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Dedicated to Austrian-Hungarian Burgenland Family History

Zeugnis

womit vom gefertigten Gemeindevorstand hiermit
bestätigt wird, dass Johann Göltl und seine Ehegat-
tin Eva Göltl geb. Schmitzhofer sammt seinen
Kindern: Paul, Stefan, Josef, Susanna, und Ka-
tharina in hiesiger Gemeinde die Zuständigkeit be-
sitzt, und dass derselbe während seines hierortigen
Aufenthaltes sowohl in politischer als auch in mann-
lischer Beziehung sich stets anstandslos verhalten, so
dass kein Hindernis gegen seine Reise nach Nord-
Amerika obwaltet.

             Leiden Wieselburger Comitat in
             Ungarn am 17. Februar 1885

[circle with Hungarian text: Lébény Mezzo Város Petsétje]
       Dudosits Nándor                  Lárár István
           jegyző                           biró

The Los Angeles translators that Bob approached were right: the handwriting was (only somewhat) hard to decipher, and the language is outdated... but dealing with those issues is something the BB staff is good at. We, as a group, have looked at enough Kurrent handscript so not to be intimidated by it and, because of our experience at looking at old Western Hungarian officialese, we are not put off by the outdated language. Still, translating these old German words and sentence constructs to English is as much art as science and literal translations are not always the best translations.

Below, I present two translations of the main body of the document, one from Fritz and the other from Wilhelm (note that line breaks are only approximate due to the rearrangement of words and phrases required when moving from German to English). Only one translation of the signature block is presented, though it is interesting that the text in the seal and the titles of the signing officials were in Hungarian, whereas the rest of the document was in German.

Certificate [of good conduct]

Whereby the town's Board signed below hereby
confirms that Johann Göltl and his wife
Eva Göltl neé Schmitzhofer, together with his
children Paul, Stephen, Joseph, Susanna, and
Catherine, has home rights in this town,
and that he during the time he lived and worked
here always behaved impeccably in regard
to politics and human relations, so
that no obstacle obtains against his travel
to North America.

=====

Testimony

prepared by the community council whereby it herewith
attests that Johann Göltl and his wife
Eva Göltl neé Schmitzhofer, together with his
children Paul, Stephen, Joseph, Susanna, and
Catherine, are residents of this community
and that the same (he), during his stay in this place,
in both public and personal conduct,
comported himself without reproach, so
that there is no impediment to his immigration to North
America.

             Lébény, county of Moson in
             Hungary, on February 17, 1885

    [circle with text: Lébény Market Town Seal]
Dudosits Nándor [Ferdinand]   Lárár István [Stephen]
      Clerk                     Judge / Magistrate

As you can see, the underlying intent of the document is essentially identical in both translations, though the English wording differs. The second is the more word-for-word literal translation and, in general, is the one I find most satisfactory.

However, there is one phrase for which I personally prefer the first translation. That phrase is "in hiesiger Gemeinde die Zuständigkeit besitzt" and the two translations are "has home rights in this town" and "are residents of this community."

Home rights, usually designated by the word Zuständigkeit, was an early form of local citizenship and conferred the right of access to community property and some additional protections under the law, including an early form of welfare when needed. You obtained these valuable home rights in a particular village either through birth or by a special grant, and you could maintain these home rights even if you were a current resident of a different village. It is my belief that the town council of Lébény would not have used that particularly rather complex word to mean only residents, as there are simpler German words (Anwohner, Bewohnern, Einwohnern) that mean exactly that, therefore I lean toward the first translation.

The argument given against this position is that a literal translation of Zuständigkeit in der Gemeinde is "standing in the community, a recognized place or position with all the prerogatives of an inhabitant of the community. To call the prerogatives rights is too strong. We don’t know what standing he actually had. Residence may be too weak, but that’s all we know for sure."

My other staff member argues that "Since residency does not imply Zuständigkeit in all cases, the certificate of good behavior would have required a slightly different wording if the person was not resident in Lébény or was not zuständig there. In the latter case, perhaps his zuständige town would have needed to issue the certificate." Nonetheless, he allows that "since Mr. Göltl was zuständig nach Lébény and also resident there, like most people, either phrase is correct and will do."

Interestingly, I looked up Zuständigkeit in my massive (nearly 2,000 A4-size pages in two volumes) German-English comprehensive Langenscheidt New Muret-Sanders Encyclopedic Dictionary that was revised and republished in 1975 but has roots reaching back to 1859. The only translations given are 1) responsibility and 2) jurisdiction. This says nothing about either home rights or standing. However, one example given for the root word zuständig is "nach Wien zuständig sein" and the explanation/translation given is "Austrian officialese: to have the right of domicile in Vienna." So it appears we must consider the "Austrian officialese" use of the word for it to make sense in this document. But, is "the right of domicile" the same as "home rights" or does it mean just "residency"?

In Article 5 of BB Newsletter #236 (31 Oct 2013), titled The Right of Domicile, I provide substantial evidence that indicates that the phrase "the right of domicile" is just a variation of phrase "home rights," and has more meaning attached than just simple residency. Thus it appears that there are reasons other than my "personal preference" for using the "home rights" translation instead of a "residency" translation. The first confers much more information about his official "citizenship" standing in the community. Thus, to not translate the phrase in that manner rejects important information. Therefore, I still lean toward the "home rights" translation and I recommended that form to Bob.

Frank Paukowits and Tibor Feher, who are analyzing the DNA of project participants, have always been perplexed by the fact that they had people with the West Slavic R1A Haplogroup gene in the project with German surnames.

The written history covering the period between 1100 and 1500 AD never reported a migration of Slavs into Burgenland. Historians, however, have indicated that an inflow of “Germans” did occur during that period from the Fichtelgebirge region in Bavaria, which borders the Czech Republic. They had come to this conclusion based on the fact that the dialect spoken in this area closely paralleled the Bavarian dialect spoken in southern Burgenland (Hianzen).



Internet sources indicated that the Fichtelgebirge section had first been settled by West Slavic tribes in the 500’s AD. Eupedia, a resource showing DNA haplogroup distributions by country, indicates that the areas of East and North Germany have a significantly higher percentage of the Slavic gene than the rest of Germany. The Fichtelgebirge region is in east Germany, so the results shown in Eupedia would be consistent with the presence of a sizable Slavic population in this region.

Our theory, which we think is plausible both from a DNA and linguistic standpoint, is that, in part, the migration of people into Burgenland from Germany in the period from 1100 to 1500 AD may have actually represented people with Slavic backgrounds who had been Germanized over the intervening centuries. This would account for the fact that a number of the Slavic-gene people in our project had German surnames, although their DNA was definitely Slavic. This was part of the Germanization process that took place in the many centuries these Slavs lived in a German territory.

This analysis definitely shows the power of using DNA along with other tools…. in this case linguistics…. to recreate historical events a thousand years earlier. Frank and Tibor are encouraging BB members with a link to Burgenland on the paternal side of the family to join the Project. Usually, there is a sale on the DNA test required for the project toward the end of the year. If you want information, e-mail Frank at paukowits1@aol.com.