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

Austrian State Treaty, 1955; Feedback Revisited: In May, I wrote about the Austrian State Treaty of 1955 and invited comments from those who lived through it. I published two reports last month and noted that Eva Hergovich, from Canada, said, "I would like to respond in regards to the State Treaty of 1955, as I recall it quite vividly. Unfortunately, I am extremely busy at the moment. In a little while you'll hear from me."

This month, she found the time to write:

Memories from May 15, 1955, the signing of the Austrian State Treaty (Staatsvertrag) in Vienna, Austria

In 1955, I was in year 1 of secondary school (Gymnasium) in Eisenstadt (which was 5th grade in the North American school system). The school was, and still is, located across from the “Landhaus,” which is the seat of the government of Burgenland. My home state of Burgenland was occupied by the Russians at that time, while other states of Austria’s federation were occupied by the British, the French, and the Americans. Vienna was occupied by all four Allied occupation troops whose commanders would patrol Austria’s capital. They were known as “The Four in the Jeep.”

I recall watching the Russian troops from the classroom window as they exercised their military drill in front of the Landhaus every morning.

Austria was desperately trying to free itself from foreign occupation. We knew that the obstacle was the Russians. All other Allied forces were more than willing to leave the country. And then, all of a sudden, it happened! The government of the USSR finally agreed to leave Austria … though for a hefty price. I do not recall all details, but I do remember that millions of metric tons of crude oil from Austria’s oil rigs had to be handed over to the Russian government… in addition to other payments in order to obtain freedom. However, this was happily done.

There was a euphoria in the country that even I, as a kid, could feel. It is hard to describe. I had never experienced anything like this before. In school, our teachers ditched the program for the day, and the topic was the upcoming state treaty. I’d like to note that we had a different teacher for every subject, but all of them talked to us about the upcoming state treaty. We listened carefully to what it all meant. For me, as a Croatian from Burgenland, I retained the content of ‘Article 7,’ which secured the rights of minorities in the country… at that time, it applied to the Slovenians in Carinthia, and to the Croatians in Burgenland. Above all, the commitment to neutrality was explained to us in detail… and this, many times over. The homework given on that Saturday morning (there was still school on Saturdays) was to listen to the radio (we had no TV in 1955)!

May 15th was a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning. After having attended mass in the morning, we rushed home and were glued to the radio. The signing of the Austrian State Treaty took place at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna. We listened as the reporter described the process: “Er nimmt die goldene Feder,” referring to each signatory: “He takes the golden fountain pen.”

Wow! I, as an 11-year-old, was so impressed that the fountain pen was made out of gold!!

The signatories were:
 ● John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, for the USA
 ● Vyacheslav Molotov, Foreign Minister, for the USSR
 ● Harold Macmillan, Foreign Secretary, for the UK
 ● Antoine Pinay, Foreign Minister, for France
 ● the High Commissioners of all the occupying forces
 ● Julius Raab, Chancellor, and Leopold Figl, Foreign Minister, for “an Austria that was again restored to a Free and Democratic Nation, as it had been before 1938.”

After the signing, all the dignitaries appeared on the balcony of the Belvedere Palace, waving at the thousands of cheering Viennese that had gathered in front of the Palace.

Leopold Figl, Austria’s Foreign Minister, held up the newly-signed document to the crowd and declared in a strong voice:

"ÖSTERREICH ist FREI” (AUSTRIA is FREE)

It was a moment in my life that I will never forget.

P.S. On a humorous side note: Many, many, years later, I studied German literature at the University of Toronto. One of the professors, Dr. Weissenborn from Germany, was very interested in the events of Austria. It was puzzling to him that the Russians agreed to let go of Austria. One day, after his lecture, he called me over with a smirk on his face: “You know, I figured it out. The Austrian delegation that negotiated with the Russians in Moscow, brought with them the best wine from the Wachau region in Austria.” “And from Burgenland,” I keenly added. Dr. Weissenborn continued: “I believe the Austrians simply drank them under the table.”



The Beer Party: Given the state of politics in the US, I can't help but mention that the Beer Party (Bierpartei, BIER), which is an Austrian satirical political party, was in the news last month. Europe has a tradition of satire that far exceeds anything in the US (in fact, retired BB VP, Hannes Graf, ran a successful satire web page long before he got involved with the BB). Founded in 2014 by Marco Pogo, the front man of the Viennese punk rock band Turbobier, the Beer Party was known as the Beer Party of Austria (Bierpartei Österreich, BPÖ) until it was renamed in 2020.

Party leader Marco Pogo, whose real name is Dominik Wlazny, holds a medical degree and was a practicing doctor before the success of his band led him to change careers. Apparently, the idea for the Beer Party grew out of a song, "Die Bierpartei," which appeared on Turbobier's debut album, Irokesentango (Mohawk Tango). In an interview at the time, Pogo stated that "the country needs a strong movement—a strong movement for beer... I did it for the country."

Initially, the party's activity was confined to Vienna, where BIER first appeared on ballots in the 2019 Austrian legislative election and in the 2020 Viennese state election. It was unable to attain sufficient votes in 2019 for representation in the National Council, Federal Council, or the Landtag, but claimed 1.8% of Viennese votes in 2020 and was able to win mandates (seats) in 11 of Vienna's districts.

Beer parties exist throughout the world, but especially in Eastern Europe. Poland's Beer-Lovers' Party was started as a prank but won 2.97% of the vote and 16 seats in the Polish 1991 parliamentary elections, even becoming part of the coalition government with its own minister. Such parties are satirical but can develop more serious platforms, as was the case for the Polish Beer-Lover's Party.

In the 2020 Vienna state election, the Austrian Beer Party campaign kicked off with a "beer rally" led by Pogo. One of the party's election promises was to replace the Hochstrahlbrunnen, a fountain in Schwarzenbergplatz, with a beer fountain. A more serious goal was to provide support to Vienna's culture scene during the corona crisis, which was badly hit by pandemic lockdown measures. Still, the winning of 11 seats came as a surprise. The party had listed only six candidates for the election, so it had to scramble to nominate additional representatives, with Pogo serving as a representative for Simmering, the 11th district.

In the 2022 Austrian presidential election, Pogo collected the necessary 6,000 declarations of support to appear on the ballot under his real name Dominik Wlazny. He won 8.3% of the nationwide vote, good for third place behind incumbent Alexander Van der Bellen.

As for the upcoming 2024 legislative election, the Beer Party has already received enough validated signatures to be on the ballot in the whole of Austria... and political pundits think it has a real chance of getting in. Political scientist Katrin Praprotnik sees the most important issues for Wlazny and his beer party – equal opportunities, young people, equal rights, health and education – as being particularly interesting for “voters to the left of center”. There are no longer any demands for a beer fountain, and Wlazny has said goodbye to his artistic alias, appearing more serious since the federal presidential election.

BIER, however, remains a shoe-string operation, with little funding. Its campaign has kicked off with just nine poster stands (one for each Austrian state)... and, because of its novelty, much expectation of additional free advertising in the press.

Their poster stands are ~5-foot-tall three-sided stands being placed in strategic public locations, with a state-specific slogan on one side, the nation-wide slogan "A party without politicians" and a picture of Wlazny on the second side, and the party "menu" (they don't call it a platform) on the third side. The Burgenland-specific slogan is shown to the right. It translates to 'Beer after wine, treat yourself," which is a play on the words of an old German aphorism about the order in which you should not drink alcoholic beverages [going back to beer after you have graduated to wine is considered a social failure... or will possibly make you sick!]. Their twist is to use it as a way to say "be yourself, do what you want." Vienna's poster says "Next stop: cohesion," as they already have a foothold there. While the party says they don't want to plaster the whole country with posters, the reality is there is not enough funds for a larger campaign. They estimate their total election campaign costs will be 350,000 euros (much less than established parties).

What do you think? Would a beer party get traction here?



Civil Recording District Changes: Thanks to Angelika Richter, I became aware that the Unterfrauenhaid (Lök, Loók) civil recording district was established effective December 1, 1901. That affected three villages, Unterfrauenhaid itself, which moved from the Stoob district, Lackendorf, which moved into it from the Lackenbach district, and Raiding, which moved from the Neckenmarkt district. We have updated our FamilySearch page to document these recording district changes.

As I've said before, discovering changes like these is not easy, as I've never found a comprehensive listing of such district changes. Thus I thank Angelika for mentioning this and I invite you to inform me if you discover one we have not documented... or write me even if you simply discover that civil records seem to "disappear" for a village... that is usually a hint that they were moved to a new district. If so, I can probably figure out where they went and then document the change for you and other researchers.



The Facebook Bunch (from Vanessa Sandhu):

Greetings, Burgenland Bunch!

It’s hard to believe that the end of summer is upon us! I’m looking forward to the chilly fall nights of genealogy research on the horizon. Please consider joining us in our Facebook group if you haven’t already! This month, we welcomed 12 new members, bringing our membership count to 2227. facebook.com/share/

Member Ryan Strawn shared a YouTube video featuring our own Steve Huber. On the clip, Steve performed the song “Burgenland you are so beautiful”. You can enjoy it here: youtu.be/pAe

Member Franz Stangl shared some beautiful photos of a celebration at Castle Güssing in honor of "Maria Snow" (the memorial day of "Maria Maggiore"). On this day, for centuries, people of the region have made a pilgrimage to the chapel for mass. The Neo-Gothic altar dates back to the year 1794.

Member Fred Knarr kept us all updated on the Austrian Olympians competing in the Paris Olympics. The Austrian sailing duo of Lara Vadlau and Lukas Mähr won the gold medal in the 470 class. Making Burgenland extremely proud was Valentin Bontus. Valentin, of Podersdorf’s Yacht Club, brought home a gold medal in kitesurfing! 

With his Burgenland heritage, Joe Kovacs brought home a silver medal for the USA in the shotput competition! Joe Kovacs born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and grew up in Nazareth, PA. Joe’s family is from Szentpéterfa, which is just over the border from Eberau, Gaas and Moschendorf. BB Staff member Bob Strauch shared some more information about Joe: Joe’s “paternal grandmother, Stella Kovacs (née Kositz) was born in Nazareth, but her father Mathias was from Steingraben and her mother Gisela (née Stelzmann) was from Moschendorf and was also a great-aunt to Verena Dunst, member of the Burgenland government who visited last October with Gov. Doskozil.” We are all very proud of Joe and all of Austria’s Olympians!

Member Renate Reingrabner recommended that anyone interested in life around Lake Neusiedl (from 1890-1960) check out the village museum (Dorfmuseum – Freilichtmuseum) in Mönchhof. She writes “It is very informative, nice and authentically designed. An entire village was built. For this purpose, Mr. Haubenwallner (Pepo) dismantled old houses and rebuilt them in the village museum. The main focus was on the crafts, workshops and everyday life of the time. As if the grandfather were about to come out of the wine cellar and the great-grandmother was fetching eggs from the chicken coop. And always on the last Sunday in July, the workshops come alive. The bakery bakes, the blacksmith forges, the cinema shows old news, the hatter makes hats, etc. This is how our ancestors lived back then.“

Member Andrea Aminger shared some nice photos and a video from the border crossing in Mörbisch, where an event was held to commemorate "35 years of the Fall of the Iron Curtain." Several informative signs were set up for guests to read about the historical significance of the area.

Andrea also provided a link to a story (Matrikenbücher der Evangelischen Kirche im Burgenland werden digitalisiert) updating the progress that has occurred in the digitization of the Protestant parish church books. Completion is anticipated this winter!

Member Samantha Schwarz shared some sad news regarding the passing of her great aunt, Theresia (Unger) Blank. Theresia was the daughter of Johann Unger and Anna Gröller, who emigrated from Strem and Deutsch Tschantschendorf. Theresia researched the village of Strem and inspired Samantha to become involved in research and dancing with the Schuhplattlers. We are very sorry for your loss, Samantha. Theresia will be missed!

Another sad bit of news comes from Member Kathy Lorber. Kathy writes, ”My Mother, Eleanor Poglayen Mutaw passed away on August 8, 2024 in Vernon Hill, IL at the age of 98. Eleanor’s mother, Ludmilla Mullner, was born in Apetlon in 1900 and moved to Waukegan, IL in 1906. Ludmilla’s parents were John/Janos Mullner and Eva Opitz of Apetlon. The family lived in Apetlon for generations. Other family names include Pilles, Loos, Pitzl, Unger, Horvath and Tschuner. My mother attended the Burgenland meetings in Waukegan in the 90’s and was proud of her Austrian heritage.“ We are very sorry for your loss, Kathy! May the memory of your wonderful mother be a blessing!

The Coplay Sängerbund is hosting its Oktoberfest celebration on Sunday, September 15th, 2024. Music will be provided by Josef Kroboth. The parade begins at 2:30 pm. There will be performances by the Auerhahn Schuhplattlers and the Button-Box committee. There will be a Sing-a-long and a Masskrugstemmen competition. Admission is $5 per person and the event is open to the public.

Member Steve Lamberty shared an interesting video about the origins of the Hungarian people. youtu.be/ojb

That’s all for now! Have a safe, happy, and healthy month!

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 1778 copies, as interested people purchased 2 books during this past month.

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

The book is an excellent read for the Burgenländers in your family... so get theirs now!



Burgenland Recipes: This recipe comes to us from Patricia Nemetz-Mills. She recently traveled in Burgenland and a cousin's mother served Zwetschgen Knödeln at lunch, which brought back wonderful memories of her own grandmother's kitchen and recipe, so she dug it out of her own recipe box when she returned home. Although we have published similar recipes twice before (recipes 129 and 235), we include it here as a companion piece to Patricia's trip report, which appears later in this newsletter (357).

GRAMMY’S ZWETSCHGEN KNÖDELN (PLUM DUMPLINGS)
(from Patricia Nemetz-Mills)

Ingredients-dough:

Preparation:

Dough: Make dough by mixing potatoes, flour, egg, and salt, then gradually adding potato water. Add enough potato water until the dough comes away from fingers while mixing.

Filling: Roll out dough on a floured surface, a bit thicker than cookie dough, maybe 1/2 inch thick. Cut dough into squares large enough to accommodate 1 plum. Place one pitted plum in center of each square. Sprinkle plum generously with sugar and cinnamon. Seal dough around plum, making sure there are no gaps. Drop sealed dumplings with plum in boiling water. Boil a few minutes until the dumplings start to rise to top and dough is firm. Drain.

Coating: Melt butter in a large pan, and add sugar, cinnamon, and bread crumbs into melted butter. The amount needed of each ingredient should be enough to coat the bottom of your large pan. Add more if necessary. Drop the boiled dumplings into the crumb mixture, stirring gently to coat each one. Serve warm.

Tips:

Choose plums that are moderately firm, but sweet and ripe, preferably with skin that is not too tough when heated. Plums tend to get sour when cooked, so test boil a few to see how much sugar to add for your dumplings. If plums are large, you can put 1/2 plum in each dumpling instead of 1 whole plum.



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

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

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



Words for Thought:

     The past, present and future walked into a bar in Burgenland. It was tense.

[Ed note: I considered including a German translation of the above 'words for thought'... but a translation simply does not work! Think a few more 'thoughts' and tell me why.]

There are interesting things in both Richard's example page and the one I show.

First, note that the village of Welten is spelled Welden on Richard's page. This again suggests that an German-speaking outsider performed a phonetic spelling of the spoken village name but was confused by the strong local dialect (Velike is the Hungarian name and is sufficiently different from Welten, so that likely did not influence the recorded spelling). [There are many other villages in the House Lists with slight misspellings of their name on the forms.]

Second, note the handscript used in the Gattung des Gebäudes column—it is the German Kurrentschrift handscript font, whereas the preceding columns were written in the Latin handscript font. (If you are curious, most of those entries state "Wohn u[nd] Wirtschafts gebaude s[amt] Hof" [Residential and economic buildings, including yard] or "Wohngebaude s[amt] Hof" [Residential buildings, including yard]). While I have seen the handscript combination as shown in the Welten example, far more common is for only the Ortschaft name and the surnames to be in the Latin font (see my example form); the given names are most often in Kurrentschrift and the right-side columns are always Kurrentschrift. Occasionally, the full form is in Kurrentschrift. I remain baffled by this intermixing of handscript fonts, as I have no idea as to why differing scripts were used.

The third note I'll make concerns the columns on the right half of the form. Of these, I've seen only the Anmerkung (Comment) column in use. This, despite the fact that the primary purpose of the House Lists had to be for taxation purposes—yet the columns relating to taxes were never filled in! Why was this, I ask?

Lastly, I'll note that there were at least two other House List forms in common use during this time (though Klaus usually obtained only the one discussed herein). The form I find more interesting lists (alphabetically) all residents of the village, regardless of whether they were property owners, and gives their "stand" (status, such as Bauer, Inwohner, etc.) in the village. And, yes, these forms were written in German.

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

The formal Burgenland Bunch Website Usage Agreement is here: Agreement

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