| Danube Swabians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube_Swabians |
The Danube Swabians (
Donauschwaben
(help·info))
is a collective term for the German-speaking population who
lived in the former Kingdom
of Hungary, especially alongside the Danube
River valley. Because of different developments within the
territory settled, the Danube Swabians cannot be seen as a
unified people. They include the Germans
of Hungary, Satu
Mare Swabians, the Banat
Swabians, and the Vojvodina
Germans in Serbia's Vojvodina
who called themselves Schwowe, and Croatia's
Slavonia
(especially in Osijek
region). The Carpathian
Germans and Transylvanian
Saxons are not included within the Danube Swabian group.
History
Beginning in the 12th century, German merchants
and miners
began to settle in the Kingdom of Hungary at the invitation of
the Hungarian monarchy (see Ostsiedlung).
Although there were significant colonies of Carpathian
Germans in the Spiš
mountains and Transylvanian
Saxons in Transylvania,
German settlement throughout the rest of the kingdom had not
been extensive until this time.
During the 17th-18th centuries, warfare between the Habsburg
Monarchy and the Ottoman
Empire devastated and depopulated much of the lands of the
valley, referred to geographically as the Pannonian
plain. The Habsburgs
ruling Austria
and Hungary
at the time resettled the land with people of various
ethnicities from the Austro-Hungarian
Empire of the Habsburgs
including Magyars,
Czechs,
Slovaks,
Croats,
Serbs,
Romanians,
Ukrainians,
and Germanic settlers from Swabia,
Hesse,
Franconia,
Bavaria,
Austria,
and Alsace-Lorraine.
However, despite their origin, they were all referred to as Swabians
by their neighbor Serbs, Hungarians, and Romanians. The Batschka
settlers called themselves Schwoweh,
the plural of Schwobe
in the polyglot
language that evolved there. The majority of them went on board
in Ulm Swabia
and came to their new destination on the Danube with a kind of
boats called Ulmer
Schachteln.
Settlement
The first wave of resettlement came as the Ottoman Turks were
gradually being forced back after their defeat at the Battle
of Vienna in 1683. The settlement was encouraged by nobility
whose lands had been devastated through warfare, and by military
officers including Prince
Eugene of Savoy and Claudius
Mercy. Many Germans settled in the Bakony
(Bakonywald) and Vértes
(Schildgebirge) mountains north and west of Lake
Balaton (Plattensee), as well as around the town Buda
(Ofen), now part of Budapest.
The area of heaviest German colonization during this period was
in the Swabian
Turkey (Schwäbische Türkei), a triangular region
between the Danube river, Lake Balaton, and the Drava
(Drau) River. Other areas settled during this time by
Germans were Pécs
(Fünfkirchen), Satu
Mare (Sathmar), and south of Mukachevo
(Munkatsch).
After the Banat
area of Central
Europe was annexed from the Ottomans by the Habsburgs in the
Treaty
of Passarowitz (1718), plans were made to resettle the
region, which became known as the Banat
of Temesvár (Temeschwar/Temeschburg), as well
as the Bačka
(Batschka) region between the Danube and Tisza
(Theiss) rivers. Fledgling settlements were destroyed
during another Austrian-Turkish war (1737–1739), but extensive
colonization continued after the suspension of hostilities. The
resettlement was accomplished through private and state
initiatives. After Maria
Theresa of Austria assumed the throne as Queen
of Hungary in 1740, she encouraged vigorous colonization on
crown lands, especially between Timişoara and the Tisza.
The Crown agreed to permit the Germans to retain their language
and religion (generally Roman Catholic). They steadily
redeveloped the land: drained marshes near the Danube and the
Tisza, rebuilt farms, and constructed roads and canals. Many
Danube Swabians served on Austria's Military
Frontier (Militärgrenze) against the Ottomans.
Between 1740 and 1790, more than 100,000 Germans immigrated to
the Kingdom of Hungary.
The Napoleonic
Wars ended the large-scale movement of Germans to the
Hungarian lands, although the colonial population increased
steadily and was self-sustaining through reproduction. Small
daughter-colonies developed in Slavonia
and Bosnia.
After the creation of Austria-Hungary
in 1867, Hungary established a policy of Magyarization
whereby minorities, including the Danube Swabians, were induced
by political and economic means to adopt the Magyar
language and culture.
Beginning in 1893, Banat Swabians began to move to Bulgaria,
where they settled in the village of Bardarski
Geran, Vratsa
Province, founded by Banat
Bulgarians several years prior to that. Their number later
exceeded 90 families. They built a separate Roman Catholic
church in 1929 due to conflicts with the Bulgarian Catholics.
Some of these Germans later moved to Tsarev
Brod, Shumen
Province, together with a handful of Banat Bulgarian
families, as well as to another Banat Bulgarian village, Gostilya,
Pleven
Province.
Between 1941 and 1943, a total of 2,150 ethnic German
Bulgarian citizens were transferred to Germany as part of Adolf
Hitler's Heim
ins Reich policy. These included 164 Banat Swabians from
Bardarski Geran and 33 from Gostilya.[1]
After the treaties of Saint-Germain
(1919) and Trianon
(1920) following World
War I, the Banat was divided between Romania,
Yugoslavia,
and Hungary;
Bačka was divided between Yugoslavia
and Hungary;
and Satu Mare went to Romania. Before World
War II, the biggest populations of Germans in the Vojvodina
were at Hodschag,
Werbass,
and Apatin.
Although precise figures are not available, scholars believe
that there may have been approximately one million ethnic Danube
Swabians in the region before World War II. In 1935 the scholar
Paul Gauss asserted there were around 500,000 in Hungary,
450,000 in the Vojvodina, and between 230 to 300,000 in the
Romanian Banat area, with an additional 60,000 in Satu
Mare (Sathmar).
Culture
The Danube Swabian culture is a melting pot of southern
German regional customs,
with a large degree of Balkan and mostly Hungarian influence.
This is especially true of the food, where paprika
is heavily employed, which led to the German nickname for Danube
Swabians as Paprikadeutsche. The architecture is
neither Southern German nor Balkan but is unique to itself. The
houses, often made of stamped mud and straw walls or mud bricks,
are ubiquitous throughout the Vojvodina
region. Georg
Weifert was responsible for developing one of the most
famous beers in the Serbia/Yugoslavia region and later became an
important banker and politician in Belgrade
(his image currently features on the Serbian
1000 dinar note).
Language
The Danube Swabian language is only nominally Swabian
(Schwowisch in the Bačka).
In reality, it contains elements or many dialects of the
original German settlers, mainly Swabian,
Franconian,
Bavarian,
Rhinelandic/Pfälzisch,
Alsatian,
and Alemannic,
as well as Austro-Hungarian administrative and military
jargon. Loanwords from Hungarian,
Serbian,
or Romanian
are especially common regionally regarding cuisine and
agriculture, but also regarding dress,
politics, place names, and sports. Other cultures of influence
include Serbian
and Croatian,
Russian
(for communist concepts), Romanian,
Turkish
(Hambar),
English
(for football),
and general Balkan
and South
Slavic loanwords like Kukuruts (corn) or "Grumbiere"
{potatoes} [this is not accurate:'Grumbiere' derives from 'Grundbirne'
(lit. 'Ground pears') and is common in Allemanic and Rhenish
German dialects] B. The plural of loanwords is in most cases
formed in the Danube Swabian way. Conjunctions and adverbs from
the respective contact languages may be integrated as well.[16]
Many German words used by speakers of Danube Swabian dialects
may sound archaic. To the ear of a Standard German speaker, the
Danube Swabian dialect sounds like what it is: a mix of
southwestern German dialects from the 18th century. Due to
relative isolation and differing proximities to nearby German
speakers (Austrians
and Transylvanian
Saxons), the language varies considerably, with speakers
able to distinguish inhabitants of neighboring villages by the
words they use for such things as marmalade
(Schleckle being one variant), or by how many (usually
Hungarian) loanwords they employ. Herman Ruediger, a German
sociologist, reports that in his trips throughout the Batschka
in the 1920s, he noted that Danube Swabians from widely
separated villages had to use standard high German to
communicate with each other because their speech was so
different.[17]
Naming
As is the custom in Hungary, Danube Swabians often put the surname
first, especially when writing, for example Butscher Jakob
(see photo of memorial). Danube Swabian villages tend to have
relatively few family names as the villagers stem from only a
few families, but usually the same family name does not appear
in more than a couple of villages, meaning that there are many
Danube Swabian family names. The names come from throughout
southern Germany, from assimilated Hungarians, and occasionally
from Balkan and Italian origins. There are usually no middle
names, but often double first names, if a distinction can be
made. The variety of first names is few, since children were
usually named after grandparents or godparents. Popular names
for women include: Anna, Barbara, Christina, Katharina,
Magdalena, Maria, Sophia, Theresia, and many two-name
combinations thereof. Popular names for men include: Adam,
Christian, Friedrich, Georg, Gottfried, Heinrich, Jakob, Johann,
Konrad, Ludwig, Mathias, Nikolaus, Peter, Philipp (or Filipp),
and Stefan (or Stephan). With so few names in villages, other
modifiers or nicknames were almost always used to distinguish
people. The modifiers were often size related (e.g., "Kleinjohann"
or "Little Johann"), occupation related, or location
related (usually by prefixing the streetname).
Coat
of arms
A coat
of arms designed in 1950 by Hans
Diplich has been adopted by many Danube Swabian cultural
organizations. Its blazon is "Parti per fess wavy 1 Or, an
eagle displayed couped Sable langued Gules; 2 parti per fess
Argent and Vert, a fortress Argent roofed and turreted Gules
surmounted with Sun and Crescent waning Or; chief wavy
Azure".
It depicts:
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