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THE BURGENLAND BUNCH NEWS - No. 329 March 31, 2022, © 2022 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 Newsletters BB Facebook Page: TheBurgenlandBunchOFFICIAL Our 26th 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: 3123 * Surname Entries: 9100 * Query Board Entries: 5886 * Staff Members: 13 |
This newsletter concerns: 1) THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER 2) HUNGARIAN MIGRATION OF "MODERN" TIMES 3) HISTORICAL BB NEWSLETTER ARTICLES: - STEPHEN MORSE'S ONE-STEP TOOLS 4) ETHNIC EVENTS 5) BURGENLAND EMIGRANT OBITUARIES (courtesy of Bob Strauch) |
1) THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER (by Tom Steichen)  This
month's random bits and pieces (Article 1) include bits about Ukrainian refugees
in Burgenland, an American clock, some history on our FamilySearch Films section, the upcoming
Hungarian election, wind turbine news, and politics in Burgenland.Our regular tidbits kick off with the monthly update on corona-virus happenings in Burgenland and continue with the monthly BB Facebook report, book sales, a recipe and a cartoon-of-the-month. In Article 2, I've written up a 1931 article by Hungarian statistician Gusztáv Thirring, titled "Hungarian Migration of Modern Times." His article addressed, from his Hungarian viewpoint, what was then a relatively current migration, and included a few migration topics that I had not considered. The remaining articles are our standard sections: A Historical BB Newsletter article, Ethnic Events and Emigrant Obituaries.  Ukraine Refugees and Burgenland: Starting in the early days of March, about 3,000 Ukrainian refugees per day arrived at the Austro-Hungarian border in Burgenland. 80 percent of the refugees intend to continue to travel to other countries, where they want to stay with friends or relatives. In support of that, both local and long-distance public transport has been made free for all Ukrainians to allow them to travel through or within Austria to their final destination. According to the Burgenland state police, further measures are being prepared in the event that the situation at the border worsens, including  converting
the Nova Rock Hall in Nickelsdorf as a refugee center with about 1,000 "emergency quarters." The aim
is to ensure a "professional and regulated process at the border." State police director Martin Huber has
also held discussions with the UN Refugee Agency concerning "the practical problems that could arise for the
refugees and the authorities – depending on the duration and further course of the war in Ukraine." The government, together with local aid organizations, are seeing to it that refugees remaining in Burgenland are being housed in available private quarters across Burgenland, but Governor Hans Peter Doskozil expressed frustration with what he called "the small-scale discussion at the federal level as to who is responsible for distributing the refugees." He appealed to the federal government to take a more active role and to offer people a safe environment within all of Austria. Walter Dujmovits and the Returnee Clock: As part of Burgenland's 100th anniversary, there is an exhibition  at
Schlaining Castle titled "100 Objects – 100 Stories." One of those 100 objects is owned by the BG's
Walter Dujmovits, and it came to Burgenland when his grandparents returned from the USA.As such, it is representative of the relatively few Burgenland families who returned. Rather than being just one more parcel from America assisting Burgenland families in economically difficult times, it represents a success story: a family who came to enough prosperity in America that they could afford this clock... and enough savings to start a new, better life back home. The ticking of the clock is one of Walter Dujmovits' earliest childhood memories. His grandparents were from Gerersdorf and both emigrated at different times, married and managed to buy a house three or four years later...  and
eventually returned to the old house from which they had emigrated; the clock found a place there too. That's
where Walter played and that's why the clock was very familiar to him. When his grandparents died, the clock came to his family in Stegersbach. So it was not an easy decision to put the clock in the exhibition at Schlaining Castle. "I fought with myself for a long time whether I should give up the clock," says Dujmovits. But for now, it rests at Schlaining Castle, a contemporaneous example of the longings, diligence and probably homesickness of the American emigrants. FamilySearch Films Section Updated 10 Years Ago: I noted this past month that it has been 10 years since the BB revamped our FamilySearch Films section into the form it now has. For some years before that, we has a section listing all known FamilySearch microfilms for Burgenland villages and for some of the adjacent Hungarian villages that served as recordkeeping locations for Burgenland villages (see http://www.the-burgenland-bunch.org/LDS/LDS.htm). The original pages derived from material developed by brothers Ed and Frank Tantsits of Allentown and Bethlehem, PA, later supplemented by Margaret Kaiser to add the adjacent Hungarian villages. The problem with those old pages was that Ed and Frank divided their information by current-day Burgenland district and, within those districts, into two sub-parts: 1) a top section listing villages based on the civil administrative structure in current-day Burgenland, which also included the villages where the records were kept; and 2) a bottom section listing the microfilm numbers for those villages that kept records. The basic organizational/search idea was to go to the records for a district, find the village of interest, observe where the records were kept, then go to the lower section and discover the appropriate film numbers. There is nothing particularly wrong about this approach except that most of us don't know Burgenland's civil administrative structure so had a hard time finding the village we wanted in the upper section, especially if the village of interest was not an administrative village. Administrative villages were (mostly) alphabetically ordered but sub-villages were indented under these parents, requiring a manual search of all entries until you found the sub-village you wanted. Ed and Frank adopted this approach almost certainly because it was the way FamilySearch cataloged the records, and FamilySearch likely cataloged the records that way because that is the structure the Hungarian archives used.  However, for the purposes
of finding film or digital collection numbers, the civil administrative structure is largely immaterial. All we
use it for now is as a straightforward, top-level division of the many villages into smaller groupings, that is,
by Burgenland District. For each District, what we really needed in the top section was a
straightforward alphabetical listing of the Burgenland villages along with the references to the appropriate
villages where the records (religious or civil) were administered. Reworking the pages to provide such an
alphabetical listing was the primary purpose of that update 10 years ago, and it was done. The bottom section then
identifies the records in each administrative village (be it a parish or civil recording location).Not quite 5 years ago, another major rework was done, this time to add digital collection numbers to the pages, as FamilySearch terminated the ability to order microfilm rolls, making online digital images their only off-site access method. While the old "film" numbers were retained on our pages, they serve little purpose now. Hungarian Election and Ukraine: In October of last year, I published a tidbit about the then upcoming spring election in Hungary,  noting
that six different opposition parties joined forces with the goal of expelling Hungarian prime minister Viktor
Orbán from office. The parties had coalesced in response to the current electoral structure, which was
designed by Fidesz (Orbán's party) to make it difficult for a single opposition party to challenge the
prime minister on their own. Well, the election will be April 3rd and it remains close: a recent poll shows
support for Fidesz at 41%, just two percentage points ahead of the six-party opposition alliance. That
leaves 20% of the electorate unaccounted for, meaning the race could go either way.Because Orbán has fostered good ties with Moscow over the past decade, Russia's invasion of Ukraine could prove awkward for Orbán, but he has leaned on a cautious, pragmatic stance on the crisis, saying: "We must stand up for our own interests... We must stay out of this war." And while he has condemned Russia's attack on Ukraine, he has avoided personal criticism of Vladimir Putin, has refused to allow the delivery of arms to Ukraine via Hungary, and is strongly opposed to sanctions on Russian energy, a stance backed by many voters. According to a poll by think-tank Publicus this month, 44% of Fidesz voters believed Russia's attack was an aggression and 24% said it was a defensive move. In the opposition camp, 91% believed Russia's move amounted to aggression. Liberal opposition leader Peter Marki-Zay, Orbán's opponent in the election, accuses him of being too cozy with Putin, of serving the Kremlin's interests and of seeking to build an "illiberal" state in Hungary similar to that in Russia. Orbán has cast the election as a choice between a leftist opposition that he says would drag Hungary into the war, and the peace and stability he insists only his conservative Fidesz can offer. In just a few days, we will see what the Hungarian public feels about this choice. Wind-Turbine Towers Demolished in Burgenland: Two old concrete wind-turbine towers were dropped via controlled explosions in Burgenland late last month.  The
100-meter-high, 1,000 metric-ton (2.2 million pound) towers stood in Potzneusiedl for 17 years, and their
demolition was a first for Austria. Because Burgenland was a leader in generating energy via wind power, their towers were also the first to reach the end of their usable life. These towers were part of an Energie Burgenland wind farm generating enough electricity for 2,200 households. Because of progress in wind power technology, new units, which will replace the demolished units, produce two and a half times as much energy. So, after the complete farm is modernized, it will support 5,700 households. As for the old units, the concrete will be crushed and used as a bulk material on subsequent construction sites, and the wind turbine heads will be rebuilt in Bulgaria and repurposed. SPÖ Burgenland Secession Rumors: Two months ago, I included a tidbit on former Burgenland Governor, Hans Niessl, being touted as a possible SPÖ candidate in the federal presidential election race that will take place later this year. This arose  because
current Governor, Hans Peter Doskozil, had called for an SPÖ candidate in the race. Current Austrian
President, Alexander van der Bellen, is an independent, and has not yet indicated if he will run again. My comments about this led Patrick Kovacs to tell me that this "...is just part of Doskozil's ongoing feud with [national] SPÖ party leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner. She said that the SPÖ would very likely support van der Bellen if he runs again, so Doskozil naturally had to oppose her publicly." Well, this past month, Rendi-Wagner gave a keynote speech intended to underpin her claim to the party chancellorship, and Doskozil did not attend. Instead, he went to Germany to celebrate the birthday of his domestic partner, claiming the trip to Germany had been planned longer than Rendi-Wagner's speech and that his non-attendance had nothing to do with internal disputes. Couple this with the fact that Doskozil withdrew from the federal party executive last year and, despite an invitation, did not participated in the New Year's retreat of the SPÖ presidium in January, so rumors are flying. Doskozil was forced to deny speculation that the SPÖ Burgenland wants to split off from the federal party. "The party should appear united to the outside world and clarify problems internally," he said. "This is not only my position, but there is a clear position of the Burgenland Social Democracy and that there is only one common path with the Social Democracy in Austria. The Burgenland Social Democracy is guided by this point of view and this opinion, and every top functionary of the SPÖ in Burgenland has to orient himself on this." It seems it will be an interesting political year in Burgenland!  Corona
Virus in Burgenland: Austria continues with no entry restrictions for travelers arriving
from the United States other than a proof of vaccination, proof of recovery from COVID-19 or a negative Covid-19
test result that must be presented upon entry.As expected, the Austria-wide compulsory vaccination, scheduled to result in significant fines after March 15th, has been suspended. This decision was made by the government on Wednesday, March 9th in the Council of Ministers. The plan is to reconsider this decision in another three months, as the government's commission of experts warned that a new, possibly massive wave could appear in the autumn. The law on compulsory vaccination therefore remains in place. FPÖ party leader, Herbert Kickl, quickly argued that suspension of compulsory vaccination is not enough. He considers the mandate to be unconstitutional and vows to continue the political struggle against it "at all levels." Conversely, Burgenland Governor Hans Peter Doskozil said of the suspension, "From my point of view, this is sad." He believes the country needs to prepare for autumn and universal vaccination is the best solution. As for Burgenland, more than 10,000 people were in quarantine in early March, as the Omikron variant continues to drive a lively infection process. This is also true for the rest of Austria, with nearly 31,000 new cases reported on March 8th and a daily incidence rate of over 2,470 per 100,000 inhabitants. Hospitalizations were also up, with 2,760 patients treated on March 8. However, the intensive care utilization has not risen. Despite Omikron, most of the coronavirus measures have been dropped in Burgenland and much of Austria. The 3-G rule applies only in exceptional cases, the mask requirement is greatly reduced, and the curfew is history. The 3-G rule now only applies in nursing homes and hospitals. The mask requirement remains only in those areas that were also open during the lockdown: the food trade, banks and tobacconists, petrol stations and on public transport. Vienna, however, continues a more restrictive approach, with the 2-G rule also applying in gastronomy and general shopping.  The
Facebook Bunch (from Vanessa Sandhu):Greetings, Burgenland Bunch! I hope that everyone is doing well! This month really did fly by! We welcomed 14 new members, bringing our total membership count up to 1832. If we are still missing you, please come join us! facebook.com//TheBurgenlandBunchOFFICIAL/ Did anyone happen to catch last Friday’s episode of Jeopardy? The Burgenland wine-making region was mentioned! It is nice to see our ancestral homeland being recognized. RootsTech, a virtual family history conference, was held earlier this month. One of the highlights was a presentation by Markus Schönherr in which he discussed “Vital Records and Other Sources for Burgenland.” rootstech//vital-records...burgenland Member Fred Knarr shared a beautiful link to a Sunday service held in his family’s ancestral church in Neuhaus in der Wart. servustv.com/kultur/v/aa2.../ Member Brett Rawart shared an album of photos of Steinbach at dusk. Member Andrea Aminger shared some beautiful photos of Loipersbach in the moonlight. Member Bernhard Antal uploaded a great file containing the civil death records from St. Michael. Included are records from 1894-1925. Member Barbara Gibian Heinrich shared her treasured family recipe for her Grandma Harriet’s Gugelhupf. It looks absolutely delicious! Member Karl J Sarkozi offered a response to a previously published newsletter article entitled “Finding our Bugnitz Burgenland Family” (BB Newsletter #328). He suggests “If your ancestors are still alive and you want to know something from them, simply ask. Don’t wait until they have left this Earth!” This is fantastic advice. There are so many things that I wish that I would have asked my own father about our Inzenhof and Eisenberg an der Pinka family before his untimely death at age fifty. I thought that I would have time, but tomorrow is never promised. You have nothing to lose! The connections you make can be the ones which fill in the missing pieces of your family’s story. Wishing you all good health and happiness! Until next month, Take Care! 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 1646 copies, as interested people purchased 11 more books during this past month. As always, the book is available for online purchase, now at a list price of $8.12 (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!). The book is an excellent read for the Burgenländers in your family. Burgenland Recipes: William Heine writes: This is my Godmother and Aunt Theresa Wailand Schroeder's recipe that my sister Dora Heine Hoffman interrogated her about. Theresa (1911-1991) was raised in Wallendorf, Burgenland, Austria for 15 years by her aunt and uncle before coming to the USA. For more than 10 years Theresa baked these cookies for me, for my birthday. What a gift of love! This final edition of the recipe is after I learned to bake them myself and realized that I needed to add all the details that a non-baker needs to know. READ ALL DIRECTIONS BEFORE STARTING!  Awesome
Kipfel Cookie Recipe (from William Heine) Before any other steps, separate four eggs (organic, cage free) and keep the yolks and whites in separate covered containers. Ingredients for the dough: • 3-1/2 cups white flour (bleached or not) • 4 egg yolks • 1 oz. cake yeast (not dry) • 1/2 pint sour cream (not lite) • 1/2 lb. low sodium sweet butter (frozen) Ingredients for the filling: • 1 lb. finely ground walnuts • 4 egg whites • 1-1/2 cups cane sugar • 1/8 cup high quality brandy Preparation-dough: Make cookie dough first. Wash your hands thoroughly, just simple soap and water. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites. Put flour on a board, then cut and rub in the frozen butter. When the butter chunks are small and rubbed into the flour (like nokedli egg-drop noodles for soup), make a hole in the middle of the flour and crumble in the yeast. Mix the yeast thoroughly with the butter flour mix. Add egg yolks, and by hand, mix by squeezing the yolks throughout the flour-butter-yeast mixture (this is messy but it works!). Add the sour cream, and continue to hand mix thoroughly. Work the dough until it is uniform in color and looks like one homogenous mass. The dough can finally be formed into a roll of constant diameter, then cut into 4 equal pieces. Store the dough in the refrigerator while preparing the filling. Preparation-filling: Beat the egg whites until stiff. This can be done with a dinner fork, or (recommended), with a machine. Mix ground walnuts and sugar together. Add stiff egg whites slowly while mixing. Add brandy. Completing cookies: Remove one section of dough from the refrigerator. Roll it out until it is about 1/8 inch thick. Then take it up and form a ball! Reroll the dough out a second time to less than 1/8 inch thick. Cut into squares 2 inches on a side, putting the trim pieces into another ball. Roll each cut 2 x 2 square, to about a 2 1/2 inch square to achieve a final thickness of about 1/16 inch. (This is the part that takes the most practice to develop the necessary skill, and determines the form of the cookies after baking.) Trim the square to 2 1/2 inches and put the trimmings into the dough ball. Place filling in center of square (not too much!) and fold dough diagonally over it. Push the edges of the resulting triangle together. Roll up the triangle from the diagonal to the tip. With the tip on the bottom, sharply bend the dough with the filling inside so that the ends nearly touch. This takes a lot of time to do properly, but the results are worth it visually. Do the same with the ball of dough you have been collecting, then repeat the process with the 3 remaining pieces of dough in the refrigerator. With practice, you will use up all the ingredients. Test bake a few cookies to find out if your forming of the cookies is correct. Place the formed cookies on an aluminum cookie sheet that has been dusted with flour. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees F for 15 to 20 minutes. When the cookies start to turn a slightly brownish yellow take them out. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Usually the cookie dough thickness and forming process requires a few tries to get it right. As the cookies bake, the dough will thicken, the filling will expand and the cookie ends will stretch out. Properly formed cookies will show the filling at the ends after baking, but not too much. These cookies taste best after a couple days in a cookie tin, letting the flavors mingle. They hold their flavor well and can be frozen for future delight. For maximum flavor, serve the cookies at room temperature or slightly warm. Now you know why making these cookies is a labor of love. Note: This Kipfel recipe makes about 10 dozen cookies.   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, we have now used up our unpublished recipes... thus this recipe section will be dormant whenever we have no recipe to publish. 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! Cartoon of the Month:  |
2) HUNGARIAN MIGRATION OF "MODERN" TIMES Ten years ago in Newsletter 219, I wrote about the Hungarian Emigration Law of 1903 and the associated Passport Act of the same year. This past month, I reviewed that article while considering which article to "recycle" as this month's "Historical BB Newsletter Articles" section (Article 3 below). There were a number of good choices, including the Hungarian Emigration Law article, but ultimately I chose a different one. Nonetheless, the Emigration Law article is quite good and should be part of a well-rounded study of emigration from Burgenland. If you haven't read it, go back and do so! Within that article, there was a link to an English translation of the Emigration Law; however, that link is now broken. While searching to see if I could find an alternative link (I did not), I stumbled across another interesting article that is the basis for the article you are currently reading. It was a self-contained chapter from a 1931 book titled "International Migrations, Volume II: Interpretations." That book can be best described as a collection of independent but related essays, one essay per chapter, all tied to migration. The 28-page chapter of interest was by Gusztáv Thirring (1861-1941) and titled "Hungarian Migration of Modern Times." As you can see above, I adopted his title as my article title... but added quotes around Modern to clue you that the "modern" of his article is not that of mine. Dr. Professor Gusztáv Thirring was a Hungarian geographer, demographer, statistician and professor, and a long-time worker in, and eventual Director of, the Statistical Office of the City of Budapest, as well as being a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was born December 25, 1861 in Sopron and died March 31, 1941, at age 79, in Budapest. Gusztáv studied at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest then began working at a university institute in 1884. After 4 years he obtained a position in the Statistical Office, eventually reaching the rank of Director in 1906. He was particularly interested in migrant statistics, his home town of Sopron, and his adopted town of Budapest. His 1931 chapter article covers emigration from Hungary in the 1840-1930 period, those years being the "modern times" of his title. As such, they are years quite relevant to our Burgenland Bunch emigration interests and to the 1903 Laws of my 10-year-old 2012 article. I am pleased to report that the generalities about Hungarian migration I included in my 2012 article are well-supported by his chapter. What makes reporting about his chapter worthwhile is that he supports his observations with significant data, provides details about the migration that go well beyond what I mentioned, and has an immediacy to the data and issues involved due to his writing in 1931. Before I begin reporting on his work, I'll note two things: First, he very clearly acknowledges the limitations of the data sets available to him, sets that include internal Hungarian government migration data, departure ports data, destination ports data, as well as the government summary reports about emigration into those destinations. The limitations arise because the various data sets cover different time periods and data items, often defining people's origins, occupations, etc. in differing ways, and were gathered for specific purposes that seldom exactly matched that of other data sets. Thus the specific observations Thirring makes often cover only limited time periods or can be drawn from only one source. Nonetheless, from prior reading on these topics via other sources, I think his observations are accurate... or, perhaps more correctly, match those from other sources that, by necessity, should be based on the same underlying data. My second note is that I found a bias toward a Hungarian "superiority" interpretation of his data-driven observations. This is not surprising in that he was Hungarian born, lived out his life in Hungary, and worked for a Hungarian government office... but it is somewhat humorous when considered 90 years later. I believe we can trust his data-driven observations... but we must question some of his interpretations of that data. For your entertainment, I will give a few examples of biased or, at least, questionable interpretation, but will not dwell on such. So on to my review of his chapter... Thirring begins his chapter with some generalities about emigration from Hungary, first noting an exodus, as he calls it, to the United States that US emigration statistics did not consider to be an emigration. Rather, he said, it was an exercise in political asylum, the non-emigrants being "Hungarian patriots after the failure of the struggle for independence in 1848 and 1849." He further notes that the first two true emigrants from Hungary appeared in US statistics in 1861. He follows that up by explaining, much as I did in my 2012 Migration article, that it took until nearly 1880 for the out-flow of emigrants—mostly going to North America, first to the US and later to Canada after the US imposed restrictions—to become significant enough to draw the attention of the Hungarian government, who then initiated actions to discourage such emigration. From there, Thirring works his way to the restrictive 1903 and 1909 Hungarian Emigration Laws and the companion 1903 Passport Act. This is the first place where his pro-Hungary bias shows to a significant level... he is much more inclined than non-Hungarian writers to treat these laws as protective rather than restrictive, and to describe negatively the conditions in destination countries. For example, he claims emigrants to Canada "...were completely disillusioned and faced with great obstacles and hardships; they were only moderately prosperous." Of those who emigrated to South America, he states: "They had been lured away by deceptive promises of Italian steamship companies and found not the loudly-proclaimed landed estates but only the hardest kind of work on coffee plantations or at other tasks. Under such conditions and exposed to a deadly climate many died." Thirring next covers an aspect of emigration that I ignored: Hungarians Emigrating to other European Countries. He speaks of emigration into Austria as being one of the largest and longest standing, noting that it still rose six-fold between 1857 and 1900, from 53,000 to 325,000, and he attributes this to the industrialization of Austria versus the agricultural nature of Hungary. Thirring writes: "This emigration to Austria drew off especially the intelligent, able-bodied elements of the population, a serious loss for Hungary, although it afforded important advantages for the people involved." He also mentions that the emigration to Germany "...is hardly thirty years old (Ed: in 1931) and has been directed to the large German cities in which qualified Hungarian laborers, tradespeople and persons with other occupations have found a good livelihood.... In the 15 years, 1899—1913, Hungary lost 42,000 persons thus." As he introduces his detailed emigration statistics, Thirring states that the Hungarian records are the most complete concerning outflow and return of Hungarians, but they go back only to 1899. For prior years, he depends on the departure and arrival port statistics, which seldom have anything about returns to Hungary and are often nonspecific as to the nationality and/or ethnicity of emigrants. He writes that, from 1898 to 1913, 1.4 million Hungarian emigrants were registered, but some of these registered multiple times across those years, some left without registering, and some returned permanently to Hungary. He estimates Hungary's combined loss over those 15 years as "not less than 7 per cent of its population." Overall, approximately 32% of registered Hungarian emigrants were female. Thirring indicates that statistics for Emigration through German Seaports (Hamburg, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven and Stettin) go back to 1871 and classify emigrants by country or continent of destination. Statistics for other European seaports (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Genoa) began in 1899. Much later, the seaports of Havre, Cherbourg, Liverpool, Naples, Trieste and Fiume became available. However, he notes that the lack of statistics from the Italian ports engaged in the South American trade leaves a perceptible gap. As for US port statistics, he notes they supply abundant demographics but often lump Austria and Hungary together. As for the "Hungarian" emigration, pre-1885 it was almost exclusively through Hamburg but then Bremen quickly became the dominant port. Rotterdam and Antwerp became somewhat important after 1900 and, after 1904, Fiume drew 20-30%, mostly because it was designated as the officially-sanctioned port. Thirring notes, perhaps with a little surprise in his words, that "98.5 per cent of the emigrants went to the United States, the participation of the other overseas countries being astonishingly small." When reading Thirring's work, one must remain aware that the Hungarian-based data he summarizes in his results includes all lands and ethnicities in the half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that Hungary ruled pre-1921. Thus, the composition of the 1.4 million registered emigrants I mentioned a few paragraphs back, based on Nationality, was 29% Magyar, 22% Slovak, 17% German, 13% Rumanian, 10% Croatian, 5% Serbian and 4% Ruthenian. A different table for these emigrants, one based on Linguistic Stock, has percentages: 29% Magyar, 31% Slovak, 16% German, 0% Rumanian, 18% Croatian, 2% Serbian and 3% Ruthenian. The most glaring issue here is that the 13% Rumanian of the nationality breakout completely disappear in the linguistic breakout (the language was not in the table). Instead, the proportions of Slovak and Croatian languages goes way up, two languages largely unrelated to Romanian. This seems an obvious error in the underlying data, which Thirring credits to the "Hungarian Central Statistical Bureau based on data for 1904-5 and 1907-8 to 1912-13." However, he is quick to recognize the problem so presents still another table based on US port data for 1905-1913. It shows: 31% Magyar, 21% Slovak, 17% German, 10% Rumanian, 9% Croatian, 6% Serbian and 4% Ruthenian (and less than 1% Other), a set of proportions much more in line with the nationality data he first presented. The purpose in mentioning the above is threefold: first, to make it clear that the "Hungarian" datasets involve nationalities/ethnicities other than Hungarian/Magyar; second, to give a clear example of the dataset issues Thirring is facing; and third, to credit him again for acknowledging the limitations of those datasets. You should keep these points in mind when considering the statistics he provides. From these same Hungarian data sets, Thirring breaks out the Occupations of emigrants in the 1905-1907 and 1911-1913 periods. Since there was little difference between periods, I have combined them here. It should come as no surprise that over 71% were day laborers of some kind (agricultural, mining, industrial or other) or that over 50% of all such emigrants were agricultural day laborers. An additional 18% were listed as agriculturalists, which I assume to mean that they farmed their own land (presumably family members taking over in their absence). Some 5%, most likely predominantly female, were listed as domestic servants. Only 3.3% combined fell in the categories of industrialists, learned professions and tradespeople and there was an additional 1.7% in an other category. He writes that "it cannot be denied that a marked characteristic of early Hungarian emigration was the exceedingly large proportion of laborers in unskilled occupations who relied on their physical strength." Age-wise, Thirring reports 22% in the 0-19 age group, 35% in 20-29, 25% in 30-39, 14% in 40-49 and 4% in 50+. So, the bulk of the emigrants are young working age, with 82% under 40 and 96% under 50. There is a slight difference between the two time periods, with the age distribution being slightly older in the 1911-1913 period. Given these are registered emigrants, I suspect a significant part of the small shift to older ages is repeat emigrants returning to America a subsequent time (however, Thirring does not provide any such speculation [other than what can be interpreted from his earlier words when he noted that the underlying data does not distinguish repeat emigrants]). As for Gender, Thirring is forced to use non-Hungarian sources for the 1871-1892 period and Hungarian sources for the 1901 to 1913 period. He provides three different measures for the earlier period and one for the more recent period. Regardless of earlier dataset, what seems clear is that the percentage female decreased in the earlier period but rose rapidly in the later period, dropping from nearly 40% female down to around 25% before rising to nearly 50% by 1913. Thirring does not provide an explanation for the falling percentages of females in the earlier period, however we know from our Burgenland experience that early emigration was largely complete families going to American to obtain farm land, with little or no intent to return. Later emigration was individuals, largely male, going to work for a few years in America to earn money. For the later period, Thirring says "This increase [in female percentage] was due in part to a prohibition on the emigration of men liable to military service, issued at the time of the Balkan Wars, and in part, to a growing tendency of females to migrate, for the number of women emigrating increased rapidly." Thirring next spends some time on what he calls Continental Emigration, a topic I have seldom considered but that he states constituted one-seventh of Hungary's total out-migration over years 1899 to 1913.  While
yearly percentages varied quite a bit, he says this had more to do with total emigration changing (driven
by numbers going [or not] to America) than the number of Hungarians migrating into neighboring states. However,
the data he provides suggests that the actual numbers emigrating within the continent rose in the 1904-1909
period (at least doubling... see graph to the right), driven by a large increase to Germany starting in
1904 and a 50% increase to Romania starting in 1908, so it seems evident that some would-be-American emigrants
found alternative destinations during down years in America. As for those continental destinations, Thirring reports 42 thousand went to Germany from 1899-1913, compared to 102 thousand to Romania and 50 thousand to other states. The lack of a count to Austria is notable but, as Thirring put it: "Hitherto, Hungarian statistics have not recorded Continental emigration in its entirety because the relations of Hungary with Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina did not permit an exact record of the Hungarians migrating to those countries." In non-politic language, I think he means it would have been political suicide for Hungary to consider emigrants to countries under direct Austrian rule as going to a foreign country, as Hungary also was under their common ruler and part of the greater Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, political expediency did not need to be considered by Thirring when denigrating other countries in 1931. He writes: "A low state of civilization in neighboring countries to the south and east (Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia, Rumania and Bulgaria) held out a promising future to Hungarians who had reached a higher stage." Clearly his pro-Hungary bias colors his writing here... but his subsequent words make that ring false. He writes: "Regarded as a whole, Continental emigration is distinguished by the relatively large number of females taking part in it... The great stream of females which flowed over into Rumania was, to a great extent, composed of domestic servants, a class that has migrated to Bucharest for many years... They were welcomed because of their trustworthiness and manual skill." To my mind, this "great stream" of domestic servants provides no support for the superior "civilization" of Hungarians relative to Romania. Thirring writes more extensively about the comparatively large emigration to Romania. One comment that struck me was: "The proportion of elderly persons in the emigration to Rumania is strikingly large." While he explains why this age group might choose to move to an adjacent country rather than overseas ("they undergo the lesser exertion of emigration to a neighboring country much more readily than the hardships of a wearisome sea voyage"), he does not explain why Romania was an apparently preferred destination among neighboring countries. He also reports race/stock of emigrants from Hungary in the 1910-13 period (the only period providing such data), again with much emphasis on Romania as a destination. One statement initially confused me: "The statistics for those years... show that Rumanians constituted about four-fifths of the emigrants who streamed in great masses to Rumania." The problem here is that the word "Rumanians" referred only to ethnic Romanians living outside of the then national area of Romania. Many of those came from Transylvania, which was then a constituent part of Hungary yet was over 70% ethnic Romanian (Transylvania declared union with Romania in Dec 1918 and officially became part of it via the Treaty of Trianon). Thirring also notes that "The greater portion (60 per cent) of the Magyars also migrated to Rumania (mostly the Széklers from eastern Transylvania)," that among Germans, a "considerable body to Rumania," and that "The small Ruthenian migration is directed principally to Rumania," so this emigration to Romania was not just a within-ethnicity movement. However, ethnic Germans favored Germany as a destination, Serbs favored other Balkan states, Slovaks favored Germany and Other European states (defined as not Germany, Romania or the Balkan states), and the Croats favored Other European states. Thirring next moves to the post-WW-I emigration. This is an era that is less relevant to Burgenland, as it was now part of Austria but, as you may have noticed, Thirring made no specific reference to pre-war West Hungary, so this is only a small difference. He begins his section on post-war migration noting that, just before the outbreak of WW-I, there was a notable upswing in Hungarian emigration to the United States. He writes that "had it not been for the war the emigration fever would have broken out in more virulent form." The Hungarian government had put a "compulsory stoppage" to emigration in mid-1914 and canceled its licenses with ship lines and ports. It even strove to induce expatriates to return to their native land, which worked well initially but died out quickly. After the war, Hungary adopted strict measures to control the renewed and initially heavy emigration of what he called "the despairing population." The US also adopted laws restricting emigration from southern and eastern Europe, setting Hungary's initial quota at 5,638 emigrants/year but dropping it to 473 in 1925. The consequence was that Hungarians who fled went to Canada, Brazil and Argentina, prompting Canada in 1923 to admit only Hungarian peasants and agricultural laborers. Trades-people, industrialists and intellectuals were denied entry. In 1914, 143,000 Hungarian emigrants departed for the US before the ban was instated; 40,000 expatriates returned before year end and another 5,000 in 1915. From 1915 through 1924, only 37,000 emigrants departed Hungary while some 32,000 returned, most (30,000) in the 3 years right after the war ended. Thirring also notes that the post-war emigration was more female and more family than in the immediately prior decades. He ends his article by talking about repatriation. I'll not bother with many statistics from that section but will point out key ideas he addresses. First, he estimates that about 24% of Hungarian emigrants eventually returned to Hungary, noting that most returnees were from America (as they were the only ones to have the financial ability to pay for a return... in fact, Thirring notes most emigrants departed Hungary with no means but the returnees "...acquired some resources in America and they considered themselves capable of beginning a new mode of life in their native country"). Males were far more likely to repatriate than females, 32% to 13%, and emigrant families even less likely to return. Percentage-wise, those engaged in trade, industry and commerce were more likely to return than agricultural workers, but Thirring attributes this to the fact that most agricultural workers were forced to change occupations in America and returned under their new category. Thirring concludes by saying "Indeed for 1920-24 foreign statistics show more repatriates than emigrants. Should this state of affairs become established it ought to be greeted as a development of the emigration movement favorable to Hungary." |
3) HISTORICAL BB NEWSLETTER ARTICLES Editor: This is part of our series designed to recycle interesting articles from the BB Newsletters of past years. In the entry below from 10 year ago, I described Stephen Morse's tools for accessing ship manifest data. At the time, I claimed it was a much better search tool for exploring Ellis Island data... and ten years later, I still think it is. If you haven't yet made his "Gold Form" your primary tool for this work, it is time to do so! THE BURGENLAND BUNCH NEWS No. 219 March 31, 2012 STEPHEN MORSE'S ONE-STEP TOOLS If you search for emigration records on the Ellis Island site using only the built-in search tool, you are doing yourself a disfavor. Why? Because the Ellis Island Gold Form, found on Stephen Morse's One-Step website is much, much, much better... and it is just one of the many tools he provides. Ellis Island's search tool is fine... if the name was indexed in exactly the form you have and the resulting link points to the correct ship manifest. But, if there are spelling, transcription or linkage errors or any other such common thing, my experience is that Steve Morse's tools, given their flexibility, gives you a much better chance to find the record. First, a little background... just who is this Stephen Morse fellow?  Well,
he is an amateur genealogist who, while researching his Russian-Jewish origins, became quite frustrated because he
could not find one particular immigration record. He is also a Ph.D. Electrical Engineer who worked at Bell
Telephone Laboratories, the IBM Watson Research Center, GE's Corporate Research and Development, Compagnie
Internationale pour l'Informatique in France and Intel Corporation during his career. He also taught at CCNY,
Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, UC Berkeley, SUNY Albany, Stanford University, and San Francisco State University,
authored numerous technical papers and wrote four textbooks. But he is probably best known as the architect of the
Intel 8086 microprocessor that became the core of the first PC's and the grandfather of many of the PC processors
that followed. So you might suspect that he has the skills to create a great computer-based tool.In fact, he wrote his first One-Step tool during the course of a single night in 2001 after his frustration at the slowness and inflexibility of early Ellis Island searches overflowed. He has since written many other tools, all free and all available on the One-Step website. To emphasize yet again how much better Steve's tools are, you should try putting in a fake, very strange name in the Ellis search and, when it comes back with no hits, check out the "Additional Search Tools" link near the top of that page... it will take you to a JewishGen page that, tah-daa!, links to some of Steve's One-Step tools! Not all of the tools apply to genealogy, but all provide improved access to databases on the web (in some cases, you must have an account with the organization that provides the database in order to see the results; databases on Ancestry.com are examples). The tools of interest for genealogy include 5 search forms for Ellis Island (each do different things; plus 3 forms that add in Castle Garden and other New York ship lists), 5 forms for Castle Garden alone, 3 forms each for passenger landing at Baltimore, Boston, Galveston, New Orleans, Philadelphia and San Francisco, sections with forms for searching US censuses, Canadian & British censuses and New York state censuses, a big section on vital records, a section on genetic (DNA) genealogy, a section specific for holocaust and Eastern Europe, plus sections on phonetic matching, foreign languages, and more. Even if these forms were not so much better, having centralized access to searches of so many collections is valuable in itself. (In fact, this article is taking me forever to write because I keep playing with the different tools!) But let's go back to the Ellis Island Gold Form... why is it better? For two types of reasons, mainly: 1) flexibility in identifying the person you are searching for; and 2) the ability to add qualifiers that eliminate inappropriate hits. For the Surname, you have one-click options for searching for a name that starts with or is what you enter, sounds like what you enter, is phonetically the same as what you enter, or (and think about this), you can leave it blank! This last option is quite useful if you want to see who else emigrated from a particular village or if you just can't imagine exactly how the surname was spelled 100 years ago or was mangled when it was written on the ship manifest and/or later transcribed into the search index. For the First Name, you again have the starts with or is, sounds like and blank options, but phonetic is replaced by contains (the real name contains the characters you entered). A unique feature is that the two next fields allow you to enter the name of a Traveling Companion (especially useful for finding families traveling together or reducing the number of hits for common names). These fields have the same one-click options as First Name field. Next you have fields for Ship Name and Port Name, should you know either of these. Then you have fields where you can enter ranges for Year of Arrival, Age at Arrival, or Year of Birth, as well as Marital Status and Gender. These are very useful in limiting the number of hits... but again, don't expect that what you believe is an exact arrival year, age or birth year will be what is on the manifest... give a short range around your "known" value! The next section provides check boxes for Ethnicity. For Burgenland searches, I usually check the Hungarian, Austrian and Croatian boxes (and only add in German if I fail with this more limited search). This feature is extremely useful in reducing inappropriate hits, so don't fail to select these boxes. The rest of the form lets you indicate what you'd like to see in the resulting listings of hits and how you would like records sorted (but the defaults are usually just fine). I often do searches just by selecting the appropriate ethnicity boxes and entering a few letters of the last name and village name... for Burgenland, you should do separate searches using both the German and Hungarian village names (and occasionally the Croatian name also). Use our BB Villages Pages to get the various names... but don't expect it to be spelled exactly right in the Ellis index regardless of language! The real power of the Gold Form is that it gives you the ability to devise complex search strategies using every bit of information you know, even if those bits are not fully accurate. So, if you have a tough research challenge, don't give up if you fail to find what you are looking for on the first pass; instead, consider how you can creatively define the search to get past potential errors... the Gold Form gives you the power but you need to put it to work! The above is merely a short primer on using the Ellis Island Gold Form... and does not even attempt to tell you about how the other One-Step genealogical forms work. However, Stephen Morse provides much more information at page About this Website and how to use it accessible on his main One-Step page. It is an entertaining read and I do suggest you review it, as it provides great strategies for using the full power of this suite of tools. I'll also note that Bob Unger provided an article in BB NL #152 from 2006, entitled "A Much Better Method for Searching Immigration Records" that reported on the early One-Step tools. |
4) ETHNIC EVENTS LEHIGH VALLEY, PA Friday, April 1: The Alpenlanders at the Lancaster Liederkranz. Info: www.lancasterliederkranz.com Saturday, April 2: Ein Abend in Wien at the Lancaster Liederkranz. Music by Bernie’s Orchestra. Info: www.lancasterliederkranz.com Sunday, April 3: Country-Western Dance at the Coplay Sängerbund. Music by the Josef Kroboth Orchestra. Info: www.coplaysaengerbund.com Friday, April 8: Kermit Ohlinger at the Reading Liederkranz. Info: www.readingliederkranz.com Saturday, April 9: Bockbier Fest at the Reading Liederkranz. Music by The Alpenlanders. Info: www.readingliederkranz.com Sunday, April 10: Dave Betz Band at the Coplay Sängerbund. Info: www.coplaysaengerbund.com Friday, April 22: Kermit Ohlinger at the Reading Liederkranz. Info: www.readingliederkranz.com Friday, April 22: Maria & John at the Lancaster Liederkranz. Info: www.lancasterliederkranz.com Sunday, April 24: Spring Concert at the Reading Liederkranz. Entertainment by the Reading Liederkranz Singers, the Lancaster Liederkranz Chorus and Hobbychor, and Don Bitterlich on accordion. Info: www.readingliederkranz.com Sunday, April 24: Viennese Ball at the Coplay Sängerbund. Music by the Emil Schanta Band. Info: www.coplaysaengerbund.com Friday, April 29: Kermit Ohlinger at the Reading Liederkranz. Info: www.readingliederkranz.com NEW BRITAIN, CT Friday-Sunday, 1-8 pm: Biergarten is open. Austrian Donau Club, 545 Arch Street. ST. LOUIS, MO (none) UPPER MIDWEST (none) |
5) BURGENLAND EMIGRANT OBITUARIES Mary Stubits (née Weber)  Mary A. Stubits, 100, of
Whitehall, Pennsylvania, passed away on March 1, 2022, in her residence. She was the wife of the late John
Stubits.Born in Eisenberg an der Pinka, Austria, she was the daughter of the late Felix and Pauline (Eberhardt) Weber. Mary spent her working years employed at various sewing mills in the area before her retirement. She was a lifelong member of St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church of Coplay where she belonged to the Altar & Rosary Society. Mary loved to keep active and enjoyed walking and working outside. Mary is survived by daughter, Inge, wife of Helmut Wachter of Austria; grandchildren, Helmut Jr., and Sabine; great-grandchildren, Kora Wachter and Jenny, wife of Philipp Seper; great-great grandchildren, Nicholas and Anna Seper; and nieces Suzanne, wife of Ron Rabenold and Rosemary Schlager. In addition to her parents and husband, she was predeceased by one sister, five brothers, and one nephew. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 10:30 AM on Wednesday, March 9, 2022, at St. Peter's R.C.C., 4 South 5th Street. Coplay, PA 18037. A viewing will be held from 9:30-10:30 AM in the church. Burial will follow at parish cemetery. Brubaker Funeral Home Inc., Coplay, is entrusted with arrangements. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in her memory to the church at the above address. Online condolences may be recorded at www.brubakerfuneralhome.com. Published by Morning Call on Mar. 6, 2022 Maria Unger (née Pehr) Maria Unger of
Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, died Wednesday, March 9, 2022, in the Ellen Memorial Healthcare Center. She was the
widow of Josef Unger, who passed away December 1, 2019.Born in Deutsch Schützen, Austria, daughter of the late Paul and Maria (Unger) Pehr, she was of the Catholic faith. Prior to retirement she was employed in the garment industry. Maria, enjoyed sewing, knitting, crocheting, cooking, and baking. She was a loving and caring mother who will be deeply missed. She is survived by her son Robert Unger, her sister Gabriella Gazdag, and nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by a brother, Josef Pehr. The funeral will be Thursday, March 17, 2022, at noon in the Frey-Fetsock Funeral Home, Inc., 201 RT 191, Village of LaAnna, South Sterling. Internment Moravian Cemetery, Newfoundland. Friends may call Wednesday March 16, 2022, from 2-5 PM. |
| END OF NEWSLETTER (Even good things must end!) |
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