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

A treasured dream would be an English language version of Dr. Dujmovits' book… Perhaps someday, the BB and BG membership may be such that the combined membership would support the printing of such a publication… A magnificent tribute to our ancestors!

Now, some 13 years after Gerry’s wish, an English edition is a reality… and, within 24 hours of its public release on January 9th, over 120 copies were purchased (the current total is 344 copies). I’m sure that Gerry is smiling broadly!

The English translation was performed by BB member, Bob Strauch, and the formatting and final editing was by me, supported by the able assistance of numerous BB staff members who reviewed the book and pointed out needed corrections.

As I noted before, Dr. Dujmovits has generously granted all publication rights for this issue to the Burgenland Bunch; we gratefully thank him for this gift. I also thank Dr. Dujmovits for allowing Gerry's dream to become a reality and also for making his book accessible to us English-only readers. We may have lost the language but we still hold dear the history of Burgenland and the story of our ancestors' migration.

BB staff member Ron Markland volunteered to read a proof copy of the book and provide an initial review. That review can be found as Article 3 in this newsletter. Thanks Ron!

The book is the definitive history of the emigration of Burgenländers to the Americas; if you haven't yet ordered a copy, I recommend that you do so, both for yourself and your family!



Reaching a BH&R Milestone: There are now close to 15,000 honorees on our BH&R (Burgenländers Honored and Remembered) website for Burgenländers who immigrated to the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries and are buried there. Each entry in our listing includes space for the name of the decedent (also, the maiden name if the woman was married), the hometown, the years of birth and death, and the burial cemetery and its location. There is also a section of the website that includes recent obituaries and photos of our honored ancestors.

The website has been in the making for over a decade. Three BB staff members (Frank Paukowits, Bob Strauch and Margaret Kaiser) have been instrumental in assembling the listings. It is fitting that this 15,000 honoree milestone is occurring at the time of the publishing of the English edition of Dr. Dujmovits’ book on the immigration of Burgenländers to the Americas.

A listing is a perfect way to immortalize our relatives. Special recognition will be accorded to our 15,000th honoree, and a copy of Dr. Dujmovits’ book will be provided to the person who provides the decedent’s name.

Let’s make a concerted effort to reach the 15,000 milestone. Please send your additions, at no cost, to the following e mail link: NYBurgenlaenders@aol.com



BB Friend, Frank Tantsits, has died: It is with great sadness that I report that Frank Tantsits died this past month. Though I will not restate his many contributions to the BB, reported last month when I heard he had to go to a nursing home, I will reiterate that he was a true personal and BB friend; I will miss him!



Frank A. Tantsits Sr. 84, of Bethlehem, passed away Sunday, January 19, 2014. He was the loving husband of the late Margaret A. (Palermo) Tantsits. Born in Coplay, he was the son of the late Alois and Elizabeth (Strasser) Tantsits. Frank was a retired Master Sergeant in the United States Air Force and also retired as a construction inspector. He was a member of Notre Dame of Bethlehem Catholic Church and a member of the Knights of Columbus.

Surviving are a son, Frank A. (Shelley) Tantsits, Jr. of Swansea, IL; a son, Mark A. (Brenda Ferraira) Tantsits of Bethlehem, PA.; a daughter Kristine A. (Michael B.) McGinty of Swansea, IL; five grandchildren, Bailey A. (Andrew) Spiers, Nicholas A. Tantsits, Katie and Sean McGinty and Audrey (Derek) McGinty-Vaughan; one great-grandson, Owen A. Vaughan; one brother, Edward (Priscilla) Tantsits of Allentown, PA.

A viewing will be held Wednesday 6-8PM in Downing Funeral Home, Inc. 1002 W. Broad St., Bethlehem, PA 18018. Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated Thursday at 10:00AM in Notre Dame of Bethlehem Catholic Church, 1861 Catasauqua Rd, Bethlehem. Burial to follow in Cedar Hill Memorial Park.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Frank’s memory to the church.

Obituary via http://www.downingfuneralhome.com



Actor Frank Marth: BB Member Rudy Rothemund wrote in to say that noted character actor Frank Marth died January 12th.

Frank Marth was born in New York City in 1922 to emigrant Burgenländer parents, Franz & Francesca (Richter) Marth, from Geresdorf and Tobaj, respectively.

Francesca (Richter) Marth and Rudy's grandmother were cousins.

In his career, Frank Marth had parts in ten films, fifteen TV movies and 113 TV series, including just about every major American prime-time TV show of the 1960s and 70s, often playing the tough cop, an FBI-type agent, or a military man. A small sample of credited TV series include: Hogan's Heroes, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Kolchak: The Night Stalker, M*A*S*H, The Fugitive, Bonanza, Car 54 Where Are You?, Hart to Hart, Hawaii Five-O, Mission: Impossible, Mod Squad, Dukes of Hazzard, Wild Wild West, and even The Young and the Restless. He got his start in TV and film as a member of Jackie Gleason's stock company, often cast as an uncredited background character in Cavalcade of Stars (1949) and The Honeymooners (1955).

 

Recipes from the German/Austrian cookbook of the Austria Donau Club:

BEEF GOULASH (from Linda Poglitsch)
(Hungarian Goulash)

5 Tbsp. fat              1 Tbsp. vinegar
4 medium onions          Caraway seeds to taste
3 lb. beef, chuck        Marjoram to taste
1 tsp. paprika (or more) 1 to 2 c. water or soup stock
Salt and pepper          1 tsp. flour

Heat fat; fry sliced onion rings until yellow. Cut meat into 2 inch cubes; add to fat. Add paprika, vinegar, caraway seeds, marjoram, and salt. Add 1 cup water or soup, or more, gradually as needed. Simmer until meat is tender (2 1/2 to 3 hours). Add flour; blend well and boil a few minutes. Serves 5.



Genealogical Cartoon of the Month:

 

3) BOOK REVIEW: THE BURGENLÄNDER EMIGRATION TO AMERICA (by Ron Markland)

[Ed. Note: BB staff member, Ron Markland, volunteered to order a proof copy of the English issue of Dr. Dujmovits book, "The Burgenländer Emigration to America," and to provide an initial review of it for our membership. Here is his review.]



When I first saw mention that this book was soon to be published, I was interested in getting one of the first printed copies. The printer, Lulu Press, was contacted via the internet (http://www.lulu.com) and it was a simple task to purchase my copy. Check out was easy and I decided to choose the lowest cost shipping method, since my experience has been that it usually arrives much quicker than expected and not much later than the higher-priced expedited shipping. In less than one week I had a copy in my mailbox. With Christmas fast approaching, it was not until after Christmas that I first began to read my "Christmas present."

If only my college text books had been as easy to read and understand. Walter Dujmovits' approach results in a very understandable history. He brings to the reader the information that was available to the villager in different time frames. I was able to understand the thoughts that were going through the emigrants' minds as the book progresses through different time frames. He further discusses the happenings going on in America at the same time that made emigration plausible. This is something that many overlook when looking at the history of the area that was not officially known as Burgenland until 1921. The author answers the question as to what was going on at the same time in America and identifies the westward expansion that was occurring, without which emigration would have been extremely different. The author does an excellent job of covering both the emigrant and the immigrant aspects.

Much of my family history was never recorded, however I now am starting to understand why my great-grandfather was living in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904 and had sent for his two daughters and his son to join him there. A return to Burgenland by my great-grandfather shortly thereafter always seemed difficult to understand—until I read that it was not an uncommon practice. All this, despite a 1000 mile trip from St. Louis to the east coast, several weeks travel by steamship, and then land travel within Europe to Burgenland, is difficult to comprehend.

If I had to summarize this book, I must say it is a treasure trove of information by time frame, village, family and occupation. It clearly points out why various villages were faced with survival—the wars, crop failures, changes in county boundaries and laws, and even the steamship replacing the sailing vessel as a means of transportation. Obviously those that made the decision must have been going on blind faith, and their willingness to work to succeed. All of this being done during a time frame that, unlike the present day, did not provide instant information regarding the happenings where they were emigrating to.

The appendices are truly amazing and filled with details.
►Section 1. A complete listing of the dates and names for the first emigrant from each village.
►Section 2. Milestones. An excellent summary of the various highlights in the time frames covered.
►Section 3. Dates and locations of the Amerikanerkruezes (American Crosses").
►Section 4. Music, lyrics and translation of "Song of the Burgenlander Abroad."
►Section 5. Village Index. Provides a very extensive, quick reference to pages that reference each village.
►Section 6. Photographs and Illustrations. In this section, in some cases, it is difficult to pick out details in the photographs. I assume that these were copies of original photographs and, as such, they will never be perfect. However their quality is similar to several I have from the same era. I just pulled my copy of Mathew Brady's Illustrated History of the Civil War, with its black and white photos from a similar era taken by a well-known professional photographer, and those prints are similar in quality to these.

It can be best said that, while I have put together a family tree with the best information I could find, that tree was still quite bare. This book puts the leaves on that family tree. I would recommend it to anyone who had family that emigrated from Burgenland. It definitely is worth its price, and I hope that Walter Dujmovits is made aware that the special efforts that he made, with the able assistance from many others, were well worth the effort and are greatly appreciated.

As for the construction quality of the book, I have purchased many books and the quality of this paperback book is as good as most and far better than many. I have been reading a couple of chapters at a time and always mark my place with a pencil or some other large object, and the binding of the book is holding up extremely well.
 

It should be evident that this translation leaves many questions unanswered. For example, what does "Take these two" mean? You should note that the card does not have an address on it, so it must have been included in an envelope or package... perhaps the "two" refers to something that was in the larger container... but we can't know for sure. Likewise, does "how poor I am" mean financially or health-wise? Even the following sentence does not help, as "my troubles" could be either financial or health troubles.

Later, new staff member Willi Schmidt, having seen and benefited from the above interpretation, provided his own interpretation, giving only the interpreted German and the English translation (the big difference being that Willi assumes more phonetic spellings than Emmerich did above). Again, you will see that he still could not make sense of some of the words, however his core interpretation appears more complete and logical:

Given all this, whatever additional help you readers can provide will be appreciated!

For completeness, below is the photo from the other side of the card.



However I won't quite stop yet...

Willi Schmidt, a day after sending his interpretation, wrote an insightful follow-up:

The letter has been going through my mind. The person that wrote it apparently is the woman on the right side of the photograph, standing next to her husband. She is still young. She is apparently living in the old country, and is sending the picture to her sister in this country as a remembrance. She has elementary schooling, and is proficient in using the old German or Gothic script, but spells the way she speaks. That is the reason why some of her words, and therefore also the meaning of her letter, are almost indecipherable.

The poverty she cries over is her state. She is poor in the sense of being lost without her father and her husband, the two mainstays of her life. She is what my grandmother would have called 'a oami Haut'—in high German 'eine arme Haut,' literally 'a poor skin.' In English we’d say she is 'a poor soul,' though we also say 'I wouldn’t want to be in her skin.' Her despondency is affecting her health. She probably wasn’t eating, not because she didn’t have food, but because she couldn’t bring herself to eat. Her mother was probably still alive, as well the other younger people in the photo, and very likely provided familial support. They are the ones she refers to as sending greetings. But she was evidently inconsolable. She is seeking sympathy from her sister by asking for a reply.

I can’t help wondering what happened to her.

Willi's comments, especially his reference to the father and husband as "the two mainstays of her life," and also the picture (which hints at the family structure), strike a chord in me in light of my reading about Hungarian peasant families in the book "Proper Peasants" (which I introduced to you readers in NL 237 / Nov 2013). While the topic is too extensive to address here, I will note that the loss of both husband and father likely would destroy the family's financial and social underpinnings... truly a cause to consider oneself a poor soul. (Perhaps I've found the next topic I will address from that book.)



However, this wasn't the only translation help requested in recent months. Another example, and one for which we had even less success, came from Kristen Kellick. Her card was in Croatian (or so we believe), but only the salutation was readable. The salutation was written in Croatian but had Hungarian consonants (for example, sz for š); beyond that, however, the text is not interpretable.

When I say "not interpretable," I'll back that up by telling you that I recruited BB member E. Wayles Browne, who says in his BB member information that "I am a translator from Croatia Croatian (and other languages) to English, and would be happy to help people with documents written in Croatian." What Wayles leaves out is that he is also a Ph.D. Professor of Linguistics at Cornell University with a specialty in "the Serbo-Croatian area (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian)" (he says this on his University biography page).

It was Wayles who interpreted the salutation on the card and pointed out the use of Hungarian consonants in the otherwise Croatian words. However, he was stumped by the body of the message. He wrote, "I showed the postcard to two Croatian scholars and a well-known Croatian-American translator at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies meeting in Boston, and none of them could read it. I've looked at it many times and haven't gotten any further."

Now it is also worth noting that Wayles has written scholarly papers on Burgenland Croatian and that he has "...also worked on or taught other South Slavic languages, Polish, Russian and Belarusian, the Balkan language area, Old Church Slavonic, Slavic historical grammar, comparative and contrastive grammar, and pedagogical grammar."  Given this background, I suspect that Wayles would not be fooled by a change to another language in the body of the message.

Instead, I suspect this is a case of an under-trained writer, creating text that lacks proper punctuation, spelling and grammar, and with phonetic words from multiple languages mixed together. This baffles even the experts! While I do not know the exact year of the card (there is a note on it that estimates it is from 1917-18), I do know that education in Hungarian-controlled regions prior to 1921 was in Hungarian, with little effort made to teach writing in other languages, thus the writings of the non-Hungarian peasants was seldom polished ...and often abysmal.

Kristen has agreed to let us share the card with you. To the left is the front of the card, with the shorter woman on the left being Kristen's great-grandmother, Maria Kirisits, who was born in Stinatz in 1898, came to the US in 1922, married in 1923 and had children in Buffalo, NY, from 1925 to 1930.

To the right is a thumbnail image of the back of the card. Clicking on it will pop up a much larger, more readable image. If this text is readable for you, please, please share your interpretation with me; I, of course, will share your note with Kristen, who will share it with her grandmother (who is greatly interested in knowing what it says!).

Regardless, if you run across and old card or letter and are scratching your head about what it says, take comfort that even professional linguists struggle with these difficult texts. Nonetheless, the BB will attempt to help if you need it... but we make no guarantees!