Sections
taken from the book: " Franken und Schwabians in Ungarn" by Heinrich
Keri
Mekényes was an uninhabited wasteland after the expulsion of the Turks
and was designated as such in the conscription lists in the 1730s as
part of the Esterhazy Ozora Domains. But there is evidence that a
population of wandering Serbs and Croats inhabited it. Among the many
Serbian names in the County, one of the most common was Mekenysi, which
was the name of the place from which they had originally come from.
It was in 1692 when the wastes of Mekényes
became part of the Ozora Domains of the Paladin of Hungary, Paul
Esterhazy. Even though there were no inhabitants, the land was
cultivated. This was also true in Kozar and Tofu. The neighboring
villages for grazing, acorn gathering, firewood and hunting often used
these undeveloped lands. Sometimes the peasants worked the land
secretly and did not give the landlord his share of the crop. The
protocols of the County note such infringements and the fines levied
against the villages of Apar, Vejke and Bereny in 1717, and in 1719
those in Mucsi, 1728 Lengyel was charged for unlawful use of the
Mekényes lands.
It was on February 23, 1735 that an
agreement was signed by the Esterhazy agents with Johann Schneider,
Peter Christ and Magnus Wissner who had come from Gyönk, but who had
arrived there from Germany in 1728, who along with others sought to
develop a new village settlement. All of them had their origins in
Hesse.
In 1725, fifteen German families settled
among the Hungarian population of Gyönk. With the exception of one
family, they all came from Ciko. Others later joined them from the
German lands, but many became dissatisfied due to the harsh servitude
demanded of them by Peter Magyari-Kossa, after he moved there in 1734.
When he learned of his subjects’ plan to
leave, he expropriated their 26 oxen to cover their debts to him as he
saw it. He had them driven 200 hundred kilometers to his estates in
Komarom. This led to a battle in the County Courts and would be an
uneven struggle, and the would-be settlers for Mekényes were forced to
pay a fine. The final agreement with Magyari-Kossa was signed by the
Richter Peter Christ and the two council representations Johann Georg
Lotz and Johann Schneider. The German Lutheran pastor, Johann Rudolph
Walther and the Hungarian Reformed preacher, Istvan Milnai, witnessed
the agreement. The names of the 29 families who left to resettle in
Mekényes are to be found with the agreement along with the miller and
brewer who are not named personally.
The following is the list of the first of
these settlers who resettled from Gyönk. Following their name is the
number of years they had lived in Gyönk before leaving:
Jakob Stirner (8)
Johann Berg (3)
**Kaspar Trapp’s widow (9 ˝)
Johann Philipp Trapp (2)
Konrad Scheidemann (8)
Balthazar Köhler (4)
Werner Theiss (7)
Georg Adolph Steitz (8)
**Konrad Krähling (9 ˝)
Andreas Wiesner (5)
Adam Hansmann (6)
Konrad Theiss (8)
Georg Karl (7)
Konrad Hollenbach (4)
Georg Christ (4)
Konrad März (8)
**Christoph Kolb (9 ˝)
Jakob Opfer (9)
Nikolaus Schäfer (4)
Johann Georg Lotz (7)
Johann Schneider (7)
The Brewer (8)
Bernhard Geiss (2)
Johann Heinrich Riel (8)
**Johann Heinrich Neller (9 ˝)
Peter Christ (7)
Dietrich Helfenbein (7)
The Miller (1)
**Those Families came to Gyönk in
1725 among the first German settlers from Ciko. Mekényes was their
“third home” in Hungary.
On the basis of the tax lists in the
following years, we note that other newcomers arrived from Gyönk and
other villages in Tolna County as well as from Germany itself.
