VISITING AUTHOR/EDITOR ARTICLE

JANUARY  2009

Our Trip to Germany

By Bob Walter

Forwarded From Trenton Donauschwaben

Kim and I had the great opportunity of traveling to Germany with the German Hungarian Schuhplattler dance Group. They had won 1st Place in the North American competition in 2007 and were invited to perform in Munich.

The first day we arrived in Munich and had lunch at the famous Hofbrauhaus, where we enjoyed our first Mass of good German beer and did some shopping. That same evening, we boarded another plane and flew to Vienna for a couple of days.  We took a bus tour and then did some major walking.  We enjoyed the Audio tour of the palace Schon Brun and had dinner in Grunzing (The wine region) where we had a family style feast and fresh local wine.

On Friday we visited St. Stephen’s Cathedral and took a small elevator up to the bell tower and took some nice photos of the city. Friday night, we flew back to Munich and checked into hotel Monaco. The hotel had nice rooms, but the elevator only held three people. We went to dinner at the Augustiner Brauhaus a few blocks from our hotel, and of course had some more beer.

On the way back to the hotel I had a barber cut UGH in the back of my HAIR my way of showing support for the dancers competing the next day. Our hotel did not have a bar and although I knew it would be an early night because of the competition. We still had a lot of ironing to do. I purchased the case of 16 ounce loose cans and brought it back to the hotel for everyone.

Saturday we went in taxis to Heide Volm for the Schuhplattler competition at 9 AM. The hall was full when we arrived. I think we might have even been last to arrive. Our dance group did not perform until around two o’clock, but the rest of us started drinking at around 9:30 AM.  There were 16 groups competing and United German Hungarian’s placed sixth. They were the only group from North America. We went back to the hotel around 7 PM and I passed out for a couple of hours,  Maybe it was the beer. When I woke up at 10 I found a note from Kim that said everyone was at the bar around the corner. I ventured out to meet up with the group and to find some more beer and food. There was a table full of older gentlemen sitting near us and we sang some old German songs with them. The bar maid had to keep turning down the music that was playing in the bar.

On Sunday, we hopped on a train to go to Ulm to visit the Donauschwaben museum. We arrived in Ulm at 12 o’clock and walked to the old section and had lunch and more beer in a restaurant right next to the Donau River. After lunch we walked along the Donau to the Donauschwaben memorial and found some commemorative plaques on the wall, one from each area of the Donau.

Then we had a guided tour of the Donauschwaben Museum, which had many photos and artifacts dating back a couple hundred years.  Later, we walked to a church, which is said to have the tallest steeple in the world. This church took over 500 years to build and was built entirely out of stone. I’m sure one of you know the name of this church. We had another hearty meal and lots of “Ein Prosit” at a small restaurant along a creek.

We made our way back to Munich by train, and a few of us had some beers in a bar car of the train. Kim’s side note, these few had so many beers that they almost missed the stop and came running through the train trying to get back to us, shouting “Entschuldigung, Entschuldigung, Bitte Entschuldigung”.  It was actually hysterical to see.

Back to Bob’s story!

Sunday morning, we ventured out to do some Dirndl shopping at a store that a local man told us about a few of the ladies in the group bought a dirndl and Kim bought two.  NO,  Bob bought Kim 2 on top of the one Bob bought in Munich for Kim.

Thank you Bob!!!!!!

I found a vest and two shirts at another store and a really cool pair of boots. At one o’clock we were on a train headed to Garmisch in the south. We arrived at our Gasthaus on St Ludwigsstrasse at around four o’clock to check in and had a beer at tables right out on the street. Later we had reservations at another Gasthaus down the street because ours was closed on Mondays.

Tuesday we chose to go to the top of the Zugspitze (the tallest mountain in Germany), and we got lucky with the great clear day and took some wonderful pictures. Tuesday night we had dinner in our own Gasthaus and the food was great.

On Wednesday some of us traveled to Mittenwald and went to the violin museum there and did some more shopping. We had lunch at a street café because it was so nice out no jackets were even needed, that’s how warm it was. We headed back to Garmisch for our last dinner in Germany.  Of course, we had some more beer and shots at another Gasthaus after dinner.

On Thursday we started our long trip home. One train to Munich and another to the airport then the wonderful security checkpoints. It was a great trip, with wonderful planners, Great accommodations,  lots of Trains, totally great food, and more beer than Kim could have imagined drinking.

Heide Volm    http://www.heidevolm.de/

Slide Show from Gauverband Nordamerika

http://www.gauverband.com/cms/index.php?set_albumName=BayerischeLoewe2008&option=com_gallery&Itemid=43&include=slideshow.php

Heide Volm Gasthaus

VISITING AUTHOR/EDITOR ARTICLE

JANUARY  2009

The Vineyards of Neudorf

By George Taubel

Forwarded From German Cultural Society, St. Louis

    The country around our village was flat, except for a rise about 150 yards high to the north of the village. The rise was a gentle

spring.

Geography

History

(Source of information: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Banatsko_Novo_Selo )

   Novoselo is mentioned for the first time in the year 1554 with three (3) taxpaying households. In the year 1570 there are eleven (11) and in 1590 nine taxpaying households (in the Turkish taxlists).   After the wars with the Turkish armies in 1699, Novoselo was called Puszta. In 1701 through 1709 in the area "west of Lorenze" it was still Puszta.  There were however, seven (7) taxpaying households in the year 1715. The name of the place St. Lorenz is now called "Lorenzi"

     In 1731 Novoselo and the Puszta St. Lorenz (Lovrenz) belonged to the court chamberlain of Baron Johann Markus of Zuano or Zuana (Joana). He was also Kameral commissioner of Upper Hungary  and had the task to settle the uninhabited areas of Hungary.  Baron Johann Markus von Zuana allowed Swabian farmers to enlist, and settled them on his private property. He provided Novoselo with four (4) fairs every year and was  landlord from 1731 until 1746.

     Novoselo later came into the possession of the count Palffy. Palffy sold St. Lorenz and Novoselo to the royal advice Csepeni Johann Adamovics. Adamovics sold the property to the royal advice Cseh. This family was owner until the 19 century.

     An emergency due to the epidemic in the year 1738 (the pestilence) was probably what caused occasional  many inhabitants of Novoselo to move away. Also, a flood made the initial years more difficult for the settlers.     A quotation from the church book:

     "In the year 1751 there was an inundation/overflow of the Danube river which increased up to the large pear tree against a place which was destined for the church, where the chapel stood.  On the 3rd, 4th and the 5th of April the water level was on/at its highest stand.   The whole village was underwater.  April 4th was "Palm Sunday".   The settlement became stabilized by the further influx from colonists, into the reign of Joseph II.

     The " flowering village", known/called by the elder generation, required the structure work of generations of its people/Inhabitants.

Neudorf/Novoselo Website at:

http://www.feldenzer.com/neudorf%20History.htm 

VISITING AUTHOR/EDITOR ARTICLE

JANUARY  2009

My Trip to Bukin

By Donald May

(A Martini cousin)

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"
and the "Bildband Bukin".

http://www.feldenzer.com/bukin_information_page.htm

All these publications can be ordered either per email or per post:
Andreas Pfuhl
Gartenstr. 23
93138 Lappersdorf
Germany
Tel. 0049-941-82503
Fax: 0049-941-891630
Email: Pfuhl-Lappersdorf@web.de