^{The News}
Dedicated to Austrian-Hungarian Burgenland Family History

1) THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER (by Tom Steichen)

This month's random bits and pieces (Article 1) starts with great news about images of the matrikal records for the Burgenland Evangelical churches going online. We follow that with a discussion of the EU "excessive-deficit procedure," something I mentioned that was worrying Austria. After that, I provide a wrap-up on the Burgenland state election and the formation of a new governing coalition. That stands in direct contrast to the Austrian federal election and its failed coalition-building attempts, which the next bit updates. The fifth and sixth bits are also updates, with the fifth peaking about the Burgenländers Living In Chicago project by Tim Hermesdorf. Tim has added 600+ entries so his database now covers the A-L part of the alphabet. The final bit is about more marriage records from the  for the Rotenturm an der Pinka (Vasvörösvár) civil recording location. Christian Saurer has added over 500 entries to his previous contribution, so the database now covers years 1921 through 1949.

Our regular tidbits include the monthly BB Facebook report, book sales, and some Words for Thought.

We conclude with our standard sections: A Historical BB Newsletter article, Ethnic Events and Emigrant Obituaries.



Burgenland Evangelisch Record Images Going Online: Patrick Kovacs recently sent me a note to report that the images of the matrikal records of the Burgenland Evangelisch churches (both classical Lutheran [Augsburg / A.B.] and classical Calvinist / Reformed [Helvetic / H.B.] confessions) have started to appear online at data.matricula-online.eu/de/oesterreich/burgenland-ab-hb/.

When Patrick notified me, only two parishes had been uploaded, but the last time I checked there were 22 parishes online, so I suspect all 29 parishes will be available soon. This is a significant contribution to the genealogical community and, on the behalf of all of us, I thank the Burgenland A.B. Superintendency for initiating this project last year in honor of its 100 years as a Superintendency (it was established in 1924). The goal was to have their record images online by year-end, but although that hard goal was not met, enough real progress has been made to say the goal has been, at least in spirit, well met.



EU "Excessive Deficit Procedure" (EDP): The formation of an Austrian federal coalition government has remained in flux since the September election. A recent thing that added complexity to coalition negotiations was that the European Commission issued a January 21st deadline to Austria to submit a "credible plan to cut spending" in order to avoid an EU "excessive-deficit procedure." Neither cutting spending nor increasing taxes was in the campaign agendas of the negotiating parties, so that makes it difficult to entice a coalition partner. As background, I thought I should explain what this "excessive-deficit procedure" is all about.

The EU developed its excessive deficit procedure to ensure that all member states maintain discipline in their governments’ budgets, meaning relatively low government debt or active measures to reduce high debt to what they believe are sustainable levels. Member states must agree to a 3% deficit ratio and a 60% debt ratio, where the ratios are calculated relative to a member state’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Aside: To put these rules into perspective, the yet-to-be finalized US fiscal 2024 GDP is estimated to be ~$29 trillion. Our national debt is now ~$36 trillion (i.e., over $100,000 per person, given our population of ~340 million), and we added ~$1.8 trillion to our debt during the 2024 fiscal year (Oct 2023-Sep 2024). Thus our 2024 "EU" numbers are approximately a 6.2% deficit ratio and a 124% debt ratio.

By EU standards, our government has massively failed to maintain discipline in its budgets according to both ratios, and would require supervision to get our finances in order. The 2024 addition to our national debt was 5% of the total debt we have accumulated in our 248-year history, an annual accumulation rate which is clearly not sustainable. It is also why financial experts worry that the US is headed toward a "debt death spiral."

The rules of the EDP are set out in the EU Stability and Growth Pact: If a member state exceeds the reference values for deficit or debt, or is at risk of exceeding them in the near future, the EU Commission prepares a report in which it analyses whether that member state is running an excessive deficit. If the Commission believes that an excessive deficit procedure is warranted for a member state, it informs the EU Council and, if the Council concludes that there is an excessive deficit, it adopts a recommendation setting out how the situation should be rectified. The recommendation may contain a corrective budgetary path, expressed in numerical terms, and a deadline. It is then up to the member state concerned to take the necessary action within six months.

If no effective action has been taken by the deadline or the member state does not comply with the recommendation, the Council may impose sanctions, including a fine of up to 0.05% of the previous year’s GDP. The fine needs to be paid every six months until the Council assesses that the member state concerned has taken effective action. If the member state continues to fail to comply, the Council has the right to intensify the sanctions (up to 0.1% of GDP).

Another aside: Austria's current GDP (in dollars) is estimated to be about $560 billion. That means, in theory, an initial annual fine could be as high as $280 million should they be sanctioned. However, the EU has never sanctioned a country, fearing doing so could trigger unintended political consequences or further hurt a country's economy. Thus the effectiveness of the EDP depends mostly on public embarrassment that one's country has been "called out" and requires supervision to get their finances in order.

Due to COVID-19, the EU suspended the EDP rules between 2020 and 2023. As of 2024, the suspension is no longer in force, so the EU has relaunched the EDP process.

In July 2024, the Council adopted decisions establishing the existence of excessive deficits in Belgium, France, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Poland and Slovakia. It also established that the excessive deficit procedure for Romania should remain open, as the country had been under the excessive deficit procedure since 2020 and had not taken effective action to correct its deficit.

The chart below shows the deficit status of each EU country over the period 2013-2023, with Austria in the bottom row of the second column. Members have excessive deficits if their blue charted data descends into the pink area. As you can see, most EU countries experienced a deficit due to the economic effects of Covid.



The chart further below shows the debt status of each EU country over the same period 2013-2023, with Austria again in the bottom row of the second column. Here, members have excessive debt if their blue charted data ascends into the pink area. As you can see, most EU countries have a debt near the 60% limit, with most seeing a slight increase due to the economic effects of Covid. However, percent debt is affected by changes in a country's GDP and by paying off obligations that have come due, so there is not an exact tie to the annual deficit (though a deficit does increase debt percentage).



In January 2025, the Council adopted recommendations for the following seven member states under the excessive deficit procedure: Belgium, France, Italy, Malta, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. The recommendations contain a corrective budgetary path, expressed in numerical terms, and a deadline for each member state.

Under the EU rules, all member states need to prepare national medium-term fiscal-structural plans containing a net expenditure path. As long as highly indebted countries follow their net expenditure path as set by the Council, bringing their debt onto a plausibly downward path and approaching the treaty reference value at a satisfactory pace, they will not be subject to an excessive deficit procedure. Austria is attempting to avoid being subject to such an excessive deficit procedure.

Note: Article and charts are based on EU webpage: Excessive deficit procedure.



The Burgenland State Election: Late last month the SPÖ announced that it was entering into coalition negotiations with the Green party. Early this month they announced that the parties had agreed on a government coalition. Hans Peter Doskozil will remain Governor and the Greens' Anja Haider-Wallner will become his new Deputy Governor (see picture below). Three previous state councilors, Heinrich Dorner, Leonhard Schneemann and Daniela Winkler, will return. However, Astrid Eisenkopf will vacate her Deputy Governor role and will become President of the State Parliament, with the previous president, Robert Hergovich, becoming the SPÖ government coordinator.

Both the ÖVP and FPÖ announced they will refuse to elect the planned SPÖ/Green state government at the reconstitution session of the state parliament, as they do not approve of Doskozil and his government team. The ÖVP stated "that the course of Governor Doskozil in the area of the economy, finances and in dealing with the municipalities will be continued," and that does not correspond to the ideals of their party. Not surprisingly, the SPÖ reacted angrily to these announcements and criticized the ÖVP in particular, saying "the fact that the ÖVP does not want to accept the democratic result of an election is another low point for the party." It is the state parliament members, once seated and parliament reconstituted, that officially elects the Governor and the other members of the government, and the SPÖ and Greens had the needed majority to elect their government leaders regardless of what the ÖVP and FPÖ did symbolically; their refusal could not alter the outcome.

However, the opposition parties said they would support a joint nomination for the three new Parliament presidents – Eisenkopf as first president, Johann Tschürtz (FPÖ) as second, and Claudia Schlager (SPÖ) as third. If so, the new state parliament could be reconstituted and the vote could go forth. This was the slate and, after the 36 members of Parliament (15 new) were seated and the presidents approved, the voting in of the governing team was officially completed. Doskozil was sworn in the next day by Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen.



Austrian Federal Election Update 3, Coalition Talks Stall, then Collapse: Efforts to form an Austrian government continued between the plurality-winning far-right FPÖ and the second-place center-right ÖVP party... but they were floundering as the ÖVP demanded control over key portfolios. The FPÖ was willing to hand over a larger share of the government offices to their partner—seven for the ÖVP compared to six for the FPÖ—but the FPÖ insisted on having control over the most important ministries, including the finance and interior ministries.

The FPÖ argued that it was crucial that it take control of the finance ministry because the previous ÖVP/Greens government was responsible for accumulating “billions in debt.” Likewise, the interior ministry was important so the FPÖ can implement “a change of course in security policy and asylum policy,” saying it was time for the population of Austria to be protected, “not the illegal intruders.” While the ÖVP was somewhat willing to hand over the finance ministry to the FPÖ, handing over control of EU affairs was something they would not budge on. The FPÖ, however, disagreed with the current course of the European Union and with control by EU institutions of national interests, so it wanted to change Austrian policy.

While negotiations continued despite the tensions between the two parties—the main reason being that neither party wanted to be blamed for the failure of the talks—they did eventually fail. So now there might be a new election in May. The FPÖ had continued to gain support in polls, though some politicians think the failure of coalition talks will blunt the FPÖ's rise. Per a recent opinion poll, the FPÖ would improve on its 29% result from last September and get 35% of the vote. The ÖVP would suffer a significant loss, dropping from 26% to 19%, and second place would go to the SPÖ with 21%.

Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen responded by inviting the NEOS, Greens, SPÖ and ÖVP party leaders to the Hofburg for more talks, with the FPÖ notably absent, as the smaller parties have signaled their willingness to try again to create a government with the center-right ÖVP.

Another potential course of action is an appointed interim "government of experts."

Back in 2019, as a result of the "Ibiza scandal," the Austrian ÖVP/FPÖ coalition government collapsed and the key leadership resigned. Thus Austria’s president was forced to arrange some sort of government until new elections could be held. In an unprecedented political undertaking for Austria (and an exceptional occurrence for Europe), Austria formed a government of non-elected experts, which was composed of senior officials of government departments and high-profile jurists. This became known as a "government of experts."

Burgenland Governor Hans Peter Doskozil has been calling for such a government for such time. After negotiations collapsed, he said "the extent of irresponsibility and lack of willingness to compromise with which both sides have conducted these negotiations is appalling. Austria deserves better in times of severe crises." He argued that the negotiations have "been about posts and functions, never about the burning questions ... such as health care or the urgently needed way out of the recession. You can't shape a republic like that and certainly not lead it into the future."

A third course of action is to continue the current situation, where the yet to be replaced ÖVP-led coalition government stays in office until new elections are held and a government formed. Most parties, including the FPÖ, are against this, believing both their party and the nation gain something while a temporary government of experts stabilizes the situation.

However, the initial approach by President Van der Bellen was to ask the ÖVP and SPÖ to again attempt to agree to a coalition. However, control of the finance and interior ministries will be contentious. Such a government would have only a one-vote majority, so NEOS was later invited into the coalition to solidify its majority.



Burgenländers Living In Chicago, Update 2 by Tim Hermesdorf: Tim continues to add to his dataset of Chicago Burgenländers, recently adding over 600 entries to his prior dataset and bringing the total to 3,020 emigrants in the A-L part of the alphabet. The current dataset of emigrants is here: ChicagoAddresses: A-L. In addition, an updated map has been generated that adds in these additional entries. That map can be accessed here: google.com/maps/ChicagoFirstAddresses A-L. Tim continues to add to this dataset and additional data will be published as it becomes available. The A-H section was documented in Newsletter344 and the I-K section in a tidbit note in Newsletter 351.

As I noted in my previous note about the map, I carefully audited the addresses in both the old and new data so they would map correctly, and in creating the map I discovered a number of things. First, many addresses in Fuller Park (and south from there) no longer exist because of a freeway (I mapped a nearest-existing address instead). That Burgenländer neighborhood, with the added data, has become very clear in the map, as has the Back of the Yards neighborhood near Sherman Park in the south-side. On the north-side, there is a clear ethnic concentration between Division and Fullerton, and several west-Chicago concentrations stand out: the west side of Whicker Park, and Hermosa, in particular. I'll update that to say there is now a small but noticeable concentration out in Forest Park, as well as a sizeable one in the Damen/Wolcott Aves area south of Chicago Ave (I referred to this as West Town in my last note, but that now seems to be an incorrect labeling). You can see these concentrations by adjusting the zoom in the map, so the markers are not one big blob.

Also, if you hit the 3 dots in the red header, you can select "View map in Google Earth" and then, when you zoom in, the names of the mapped residents appear, which is kind of cool in the more concentrated areas! They didn't all reside there at the same time, but it is still impressive.

PS: After I shared a draft of this bit with Tim, he responded with the following, I think in response to my confusion about what to call the neighborhood I had previously referred to as West Town:

Just a bit to help you in understanding neighborhoods. Around 1920 or so, the University of Chicago Department of Sociology undertook a project to study the city. They defined 90+ community areas. Each area contains several neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are named by an un-official consensus and are fluid and changeable. The neighborhood in which I was born was first called Pacific Junction, then Logan Square, now Humboldt Park.

This is certainly consistent with the fate of the south-side neighborhood once known as Little Burgenland, a name you will not find on any map now. I'll also note that Chicago has undergone multiple rounds of renaming streets and renumbering houses. This is a major difficulty in trying to map "first addresses" (plus the fact that many streets, like in the former Fuller Park area, were completely eliminated by freeway and other infrastructure projects).



Rotenturm Civil Marriage Records 1946-1949: We are pleased to report the availability of additional marriage records for the Rotenturm an der Pinka (Vasvörösvár) recording location, this time for years 1946-1949. The recording district also included the villages of Siget in der Wart, Spitzzicken and Jabing.

In 2021, BB member Christian Saurer provided marriage records for years 1921-1945; the currently released records add to this collection. Please note that these records are not available at FamilySearch, making it a rather special resource! The collection now consists of 523 marriage records from 1921 to 1949, and can be accessed from the BB Records section here.



The Facebook Bunch (from Vanessa Sandhu):


(check back in early March)







Update for book "The Burgenländer Emigration to America": Here is this month's update on purchases of the English issue of the 3rd edition of Dr. Walter Dujmovits' book "Die Amerika-Wanderung Der Burgenländer."

Current total sales are 1838copies, as interested people purchased 8 books during this past month.

As always, the book is available for online purchase at a list price of $8.89 (which is the current production charge for the book, as we purposely choose not to make any profit so you can obtain the book at as low a cost as possible!), plus tax & shipping. See the BB homepage for a link to the information / ordering page.

The book is an excellent read for the Burgenländers in your family!



Burgenland Recipes: (none this month... got one for us?)



Note: Our recipes sortable list has links directly to the recipes or food-related articles published in our past newsletters. You can access the list by clicking our recipe box (to the right). Thanks to the contributions of our members over the years, we have quite a collection of Burgenland recipes, some with several variations.

However, whenever we use up our unpublished recipes, this recipe section will become dormant. So, if you have a favorite family recipe, please consider sharing it with us. We will be happy to publish it. Our older relatives, sadly, aren't with us forever, so don't allow your favorite ethnic dish to be lost to future generations.

You can send your recipe to BB Recipes Editor, Alan Varga. Thanks!



Words for Thought:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

-- Emma Lazarus, from poem "The New Colossus," 1883.

You perhaps know that these words are associated with the Statue of Liberty, but they are just 20 words of an 105-word-long poem that was reluctantly written as a donation to an exhibit of art and literary works for an auction conducted to raise money for the construction of the statue's pedestal (France paid for the statue but the US was responsible for building an appropriate pedestal for it).

Although the poem was the first item read at the exhibit's 1883 opening, and it remained in its catalog until the exhibit and auction closed in 1885, it was soon forgotten and played no role at the grand opening of the statue in 1886. It would not be until 1901 that efforts to memorialize Lazarus and her poem were undertaken, resulting in a plaque bearing the text of the poem being placed on the inner wall of the pedestal in 1903. In so doing, it reinvented the statue's purpose.

The statue was originally intended as a monument to the principles of international republicanism, donated by the French to commemorate the centennial of US independence in 1876 (and also to connect the US Republic with the French 1792 revolution and its First Republic). John Cunningham wrote, "The Statue of Liberty was not conceived and sculpted as a symbol of immigration, but it quickly became so as immigrant ships passed under the torch and the shining face, heading toward Ellis Island." However, it would be Lazarus's poem, he says, "that permanently stamped on Miss Liberty the role of unofficial greeter of incoming immigrants."

Amazing what a few words, even if reluctantly written, can do!

"We are living in the capital city of an empire that is looking very much like one on its last legs. Our emperor is a tired old man, an anachronism. Our Parliament is cacophonous and disruptive beyond repair. Our army, in spite of its grandly colorful uniforms, has not won a battle, let alone a war, in this century. Our borders keep shrinking. We have built a splendid boulevard of gaudy marble facades, but we cannot house or care for our lower classes. We have huge uncontrolled debt, and no one with a clue how to reduce it. All the nationalities, our dear Slavic countrymen, are dangerously restive, clamoring for attention and independence. And all we Viennese want to do is drink our coffee mitt schlagg, listen to operettas, meet our sweet girls, and waltz ourselves silly to the strains of Strauss the younger. Let us not call it 'dancing on the precipice,' heavens no, that would be cynical. Let us look at the rosy hues only."

The character speaking is one of the Jung Wien who made famous the Viennese coffeehouses, the sons of the haute bourgeoisie, who took up the aesthetic, creative and intellectual life and rejected the world of business and industry of their fathers, a world that had generated the wealth and luxury that allowed them their easy existence. Their fathers and grandfathers were the ones who thrived after the establishment of the Austrian constitutional monarchy in 1848... an event that also initiated the move away from peasants (our ancestors) being beholden to the landed nobility.

What I found interesting about the book was that the time-displaced characters of the novel both observe and become involved in this Viennese world... using their knowledge of "the future" to comment on "current" affairs. While the book spends much time in this Viennese world, the back-stories of the lead characters (their original lives in their original time eras) also consume much of the book. As you can imagine, allowing time displacement creates opportunity for many interesting plot twists. I will not go into those, as it will ruin the story for you, should you choose to read the novel. The book is also quite complex (perhaps too complex for some readers and reviewers), touching on many social issues... but again I'll avoid comment on those and let you discover (and judge) the usefulness of this complexity.

One interesting oddity that I will mention is that a pivotal character in the book is Arnauld Esterhazy, a (fictitious) member of the Esterházy noble family that owned much of northern Burgenland for many years.

All in all, I was most fascinated by the author's descriptions of 1897 Vienna and the impact of that world on the present... and I really wished for more of that. But, as I noted above, this is merely a novel and a light-hearted romp of a novel for all that.

However, in the Author's Note at the end of the book, he says that much of the 1897 history in the book comes from a non-fiction 1982 book by Carl Schorske, titled Fin-De-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. Perhaps I must read that!

2025 addition: I did buy Schorske's book (it was apparently inexpensive) and I started to read it. However, the evidence my bookmark shows is that I never completed even the short, 20-page Chapter 1 before setting it aside and ignoring it for ten years. Going back to it now and rereading just four pages, I remember why I stopped reading it: it was dreadful, dense with words that said mostly nothing! My current read found only three sentences in that four-page section that I considered informative, and perhaps even insightful, but the rest was academic blathering... lots of big words and entangled, nearly meaningless thoughts. As an example, I will quote a "summarizing" sentence (about an author Schorske quotes extensively in the chapter... and about the chapter itself) that a prior owner of the book thought worth marking with a highlighter pen: "But his witness to the need for widening the range of political thought and practice to comprehend human feelings as well as rational right posed a central issue for the post-liberal era."

That sentence (unfortunately) actually captures the essence of the book. The author, a collegiate history teacher, goes on to explore each of these ideas in excruciating detail over 366 pages, working hard to explain the unexplainable why of the era rather than the what of it.

This is where my current book comes in. Entitled "The Crossroads of Civilization: A History of Vienna," it was published in 2022 by Angus Robertson, who was a journalist with the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) as well as NPR in Vienna, the BBC, and other broadcasters. Later he was a member of the UK House of Commons and was elected in 2021 as a Member of the Scottish Parliament. He is currently Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture in the Scottish government. In 2016 he was awarded the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria, the country’s highest national honor.

Robertson's book, as the subtitle says, tell the history of Vienna starting back when it was a Roman military outpost called Vindobona. It covers Fin-De-Siècle Vienna in just 38 pages, concentrating on the what of the era and only mentioning the more-obvious whys of it. If you want to learn what happened in this era, this book quickly tells that (and probably all the why you really want to know). I suspect Schorske's book covers the same whats, but you will need to extract them from among his dense (yet probably mostly incorrect) conjectures about why these things occurred.

Robertson's book is, by any standards, much more readable than Schorske's book. Still, it covers an immense period of time with a great outpouring of what happened over 2000 years. Interestingly, its text covers 366 pages, same as Schorske's. The challenge in it is to keep all the facts about empires and people straight in your mind as you wend your way though the pages and the years!

NOTICE (Informal Terms and Conditions): The Burgenland Bunch (BB) was formed and exists to assist Burgenland descendants in their research into their heritage and, toward that end, reserves the right to use any communication you have with us (email, letter, phone conversation, data upload, etc.) as part of our information exchange and educational research efforts.
    ● If you do not want your communication to be used for this purpose, indicate that it is "confidential" and we will attempt to abide by that request.
    ● Correspondents who communicate with the BB without requesting confidentiality retain their copyright but give a non-exclusive license to the BB allowing us to forward to BB members, publish in our monthly newsletter or on our website, and/or subsequently and permanently archive all or parts of such communications.

The formal Burgenland Bunch Website Usage Agreement is here: Agreement

The Burgenland Bunch homepage (website) is at: the-burgenland-bunch.org