Baranya County is situated west of the Danube,
north of the Drava River and bordered in the west and north by the
Counties of Somogy and Tolna. The upper tier of the County is officially
called Hegyhári járás: the mountainous region.
We will be occupying ourselves with the villages of
that region, which were previously part of the Dombovár Domains of the
Eszterházy family. They are the villages of Gerényes, Hörnyék
(it has been annexed by Sásd since 1936), Jágonak, Mezöd, Nagyág
(Ág), Sásd, Szekcsö (Kaposszekcsö), Tarrós, Tékes, Töttös
(Csikostöttös), Vásárosdombó, Vaszar (Kisvaszar). In addition,
there were three other villages that were originally part of Tolna
County and were part of the Ozora Domains and need to be included:
Kozár (Ráckozár which is now known as Egyházaskozár), Tófü
and Mekényes. They are dealt with separately here because of the
different aspects of their settlement and development.
We are dealing with the late settlement and migration
of Germans in Hungary in the last quarter of the 18th
century. In the popular mind and most histories it is often connected
with the Josephinian settlement policy and the so-called third phase of
the Great Swabian Migration. But this internal migration of Germans
already settled in Hungary has received far less attention from
historians.
The local tradition in some of these villages was the
claim that their ancestors had come directly from Württemberg. The
researcher Johann Weidlein argued correctly that Johann Schmidt was in
error in his claim that German Lutherans came to Töttös, Szekcsö, Ág,
Tarrós, and Vaszar from the Hessian villages in Tolna County in 1757,
while we know that Tékes was not even colonized by Germans until the
beginning of the 19th century. These details can now be
corrected because new basic sources have only been recently found in
reports about the background of the colonization, or rather about the
settlement of Germans among the existing Hungarian population at the
time.
When the Paladin of Hungary, Paul Eszterházy
purchased the Dombovár Domain in 1692, the first named villages listed
above, with the exception of Sásd were populated by bonded Hungarian
serfs. These villages existed during the feudal Middle Ages and managed
somehow to survive the occupation of the Turks without great losses.
Locked up between rolling hills, surrounded by dense forests and off the
beaten track they were protected from the mainstream of history that
passed them by. In later testimonies the inhabitants often mentioned
that they paid the local tax to both their Turkish overlord as well as
their Hungarian noble who was living elsewhere in exile and in this way
bought their peace. On the other hand, the three fortified places that
collected tolls on the road between Székesfehérvár and Pécs: Sásd,
Dombóvár and Kóny were devastated several times.
In 1702, the Eszterházys colonized their landholdings
at Sásd to safeguard their income from the tolls but did so with
subjects who were not bonded serfs by were listed as taxpayers or paid
special fees (arenda) to the nobles for freedom from providing free
labour and both of these groups are indicated in the various
contemporary documents of the time. East of these villages there were a
number of uninhabited prairies that were part of the Ozora Domains,
which formed part of Tolna County. It was to their detriment that they
were situated on the army road that led to the fortifications at Döbrököz and the castle of
Simontornya.
During the Turkish occupation they remained
uninhabited except for the presence of some nomadic Serbian herdsmen.
There did not seem to be much economic advantage to the Eszterházys to
colonize them. They did not have any additional bonded serfs to spare
and obtaining free peasants would involve additional costs. Paul
Eszterházy issued an order in 1701 to the effect that neither Serbs nor
Protestant preachers would be allowed to settle on these prairies. But
the situation changed suddenly when neighbouring landowners colonized
their more modest unsettled property with both Serbs and Protestants at
the same time. These colonized villages often made use of the unsettled
prairies in the neighbourhood, frequently using the neighbouring forests
to gather acorns to feed their pigs, which was the major method of
fattening them at that time. The ownership of the property along the
borders of their holdings was not clarified and gave encouragement to
proceedings of this sort.
In order to preserve their claims and rights to the
property, the Eszterházys, who were the owners most affected, turned to
the County and raised their protests, complaints and took legal action,
submitting petitions threatening arrest, restraints and fines, but for
all of their efforts it did not rectify the evil. As a unique solution
to the colonization of the open prairies with free-lance peasants it was
decided that their rights had to be protected by a contract. As a
result the Eszterházys colonized Kozár with Serbs in 1717 despite their
resistance to the idea through the efforts of their Administrators.
Tófü was settled with German Lutherans in 1723 and Mekényes was
colonized in 1735 with German Lutherans from Gyönk. In spite of the
resistance of the County of Tolna, these three villages were added to
Baranya County some time shortly after their settlement and their
annexation to the Dombovár Domains.
As a result, from the standpoint of Baranya County
there were two sorts of subjects on the Dombovár Domains: those who
paid fees (arenda) in Kozár, Mekényes, Tófü and Sásd as well as the
hereditary bonded serfs in the other villages. The first group had
either written contracts or verbal agreements with Domain according to
conventional custom, whatever “conventional” and “custom” was at the
time with the property administrator determined. In general, the
Eszterházys kept to the conditions of their contracts, but the people
continued to try to secure greater advantages through negotiating new
contracts with the Domain.
In order to avoid tension, however, they were
concerned about the individual villages being occupied exclusively by
either those paying the arenda fee or with bonded serfs. Those paying
the arenda had recourse to turn to the County or directly to the Royal
State Chancellery in Pressburg because of a breach of contract,
sometimes they even did so successfully, while on the other hand the
endless petitions presented by the bonded serfs in upper Baranya gained
little attention or failed to even have a hearing before the County
officials.
Further to the matter regarding those who paid the
arenda. They too had their own special difficulties in their
relationship with the various Domains but they were of a different
nature. The Eszterházys had still not given up their hostility towards
their Serbian and Protestant settlers in spite of the contracts they
offered to them. As a result, during an assembly of the administrators
of the Ozora Domains held on the 9th of November in 1730, a
proposal was dealt with, according to which officials were informed that
they were to terminate the contract negotiated by Joseph Eszterházy with
the Serbian colonists who established themselves in Kozár in 1717 in
order to settle Hungarian or Slovak peasants in their place.
Shortly after the settlement of Mekényes with German
Lutherans the administration of the Domain supported the point of view
that any additional settlers that would be recruited to settle there
would have to be Roman Catholic. The closure of the Lutheran prayer
house in Mekényes and the expulsion of the notary in 1742, who in fact
also played the role of a lay preacher, a so-called Levite Lehrer, was
done under the auspices and with the lively assistance of the Dombovár
Domains administrative staff. All in all, the villages that were
settled with free peasants were able to develop well economically, while
the villages with bonded serfs remained in poverty. The estate owners
profited little from them.
Nevertheless a slow change was gradually taking
place. From the minutes of the County Assembly it becomes obvious the
stresses that incurred between the landowners and their subjects shifted
in other directions. In the 1720s and 1730s the issues that were raised
were primarily about the rights of the estate owners: property rights
were clarified, border violations were dealt with, the search and
recruitment of suitable serfs were the major agendas. In the 1740s and
1750s the complaints and petitions of their subjects step into the
foreground. But since the chief landowners of the County were the
predominant members of the County Administration little could be
expected in the way of support for their claims or grievances, but
instructions for the undertaking of investigations kept coming from the
Royal State Chancellery with a request for reports that were undertaken
reluctantly or sometimes simply ignored.
Despite the resistance of the nobles the differences
between the two groups of subjects, both the free peasants and the bound
serfs, became less and less significant although there were shades of
differences even within the two groups. The Urbarial Regulation of 1767
that the Empress Maria Theresia decreed accelerated the matter. The
size of a full session of land was determined: dependent upon various
factors it could be 18, 20 or 22 Joch of arable land, the extent of the
meadows was also variable, and a house lot and garden were included or
the three factors could be balanced in manner suitable to the parties
involved. Even the maximum amount of free labour, money and natural
produce were assessed.
The common Urbarial tax for all subjects was
introduced throughout the country for peasants in possession of over an
eighth of a session and for peasants with an eighth of a session or
less. (In Baranya County the terms for small cotters and simply cotters
was used to assess those who had no land at all.) The distinction
between free and bonded peasants would only disappear in the legislation
under Emperor Joseph, because in a sense the Urbarial Regulation already
puts an end to the practice which had formerly lead to the preference
for bonded serfs to settle in the villages.
The eighth point in the Urbarial Regulation was the
question of whether there were any abandoned or uncultivated sessions in
the village. This was of special interest to the landowners and the
State (because it had an effect on tax revenue) for if the abandoned
sessions were re-occupied by peasants the land could not be integrated
back into the cultivated lands of the owner who as a noble did not have
to pay taxes of any kind. With the carrying out of the Urbarial
Regulation local surveys were not carried out so that the actual amount
of cultivated land was concealed both by the estate owners and their
peasants to their own advantage. Manipulating the dimensions of the
sessions, as well as concealing some expansion that was taking place
produced a considerable amount of remaining land that was not recorded
in the Urbarium.
In contemporary sources, writers also speak of
surplus land. These pieces of land were also put to various uses. In
the Urbarial Register for upper Baranya in 1767 (and shortly after that)
there are no German family names included in the lists of these thirteen
villages, but deserted farms and unclaimed land are identified so we can
expect that settlement activity began to take place fairly soon. The
next countrywide conscription registers date from the year 1828 which it
quite a long time since the Urbarial Regulation. But with regard to the
early settlement and the extent of it for which we cannot obtain any
satisfying answers from these official sources we can turn to the Church
parish registers for information even if that does not afford us with
much in terms of a statistical analysis.
In the 1770s permission to maintain church records
was only authorized for a few Protestant villages, the large majority of
the villages were placed under the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic
parishes. The vicars of Sásd and Vásárosdombó were responsible for the
Catholic and Protestant villages of this region.
We can make the assumption that one can in all
probability determine the ethnic identify of families by their family
name during this time frame. In difficult cases such as Peter Gotthárd,
the name of the wife, the godfather or the witnesses can frequently
assist in making the right determination. Any wrong decisions in this
regard hardly change anything in getting the total picture. Following
an examination of the church records of Vásárosdombó and Sásd for the
period 1771-1781 the following can be said:
(1) Three
of the villages have a totally Hungarian character throughout with the
exception of the Vicar serving in Vázsnok.
(2) Only
on occasion do we find any German names prior to 1776. These are
millers who live outside of the village community, frequently changing
their place of residence as well.
(3) At
the beginning of the 1770s some “neocoloni”, new free peasants are
mentioned in these church records.
(4) The
settlement by Germans took place gradually: Vászar (as of 1776), Nagyág
(as of 1777), Töttös, Szekcsö, Gerényes, (1778), Tarrós (1779), Mezöd,
Hörnyék (1780). The only German name in Mezöd in the year 1776 is that
of one of the millers.
(5) There
are no details as to the place of origin of the settlers in the church
records. At the time of weddings they will have often married
individuals from their former home: they come from Kalaznó, Kéty,
Dorog, Belac, etc.
(6) The
Germans in Vászar, Jágonak, Mezöd and Hörnyék are Roman Catholic and
those for the other villages are Lutherans. At first the Lutherans were
buried in the Catholic cemeteries, but developed cemeteries of their own
soon after. In 1779 Kozár, together with the surrounding new Lutheran
villages requested to be allowed to build a church. Only after the
construction of the church in 1784 as a result of the decree of the
Emperor Joseph, the Edict of Toleration, the other villages were then
regarded to be filial congregations of Kozár.
Despite the lack of/or the poor quality of the
documentation available we are able to reconstruct the broad outlines of
the course of the settlement that took place.
On the 9th of March in 1778, Inspector
Franz Vlásits of Dombóvár wrote to the current chief steward of the
Eszterházy estates, István Nagy, in which he emphasizes his contribution
in the settlement: “I need to mention that I have already completed the
distribution of 3,000 house lots for the cottagers within Baranya County
and this operation should result in over 3,000 Gulden for Prince
Eszterházy. While at the same time, the Baranya villages will be more
prosperous than all of our villages in Tolna County resulting in the
construction of more beautiful and fine houses.” In his letter of the
15th of March 1778 he once again returns to the same matter.
He excuses some of his failures in the past but asks that they be
ascribed “to the difficulties in the distribution of these cottagers
house plots in Baranya County which I and Birkenstock along with the
Hungarian surveyor continue to be occupying from morning until evening.”
The settlement of the Germans, which began in 1776
(in Vaszar) achieved its high point in 1777/1778 for which 3,000 house
lots had been designated at the beginning of 1778 and would have
concluded by 1780. According to the census of 1828 there were
approximately 380 German families in those villages and among them were
some of them that were designated as cottagers but day labourers who did
not have homes of their own. This indicates that after 1780 no major
German migration continued into these villages.
We need to take a look at the economic basis for this
new settlement. There is one reference of consequence in this regard in
that, “that of all of Prince Eszterházy’s Domains those at Dombovár
provided the highest income in 1780.” The author of this notation, who
has great difficulties with the German language particularly in this
statement, wanted to use the information to achieve a further increase
in revenue by also taxing the surplus land of the peasants or dividing
it up among the Germans or through bringing in more settlers, which was
the case in Mezöd or through the authorization of reclamation of
forested lands which would result in a special tax for each two Joch for
every cottager.
With regard to Tékes the report indicates: “The
German cottagers who have been making free use of the surplus lands for
crops for some time will pay 60 Dinars or provide three days of free
labour on the basis of every Joch they have used and through the
implementation of this action the income will be increased to 60
Gulden.”
In Gerényes: “All of the surplus fields and land
that can be identified which have been left for the use of peasants will
be assessed 60 Dinars each or the provision of three days of free labour
and the payment of 1 Gulden. But three of the cottagers were registered
who each paid 6 Gulden for a total income of 18 Gulden.”
In Szekcsö: “The use of 350 Joch of surplus fields
for crop production resulted in the payment of an arenda (fee) of 210
Gulden by the community.”
In Mezöd: “The use of all of the identified surplus
land should also require the payment of the arenda fee or three days of
free labour. The rate was 60 Dinars per peasant or 100 Gulden by the
village community. The seven landowning peasants were assessed 6 Gulden
and in addition for every 2 Joch of cleared land they were to be taxed 2
Gulden up to 28 Gulden.”
The same kinds of assessments were made in the other
villages as well. Actions that the villages instituted against the
Domain, or rather against their agent Johann Birkenstock who had
arranged the settlement, shows that not everything preceded according to
the promises made to the German settlers during the time of the early
development of their villages.
The profits made by Birkenstock from Kozár and the
surrounding villages were verified on numerous occasions and over the
course of time he was unable to conceal his dubious undertakings, but
rather than halt him from continuing he found new ways to manipulate the
situation to his own advantage. But when he was challenged he lost even
the support his former patrons. On the 24th of November in
1784 the Inspector of the Eszterházy estates, Franz Vlásits wrote to the
Paladin about his best assistant during the settlement: “I assure you
that he has been the best assistant I have had since I have been
Inspector, but I must ask that he be expelled from his position because
he interferes in matters that do not concern him, especially because it
is quite clear that due to these infractions he draws not only the
dislike of those he has cheated but by association he invites the hatred
of your officials. At the first opportunity I have I will bring this to
his attention myself.”
With that the slow decline of the once successful and
powerful Birkenstock began. In 1776 the villages of Töttös, Szekcsö,
Vaszar, Gerényes, Tarrós, Tékes, Jagonak, Nagyág, Mezöd and Hörnyék (all
of them with German settlers) instituted proceedings against the Domain
with the County claiming that they had been refusing them the customary
three years of freedom from paying taxes since their settlement.
Their petition was passed on to the courts with the
request that they administrator justice on behalf of the subjects of the
Eszterházys according to the valid Urbarial Regulation. Testifying in
court, the peasants explained that they were recruited by Johann
Birkenstock of Kozár eight years previously, with the promise that they
would be exempt from paying taxes for the fist three years if they
settled in the villages of the Domain. In the course of the hearing it
turned out that Johann Birkenstock’s promises were unauthorized by
anyone but himself. That had been exempt from taxes but they had to pay
the customary duties on the natural products they produced according the
to the existing Urbarial ruling.
At the same time Birkenstock had collected 2 Gulden
and 40 Kreuzer from every individual for the surveying of their fields
and even collected money for the hunts for their noble landowner and his
guests, which was all money he pocketed for himself. Birkenstock denied
everything resorting to his usual method of operation: bribery. His
attempt to bribe the officials could not be proven explicitly but the
money handed back to him by the judge he placed in a special container
that was visible to everyone in court. Then, on the instructions of the
High Sheriff it was split up among the villagers and handed over
personally by Birkenstock. In the course of this, Birkenstock lost the
rest of his credibility despite the numerous cases in which he was
involved until his death in 1791, all of which proved to be
unsuccessful.
In conclusion: the settlement of Germans in the
villages of Töttös, Szekcsö, Nagyág, Jágonak, and Tékes. Gerényes,
Vaszar, Mezöd and Hörnyék to place in the years between 1776-1780. The
settlers came predominantly from the German villages of Tolna County; a
considerable influx coming from German territories can hardly be
proven. They were settled as free peasants with a house lot and one
quarter session of property at most of the surplus land according to the
Urbarial ruling. In some places, the reclaiming of 2 Joch of wasteland
was awarded to them. With the exception of the freedom from paying
taxes in the first three years they were not given any other privileges,
but they also had to manage the customary duties from the yields of
their fields during the free tax years.
On the basis the church records in Vásárosdombó we
can determine the following:
Nagyág
In 1767 there were 13 Hungarian families
In 1828 there were 25 Hungarian families and 56
German families.
Gerényes
In 1767 there were 20 Hungarian families
In 1828 there were 37 Hungarian families and 29
German families
Jágonak
In 1767 there were 33 Hungarian families
In 1828 there were 49 Hungarian families and 33
German families
Töttös
In 1767 there were 33 Hungarian families
In 1828 there were 29 Hungarian families and 59
German families
Szekcsö
In 1767 there were 41 Hungarian families
In 1828 there were 36 Hungarian families and 38
German families
Vaszar
In 1757 there were 12 Hungarian families
In 1828 there were 22 Hungarian families and 58
German families
On the basis of the church records in Sásd we can
determine the following:
Hörnyék
In 1767 there were 19 Hungarian families
In 1828 there were 20 Hungarian families and 21
German families
Mezöd
In 1767 there were 17 Hungarian families
In 1828 there were16 Hungarian families and 31
German families
Tarrós
In 1767 there were 16 Hungarian families
In 1828 there were 13 Hungarian families and 22
German families
Tékes
In 1767 there were 13 Hungarian families
In 1828 there were 31 Hungarian families and 33
German families
