Salt
Lake City to Michigan so he could pore over them in the church library. The
“Old Country” opened up to him. He learned the marriage dates, the birth
dates, the baptismal records of the MAJ family and the dates aligned with the
known dates of his relatives. He learned the names of great and great-great and
great-great-great grandparents. We were related to Martinis and Pfuhls, and
Schweitzers and Gyurisits and Wittners and Hermans and Kunters. We were able to
trace eight generations, back to the eighteenth century. And for over one
hundred years, the MAJ family lived in Bukin, now Mladenovo, Serbia. We were
Donauschwaben, German settlers who colonized towns along the Danube to help
protect the frontiers of the Hapsburg Empire. Unfortunately
my father died in 2005 at age 89. Thus, he would never know that in 2008, his
son had a golden opportunity to visit friends who were on a Fulbright
scholarship in Hungary. I asked that friend, Andy Paulen, if it might be
possible to drive to Mladenovo, Serbia to see my family’s ancestral home. On
Friday, April 11, 2008, I was able to visit the town of Bukin. We drove from
Budapest and crossed the border into Serbia. The border guards spoke no English
and carried automatic weapons. However, a cell phone call to Andy’s Hungarian
neighbor explained to the locals the purpose of our little pilgrimage. We were
waved through. We drove on to Novi Sad. The Serbian version of an expressway
would be a well maintained two lane highway in America. At one point, we had to
stop so a shepherd could cross the expressway with his flock. The Cyrillic
alphabet on billboards was unintelligible. South
to Novi Sad, then west through Backa Palanka.. The land was flat rich farmland.
Onions, potatoes, and carrots were sold at roadside stands. Although it was
mid-April, it was seventy degrees, the kind of weather Michigan enjoys at the
end of May. We saw some cars, not many, and they mostly appeared to be compact
Russian design or similar to Yugos. No SUVs, just compacts and old trucks. The
population looked slim and healthy, not overweight like most Americans. I
speculated they walked or bicycled more than we did. At a rare stoplight, gypsy
boys begged for change at our car windows. They ran away when I pointed a camera
at them. Finally we stopped at the village sign welcoming us to Mladenovo. Two
women who looked to be about sixty rode their bikes past us as I snapped photos. I
had seen the streets on Google Earth on my home computer before my trip so I had
a general idea of the size of the town. Then I suddenly saw two headless statues
that I recognized from the Catholic Church Jubilee book published in 1913 which
had served as my best source of the town’s history. There before me were the
ruins of the old German Catholic Church. Not in its original location, this
building was in essence where my great-great grandparents were married. Here
were the remnants of the building where my grandfather was baptized as an
infant. The front wall of the building still stood. Inscribed in German was a
plaque celebrating the church’s one hundredth anniversary. It had been
vandalized, but it was still readable. A smiling Serbian man walked off his
nearby porch and I knew he was curious about me. I knew enough German to say
“grandmother and grandfather” and pointed to my wedding ring and pointed to
the church. He told be in broken German that his grandmother was from Stuttgart.
It appeared that half of the church that still stood had been converted into a
community hall. What appeared to be the old rectory or priest’s house was now
a Serbian government building. I pointed to the headless statues and drew my
finger across my neck. He pointed to the same statues and said, “Tito.” The
old Yugoslavian dictator was responsible for removing their heads. Across
the street from the old church was a public school in session. My friend Andy
suggested we might find someone who spoke English there. We walked in and met
the principal and assistant principal. They knew tiny bits and pieces of
English, but soon fetched a young Bosnian teacher who spoke nearly perfect
English. She told us she was selftaught and I told her how remarkably well she
spoke English. Our hosts offered us apple juice. I explained why I was in
Mladenovo. She translated for the group of four women school administrators.
They asked me through her if I knew some of the history of the town. They
explained that the town had been moved further north away from the Danube River
twice. I knew of the flood of, I believe, 1889 when the Danube overran its banks
and destroyed much of the first town. In fact a member of the May family had
donated part of his vineyard for the second site of the town. Apparently a
subsequent flood caused the town to be moved to yet a third site. We
thanked the ladies for their hospitality and I asked our translator to write a
short note I could hand to the Hungarian border guards on the way home to
explain the purpose of our trip. I would have liked to have driven down to the
Danube River to investigate the old town site but the lowlands were too muddy
and we certainly did not want to get the car stuck in the muck. So we drove
around town and took pictures. Many of the old houses still had the family names
carved on the top of the front wall of the homes. Some had crosses under the
names, one even had a Star of David. It appeared that many of the old walls
still stood and were simply covered with a kind of stucco. Some of the homes
even had satellite dishes. One old house had been converted into a tavern
judging from the beer signs out front. I did not see many cars, but we did have
to steer around a horse-drawn cart on one street. I
wish I could have stayed longer, but Andy and I wanted to cross the border back
to Hungary in daylight. For the most part, much of what I saw in Serbia reminded
me of America in the sixties. Modest homes, not a great deal of creature
comfort, and clearly, here and there, poverty. The infrastructure, the
undersides of bridges, the street lamps, had a lot of rust. Many farms, huge
farms in fact, but I learned that many of the farmers lived in the villages and
not close to their fields. And each village had as its centerpiece, a church.
Across the street from the church ruins in Mladenovo, next to the public school,
a large new Serbian church was being built. I
knew as I looked around Mladenovo that the families who built those houses were
no longer living in them. But that’s another story altogether. I saw what I
had come to see. I had over one hundred pictures in my digital camera. It was
time to get back to Hungary where I felt a little more comfortable.
Bukin
Town Square 2008
Bukin would now be 250 years old (by Andreas Pfuhl) The community of Bukin, with its inhabitants and 200 years of joy and suffering, it can also be compared to a book. Its settlement and history began in 1749 and lasted for its German inhabitants until 1944/45. View History at: http://www.feldenzer.com/bukin_history_page.htm
Information
about the "Ortssippenbuch Bukin" http://www.feldenzer.com/bukin_information_page.htm
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