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THE BURGENLAND BUNCH NEWS - No. 300 August 31, 2019, © 2019 by The Burgenland Bunch All rights reserved. Permission to copy excerpts granted if credit is provided. Editor: Thomas Steichen (email: tj.steichen@comcast.net) BB Home Page: the-burgenland-bunch.org BB Newsletter Archives: BB Newsletter BB Facebook Page: TheBurgenlandBunchOFFICIAL Our 23rd year. The Burgenland Bunch Newsletter is issued monthly online. The BB was founded in 1997 by Gerald Berghold, who died in August 2008. |
| Current Status Of The BB: * Members: 2887 * Surname Entries: 8776 * Query Board Entries: 5777 * Staff Members: 13 |
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1) THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER (by Tom Steichen)  Well,
here it is: BB Newsletter # 300 ...another "round-number" milestone! I'm not sure I understand why these kind
of milestones attract our attention—but they do—so I'll give in and talk about this one.Our first edition, edited (and distributed via email) by BB founder Gerry Berghold, came out in January 1997... with just 13 readers! It took only to October 2001 to reach the 100th edition, now with 750 readers. That short elapsed time (4 years, 10 months) was because the first 87 editions were published bi-weekly. However, in September 2000, Gerry switched to the monthly format that we have sustained since. Our 200th edition was published in June 2010, with 1,852 BB members receiving the newsletter (we stopped counting readers somewhere along the way). Gerry was editor of 176 of those editions, but his failing health forced him to give up his editorship after the July 2008 edition. I stepped in as interim editor of newsletter 177 and then Hannes Graf became our new continuing editor with number 178. This was also the period we changed the format and distribution of the newsletter. Editions 1-147 were strictly via email. From February 2006 through December 2009, newsletters were simultaneously formatted and distributed as an email and an online document (#s 148-194, 47 editions). Being online meant we could add images to that version of the newsletter, which we started doing with edition 183. Since January 2010, newsletters are formatted and distributed solely as online documents (#s 195-300, 106 editions). This was done both because of the added flexibility of images in articles and the nicer formatting, as well as to cope with the increasing problems of trying to distribute large documents to many people via email... overly-sensitive spam checkers and ISP blockers were monthly problems that plagued the distribution process (and drove Gerry crazy!). Now our only email distribution is a short, bland note saying the monthly newsletter is available online... no more blocking problems! And now we have edition 300 in August 2019, going to some 2,885 members. Coincidentally, this is also my 100th edition as editor (another round number). Hannes would publish edition 201 but I became editor in August 2010, and these most recent 99 editions along with my earlier interim edition push my editorial count to 100 newsletters.  But let's talk about this newsletter... as you likely noticed already, it is a reduced, tidbits and standard sections-only newsletter. It wasn't planned that way, but life sometimes makes me change my plans.... First, we had already committed to having the grandsons here at the start of the month, so that initial week was never going to be amenable to the quiet hours I need to write and assemble a newsletter. But then my son in DC closed on a new house and moved in that week too, which meant that the old flat need to be prepped for sale. So I spent a sequence of ten straight 12-hour+ workdays in DC, replacing and repairing and cleaning and prepping and painting... and I’m much too old for that! I was then able to return home for two days of (partial) recovery before I had to turn around and take my wife to DC, both to see the son's new place and then to put her on a plane to Minnesota early the next morning (she was going back for a class reunion). Returning home, I had three weeks of correspondence and other stuff to catch up before I could even think about the newsletter... and that left too little time to do justice to a full newsletter... in fact, I'm having difficulty finding energy to do even this limited version. So it is a tidbits-only edition (even though it is # 300!). I tell ya... my son is on his own whenever he sells this current home! This month's collection of Bits and Pieces in Article 1 starts off with a email message from former newsletter editor Hannes Graf. It has been over three years since I last heard from Hannes, so it was a pleasant surprise. I follow that with a newsletter reader feedback comment, this time from Richard Potetz. I'm hoping to make reader feedback a fairly common bit (you have to do your part by sharing your insightful comments!). I then make some comments on additional FamilySearch website changes. Nothing earth-shaking here but worth reporting. Next, Frank Paukowits asked me to run a short bit about joining the Burgenland DNA project. I then make a comment about our Burgenland Recipes newsletter section. I finish up with a report about warmth and thunderstorms in Burgenland before turning to our regular tidbit features, the monthly BB Facebook report, book sales, the recipe section and then some Words for Thought, a section I occasionally swap in place of a cartoon. The remaining articles are our standard sections, Ethnic Events and Emigrant Obituaries. While it is a short newsletter, I hope you enjoy it, and I promise I'll try hard to produce a full-length newsletter next month.  I heard from Hannes Graf at the end of last month: You may recall that Hannes was with the BB staff from January 2001 until July 2010, then returned to the staff in April 2012 and stayed with us until December 2015, only dropping out again because his eyesight was failing. At that time, he told me that he was giving up all online activities because of his sight problems. Nonetheless, it should be self-evident by the recent communication that his eyesight issues have improved enough now to allow some limited email activity. I'm pleased for him! In his message, Hannes reports that Southern Burgenland is becoming more and more like "some settlements in Virginia," as many of the things that gave it its own special character are changing. He noted first that "the railroad Oberschützen–Oberwart is gone, the track is removed, the buildings and all wagons destroyed." Resurrection of that railroad was a project that he (and others) put many hours into... and, accordingly, he takes its demise personally. Second, he notes that "the old historic gravestones of many graveyards had been removed," including at the Hagensdorf-Luising cemetery he once wrote about. Third, the Sculpture Park in Olbendorf "is now smaller (20%) and most of the sculptures are gone." And last but not least, he tells us that "the Berghold house is destroyed (I send a pic)" and that "many other buildings are gone, most of them old houses."  Berghold House, 2019 (the residential wing to the left has been knocked down) Hannes could not end without at least one positive, so he sent a picture of "...the biggest Burgenländer... the trunk of a sweet chestnut in Liebing, more than 10m around." I won't share that picture here... but maybe in a subsequent newsletter.  Feedback
from Newsletter Readers: Almost every month I receive comments on the newsletter, often from member Richard Potetz.
I'll share part of his most recent comments:Great newsletter, Tom. Now that FamilySearch lets people edit indexed entries, I have a lot of work to do. It's a way I can pay back a little to an organization that has done so much for the genealogy hobby. [Editor: I think this is a way we all can "pay back" a little; I encourage all of you to do so!] There is a lot to learn and think about in the study, The Divergent Development of Two Villages in the Austro-Hungarian Border Region. I’m sure that will be true for the second part also. One example in the study does not agree with what I have seen in my genealogy research: "A typical example is a family, in which, of the 12 children born, 6 died in childhood, and 5 emigrated (4 sons to Buenos Aires, New York, Florida and Budapest, respectively, 1 daughter to New York). Only the youngest daughter stayed at home, and inherited the small farm." Six out of twelve died in childhood is not typical from what I have seen. I’ve seen that but it is not typical. From what I have seen, three of twelve would be more typical. Also, 4 sons to 4 different locations is NOT typical. I have seen two locations twice in my research. In my family, my uncle John went to Chicago even though he had aunts and a sister in New Britain. But that was an exception. What is now called chain migration grouped relatives in one area. [Editor: I agree with Richard's take.] A part of another sentence really caught my attention: "In nearly every family there were children who were not marriageable because of the endogamy, or..." Wow! Yes there was a bit of endogamy, and some consanguinity too, but I have never heard that it was severe enough to cause harm. I wonder if anyone in Burgenland thought the level of endogamy or consanguinity there caused "children who were not marriageable" in nearly every family. In the US, there is a stereotype of inbred people in Appalachia. Well, it’s almost as if someone doing that study had a similar stereotypical view of their subjects—half the children died, children not marriageable in nearly every family. [Editor: My initial reaction to this text was similar to Richard's. However, I later attributed the severity of this "endogamy" statement to two causes given in that paragraph: first, the authors note that there were, because of the differing languages, two separate "social" circles in these small villages, and they implied that marriages largely took place both within the village and, further, within each language-based circle, thus reducing greatly the number of unrelated potential mates. Specifically, they state: "Among more than 80% of our interviewees, both grandparents came from the same village" (making many potential mate-pairs first cousins and greatly increasing the endogamy problem). Second, there was an "or" part to the statement that Richard did not quote. I'll rewrite the sentence, dropping out the endogamy part and adding underlined emphasis, so you can see what the rest of the sentence said: "In nearly every family there were children who were not marriageable because ... [they] were not allowed to marry, in order to avoid splitting the property any more." Thus, the "in nearly every family" claim had an inheritance component totally unrelated to endogamy component... but the authors did not give a clue as to which component was larger.] Anyway, neither of those topics were part of that study, but the study is fascinating and, as you say, applies to the rest of Burgenland too. Thanks again for doing all of this. [Editor: And I thank Richard for sharing his thoughts!] FamilySearch Website Updates: Last month I mentioned the new "editability" feature for indexed records (and Richard Potetz mentions it above too) ...but FamilySearch announced some additional website updates this month. One is a new Search Results page, which was there last month but I didn't register its significance! Even now, saying "significance" is perhaps an exaggeration, as my initial reaction was that it offered no advantages over the old page (which was just an expansion of that part of the search results listing). Having worked with it more, I now see some small advantages... but mostly because I recall the disadvantages of the old method! In the old method, when you expanded the detail view of a search result item (by clicking the "View the record details" icon:  ), it expanded in place, pushing the following search list
items further down the screen. The problem occurred when you closed that expanded section. Rather than having the next item
in front of you, the screen returned to a seemingly-random earlier place in the list, so you again had to manually search
down the list to find where you were. I admit I occasionally thought some inappropriate words about that behavior!In the new method, a pop-up window appears when you click the icon:  Loading this window takes longer than expanding the section did in the old method, and closing it and restoring the search list also is quite slow, so there didn't seem to be much gain in usability. The key, however, is those arrows in circles  on the sides. Clicking
those move you directly to the next (or prior) item's detail page, and that operation is much quicker than opening or
closing the whole pop-up window! Using the arrows mean you never lose your place in the list and you don't waste time
waiting for the screen to repaint. Not a big gain, but a gain nevertheless.However, I have noticed that not all records result in these new pop-up windows; some just jump to a completely new page. I haven't yet discerned why there is this differing behavior but the old expansion-in-place behavior no longer occurs for any records. There were a number of smaller announcements too. First, the maximum number of items that could be displayed in a search list has been increased from 75 to 100. If you routinely use the default 20, this does not matter much. Second, in FamilySearch Family Tree, there will be a system-wide update to standardize many dates and locations in vital and couple relationship data. This will eliminate many of the annoying “Missing Standardized Date” and “Missing Standardized Location” error messages and will provide more accurate record hints and improve data reliability. The automatic update will be applied only in cases where a standardized value very closely matches the value being replaced. Third, in the pop-up windows shown above, a listing of "similar historical records" will be shown in the lower right corner of the window. For example, I popped up the detail page for John W Albertson in the 1930 US Census. The list of similar historical records for John include links to the 1910, 1920 and the 1940 US Census plus a GenealogyBank obituary and a Pennsylvania marriage listing. For many people, however, there are no "similar records" listed. Joining the Burgenland DNA Project: The process for joining the Burgenland DNA Project at FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA) is not intuitive and is somewhat convoluted. This tends to discourage people from joining. Below is a set of instructions for you to use. Those interested can join online by following a series of simple prompts. Here are the steps that need to be followed to get into the Project: 1) Log into your FTDNA account, which will bring you to your homepage. 2) On the top left-middle side of the page, is a menu item labeled myPROJECTS. 3) Hover your pointer on it and Join a Project will be one of the options that appears; click it. 4) The Burgenland DNA Project is in the Dual (Y-DNA AND mtDNA) Geographical Projects category and is in the B letter group. Find the category and letter group and click the B. 5) Roll down towards the bottom of the page and click the Burgenland DNA link (it is currently the last "B" project). 6) After the description of the project there is a button labeled Join, near the bottom of the page, that you must click to join. 7) Finally, there are a few pieces of info you must provide, which are self-explanatory. If you get stuck at any point, please get in touch with Group Administrator Frank Paukowits at paukowits1@aol.com, who will walk you through the process. As previously mentioned, the Burgenland DNA project accepts Y-DNA, mtDNA and autosomal DNA results. Most autosomal results from AncestryDNA, 23andMe and MyHeritage can be uploaded to FTDNA for free, which gives access to a limited subset of FTDNA's tools (access to all tools require a $19 payment). If uploading data, you must establish an account and complete the upload before joining a project. Burgenland Recipes: I want to draw your attention to our monthly recipe section below. Though we call it Burgenland Recipes, it might be more accurately called Ethnic Recipes, as it has had more a regional than Burgenland-specific reach, encompassing Austrian, Hungarian, Croatian and Burgenland recipes. The point of mentioning it, however, is twofold: first, we are running out of recipes, so it may go dormant, only revived when someone sends in a recipe; second, we have linked our "recipe box" image to a "sortable list" pointing to all past food-related articles and recipes published in the newsletter. You can read the details below in the "Note" section of our recipe area. Warmth and Thunderstorms in Burgenland: Much like we have experienced rising temperatures in the US in recent years, Burgenland has too, at least that is what a couple of ORF (burgenland.orf.at) articles say (my text below is motivated by those reports and includes a few translated quotes from them, but also includes related material from other sources). ORF states that the Austrian Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG = Zentralanstalt für Meterologie und Geodynamik) reports that this summer will be the second warmest since routine temperature measurements have been undertaken (2003 was the warmest). Routine measurement began in 1767 in Austria, roughly at the lowest temperature point of the Little Ice Age in Europe (1300 to 1870), a period of "large temperature anomalies, heavy winter snowfall, and a general advance of alpine glaciers" along with "cool, wet summers." The projection (summer is not quite over) is that the 2019 summer in Austria will be 2.7°C (4.86°F) above the multi-year average [defined as the average summer temperature for 1981-2010, which was already warm compared to the Little Ice Age, though was not unusual when compared to the Medieval Warm Period that preceded the Little Ice Age nor the Roman Warm Period before the cooler Dark Ages]. Most of the 2019 rise was driven by an exceptionally warm June. ZAMG also reports that one of the effects of higher temperatures is severe weather, particularly localized thunderstorms and hail. One example ORF gave was a May 11th thunderstorm that dumped "100 liters of precipitation per square meter" on Mattersburg, causing severe flooding. Translating that to units we understand better, it comes out to 2.45 gallons per square foot, more commonly reported as ~4 inches of rain! Streets in Mattersburg "transformed into raging rivers" (see below).  Another thunderstorm a few weeks ago in Lutzmannsburg dropped only 70 liters per square meter (~3 inches) but was accompanied by severe hail that battered crops. ZAMG has been researching the localized thunderstorm phenomenon for a year now, inviting the public to report severe weather events in order to compare them with forecasting and survey station data. The aim is to be able to estimate severe weather risk for specific regions more precisely. However, they already know that Burgenland and Southeastern Styria are particularly vulnerable to severe thunderstorms.  The
Facebook Bunch (from Vanessa Sandhu):Greetings Burgenland Bunch! Here is a quick recap of what you might have missed if you haven’t joined us in our Facebook group! Please feel free to join us. We now have 1038 members and we would love to have you with us, too! We love to help! facebook.com/groups/TheBurgenlandBunchOFFICIAL/ President Tom Steichen’s article in last month’s newsletter regarding marginal entries in civil marriage records received rave reviews from many members. Burgenland Bunch staff member Patrick Kovacs is planning on visiting the Catholic archive in Szombathely this September to examine their collection of wedding dispensations. He has kindly offered to help our members look up dispensations in the parishes of Oberwart, Güssing, and Jennersdorf district. I posted a query to our Lehigh Valley / East Coast members to determine whether they would be interested in meeting up, as the Midwest and St. Louis groups do. The response was overwhelmingly positive, so I have started researching some potential meeting places for us to gather. I will be sure to keep you updated as we get more information! Several of our Chicagoland Burgenland descendants also expressed an interest in gathering, as well. I am excited for all of us to meet to discuss our genealogy! This month, we also welcomed Burgenland Bunch staff member Bob Strauch to the group. We are very happy to have him here! As always, we have been assisting with translations and look-ups. If you need help, please ask us! For this month’s musical selection, we present Musibanda Gramüposcha, singing "Liebe kleine Burgenländerin" youtu.be/OsdG29Im1FE. Enjoy! Have a wonderful day! Vanessa  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 1440 copies, as interested people purchased 6 more books during this past month. As always, the book remains available for online purchase at a list price of $7.41 (which is the production charge for the book, as we purposely choose not to make a profit so we can avoid dealing with the income tax consequences and 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 and for information about current discounts (there is at least one discount on price or shipping available most of the time... if not, wait a few days and there will be one!). Burgenland Recipes: Here is another recipe from Allentown's St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church, provided by Louise Fielding. Schnitzel is always a classic but, surprisingly, this is the first recipe for it that we have published. Although this recipe calls for veal, I remember my grandmother preparing chicken tenderloins the same way. (from St. Peter's Church) Ingredients: 1 slightly beaten egg 1 tbsp milk 1 cup fine dry bread crumbs 1/4 cup flour 1 tsp salt 1/4 tsp pepper dash of garlic powder (optional) 2 lb veal steak (1/2 inch thick) 4-5 tbps shortening or oil Preliminary preparation: Lightly beat an egg, then add milk. Stir briefly, pour into a wide, shallow glass dish or bowl and set aside. Pour the bread crumbs into a different shallow glass dish or bowl and set aside. Preparation-main dish: Combine the flour, salt and pepper and (if desired) garlic powder. Pound veal until about 1/4 inch thin. Cut into serving pieces. Coat cutlets with the flour mixture. Dip cutlet into the egg and and milk mixture, then coat with bread crumbs. Let stand for 5-10 minutes to "seal" the coating. Heat shortening or oil in a large, heavy skillet. Add cutlets without crowding them and cook over medium heat until browned and tender on each side. Remove to a warm serving platter. Serving suggestion: Garnish with lemon slices and one or two sprigs of parsley; serve with white rice.  Note:
We have gone through our "pile of index cards" and updated the recipes sortable list,
originally proposed by Sarah Kierein, with links directly to the recipes or food-related articles in our 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, we will soon use up the few remaining unpublished recipes we have... and when those are gone, this recipe section will become dormant. Nonetheless, we are always on the lookout for fresh ideas, 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 (appropriate for genealogy and history): "The past is never dead. It's not even past." —William Faulkner |
3) ETHNIC EVENTS LEHIGH VALLEY, PA Sunday, Sep. 1: Sunday Dance at the Coplay Sängerbund. Music by The Polkateers. Info: www.coplaysaengerbund.com Sunday, Sep. 1: Parish Picnic at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Stiles (Whitehall). Music by The Pennsylvania Villagers and Common Ground. Info: www.stjohnsstiles.com Sunday, Sep. 8: Sunday Dance at the Coplay Sängerbund. Music by The Jolly Bavarians. Info: www.coplaysaengerbund.com Sunday, Sep. 15: Oktoberfest at the Coplay Sängerbund. Entertainment by the Josef Kroboth Orchestra and the Auerhahn Schuhplattler Verein of Oley. Open to public/$ 3.00 per person. Info: www.coplaysaengerbund.com Friday-Sunday, Sep. 20-22: Oktoberfest at the Lancaster Liederkranz. Info: www.lancasterliederkranz.com Sunday, Sep. 22: Sunday Dance at the Coplay Sängerbund. Music by the Emil Schanta Band. Info: www.coplaysaengerbund.com Sunday, Sep. 29: Sunday Dance at the Coplay Sängerbund. Music by The Polkateers. Info: www.coplaysaengerbund.com Sunday, Sep. 29: Oktoberfest at the Holy Family Club in Nazareth. Music by the Josef Kroboth Orchestra. Info: www.holyfamilynazarethpa.com NEW BRITAIN, CT Friday, Sep 6, 7 pm: Heimat Abend. Austrian Donau Club, 545 Arch Street, $3. Music by Frank Billowitz. Friday, Sep 20, 7:30 pm: Heurigan Abend. Austrian Donau Club, 545 Arch Street, $3. Music by Schachtelgebirger Musikanten. |
4) BURGENLAND EMIGRANT OBITUARIES Rose Fatzinger (née Lukitsch)  Rose M. Fatzinger, 96, of Alburtis, Pennsylvania, passed away Sunday, August 4, 2019 at Luther Crest. She was the wife of the late Alden A. Fatzinger. Born in Grieselstein, Austria, she was a daughter of the late Joseph and Rose (Gölles) Lukitsch. Rose worked for Rodale Shirt Factory before retiring. She was a longtime member of St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church and the Women's Guild. She is survived by sons, Joseph A.; Alden A. III and wife, Ruth; Carl A and wife, Cherie; daughters, Helen M. wife of Jim Christman; Rosemary A. wife of John Hoch, Jr.; Susan L. wife of Terry Debus; sisters, Mary Smith and Anna Recker; fifteen grandchildren; twenty five great-grandchildren. Services will be held at 10:00 am Thursday, August 8, 2019 in Schmoyer Funeral Home 8926 Brookdale Road, Breinigsville. Visitation will begin at 9:00 am. In lieu of flowers, a donation may be made to the church, 1879 Applewood Dr, Orefield, PA 18069. Published in Morning Call on Aug. 6, 2019 Gabriele Sittler (née Fischl) Gabriele Sittler, 84, of Allentown, Pennsylvania, passed away Thursday, August 1, 2019 at home. She was the wife of Walter H. Sittler to whom she was married for 60 years. Born in Rábafüzes (Raabfidisch), Hungary, she was a daughter of the late Edward and Anna (Mikos) Fischl. She was a seamstress for various clothing mills in the Lehigh Valley. She was a member of St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church, Allentown. She is survived by her husband, Walter; son John W. and wife, Diana; sister Anna Jelosits; three grandchildren, Andrew, Edward and Cristy; a great-granddaughter, Scarlett. She was predeceased by brother, Rudolph. Memorial Services will be held at 10:30 am Friday, August 9, 2019 in Trexler Funeral Home 1625 W. Highland St, Allentown. www.trexlerfuneralhome.com. Published in Morning Call on Aug. 6, 2019 |
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