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The massive colonization of South
Eastern Europe during the 18th century, the center of which was the
settlement of the Banat (the area between the Danube, Theiss,
Marosch and Siebenbürgen) by Germans is also part of the history of
migration of the German people, the entire portrayal of which
historical research has yet to finalize.
It is a result of the victorious
conclusion of the defensive actions of the German empire against the
Turks, whereby large areas in South Eastern Hungary were recaptured.
But the areas became desolated over the decades by constant battles
and had to first be developed both agriculturally and commercially
after the victory of arms. Because of this, a deliberate
state-linked colonization policy, which reached its high-point
during Maria Theresia’s reign, was set up in these areas, whose
advanced frontiers were of major importance to the German empire. At
that time, thousands of German craftsmen and farmers flocked to the
Banat. They came mainly from the small western states of the empire
or from the areas either side of the Rhine, which had been
splintered by the disastrous French wars. Heavy enslavement by the
landowners in their own country, or the famine of 1770, persuaded
those keen on emigration to follow the call of Queen Maria Theresia.
Through advertisements in the newspapers or canvassers who traveled
throughout the land, they had heard the news that the Queen wanted
them to settle in the Banat as Crown tenant farmers and that she
would guarantee their journeys be made possible and broad support
given for the founding of their new existence.
However, strict emigration bans
by the individual landowners, who didn’t want to lose their work-
and tax force, stood in the way of this imperial offer. If the
German farmers had already become French subjects, then they were
threatened with banishment to the Galeere, should their emigration
attempt fail, for France itself was working on expanding emigration
to its overseas colonies and wanted, similar to Prussia, Spain and
Russia, to win over those wanting to emigrate by offering wonderful
conditions in the areas to be settled. Despite this, to the
countless German farmers living in states either side of the Rhine
the offer by the Queen was more tempting than the favorable offers
made by foreign countries. They trusted the state to protect them
more than the foreign powers would, and would rather remain German
subjects than face an uncertain future in a foreign European country
or in overseas colonies. So thousands took their lives in their
hands and fled in the small hours of the night, leaving their homes
and all their worldly goods behind and taking with them only those
possessions that could be carried on the journey and thus strived to
reach the imperial migration points.
The main gathering point for
emigrants before beginning the journey to Hungary was the city of
Vienna. Here, all the colonists had to register at the Imperial
Court Chamber in order to claim their passes, money for the journey
and further transportation to the Banat at the cost of the State.
The Court Chamber, which was entrusted with the colonization of the
Banat, acted thereby as the official emigration point and it is this
which historical research has to thank for the emigration statistics
for the South Eastern colonization of the 18th century. Already in
1723 the Court Chamber had set up registers of emigrants to the
Banat but unfortunately these were not kept for the first part of
the German settlement of the Banat under Karl VI. The emigration
lists are only available from 1749 to 1776, which since 1st May 1768
contain not only the names and origins of the emigrants but also
details of their age, occupation and status as well as the number of
fellow travelers, whereby the number of children is especially
revealing, and the fellow travelers are listed as bride, wife,
relative or servant. This broadening of details in the emigration
lists was by order of Queen Maria Theresia, who always showed the
greatest attentiveness and personal sympathy to the settlers of the
Banat. She represented the ground rule that ‘the prorogation of the
people is to be seen as one of the most valuable things’.
These emigration lists of the
Viennese Court Chamber for the Banat, which are printed in the
‘Quellen zur deutschen Siedlungsgeschichte in Südost Europa’
(Sources of the German Emigration History in South East Europe),
revised by Dr. Fr. Wilhelm and Dr. J. Kallbrunner, although without
details of ages and without breaking down the head count, are guilty
of two errors from the history of migration point of view, neither
of which could be avoided in modern emigration statistics. Firstly,
they only contain the names of those emigrants who registered
themselves at the Court Chamber in Vienna and do not take into
account all those who did not make a claim for the support of the
Court Chamber and therefore could not be included statistically.
Furthermore, the names and origins of those traveling with the heads
of families, i.e. women and children, are missing. From this we see,
for example, that of the 1,381 settlers in the Banat village of
Bogarosch, which have been ascertained in the church registers as
German immigrants, only 11 per cent are named in the ‘Quellen’.
Secondly, the lists of the Viennese Court Chamber, with a few
exceptions for the years 1749-1752, leave open the question of
whether these emigrants actually reached their stated country of
destination and in which Banat villages they settled. With these
emigrants we are talking about a seriously large number of imperial
colonists for the South East who had left difficult conditions in
their homeland and of the best German farming community and most
knowledgeable craftsmen being transplanted to the South East. They
kept their customs and traditions up until the present day and have
also been given State recognition through the German ethnic groups
of the South Eastern states. That is why the answer to the question
of knowing the destination of these first culture pioneers of the
18th century is not only worth knowing as an historical way of
looking at a problem but it is also a register of kinship groups of
ethnic German people from both sides of the border of the German
empire.
The sources for the registers of
emigrants to their destination are the church registers of each
individual village in the Banat. These registers are fore-runners of
the personal status register (census?) with details of their
origins in the death, marriage and birth registers (details of the
parental couple) and supply infallible proof of the settlement of
German people in relation to the great South Eastern colonization of
the 18th century. The reason why the church registers have up until
now been so little utilized in this way is because they are kept in
a foreign country and are therefore not easily accessible. Today,
however, there is a unique possibility of systematically working
through them in a sense of genealogical stock-taking of the German
people across the state borders. The Deutsche Ausland Institut (German Foreign Institute) in Stuttgart allowed the church
registers to be photographed and photocopied at the suggestion of
the co-publisher of the ‘Quellen’, Dr. Josef Kallbrunner, Director
of the Viennese Court Chamber Archives. And so this priceless
material was not only collected and secured but above all also
reconstructed for academic research in the widest capacity. This
generous calculated move further made possible a record of German
immigrants with their places of origin, respectively areas, whereby
for the exploration of the German South Eastern colonization of the
18th century a second, solid foundation can be achieved which will
continue, i.e. complete the ‘Quellen’ in the most beautiful way.
To differentiate, however, from
the ‘Quellen’, which is an emigration list according to the
Viennese Court Chamber and set up in chronological order, the immigration list for the Banat can only be worked on by
settlements. Apart from the three-tier settlement system practiced
in the Banat (the migration to, the transfer to and the founding of
the new settlement), three different groups of settlement places
should be taken into consideration:
1. Places in which the German
colonists were settled;
2. Places which were made
available for the German colonists by the migration, which was
usually for military or political reasons, of the Serbs and
Romanians previously living there;
3. Newly founded settlements on
previously uninhabited pastureland.
Bogarosch, which was planned by
the Impopulations Director, Johann Wilhelm Hildebrand, as a
settlement for 200 colonial families in 1768, belongs to the latter
group of villages founded in the wilderness. When he was dismissed a
short time later, the continuation of the building of the settlement
was left in the hands of the administrator, Johann Georg Plasch, and
the Lippaer, Neumann von Bucholt. In 1769, the first colonists
designated for Bogarosch arrived. But as the completion of the
village had been delayed by the change of building site supervisors
some of the colonists had to be put up in nearby Lenauheim, where
they were members of the parish until the beginning of 1770, until
their own houses were finished. That is why there are entries of
Bogarosch settlers in the church registers of Lenauheim in 1769, as
well as a few in 1770 and 1771. Bogarosch got its own church at the
end of 1769.
This publication is an attempt to
reconstruct an immigration list for Bogarosch taken from the details
of origin found in the church registers of Bogarosch and Lenauheim.
The marriage, birth and death registers of Lenauheim had to be
scrutinized from 1769 to 1771. The church registers of Bogarosch
begin in January 1770 and were used from then onwards up until 1839.
Just as the ‘Quellen’ adhere strictly to the emigration lists of the
Court Chamber and reproduce these in their shortest form so, too, is
this publication a pure reworking of the entries in the church
registers in order to show clearly the results of using church
registers. The publication is in alphabetical order of the
immigrants’ names and the columns of the church register headings
‘Patria’, ‘locus originis’ or ‘locus nativitas’ show details of
their origins. All details found in the church registers are also
shown, i.e. occupation, status, origin, date of marriage or death,
age and house number. The names of children and youths, who could
not really be called colonists themselves, are also included because
their details of origin often point to the origin of one or other of
their parents which is not shown in other entries in the church
registers, be it because the details of origin are missing or
because further details of the parents are not to be found in the
church registers of Bogarosch.
The details of country and place
of origin are given exactly as they appear in the church registers.
However, as these entries are described by place names or areas
which do not correspond with today’s names, be it because of
antiquated forms of names used or mistakes made when writing the
place names, we have tried to identify them as far as possible by
using the current descriptions of the places or areas. We also used
the following publications as an aid: For the German empire,
’Müllers Grosses deutsches Ortsbuch’; for Alsace-Lorraine, ‘Das
Reichsland Elsass-Lothringen’ published by the Statistischen Bureau
des Ministeriums für Elsass-Lothringen, also the
‘Gemeindeverzeichnis für die Westmark nach dem Gebietsstand vom 1.
April 1941; for Luxembourg the ‘Ortschaftverzeichnis für Luxembourg'
revised by the Chief of Civil Administration in Luxembourg; for
Austria, the ‘Allgemeine Verzeichnis der Ortsgemeinden und
Ortschaften Oesterreichs’ published by the k. k. Statistischen
Zentralkommission in Vienna, and ‘Müllers Ortsbuch für die Ostmark,
‘Müllers Ortsbuch für die Sudetengebiete’ and ‘Müllers Ortsbuch für
das Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren’. The breakdowns are shown in the
column headed ‘Country’ or ‘Place / Town’ under the details which
were found in the church registers. For Westmark the incorporation
of the old description is added to the new name according to the
details in the parish records of Westmark.
Where geographical aids have
failed we have tried (as far as was possible during the War years)
to solve the place names in question with the help of individual
researchers in the empire and it is to the following people that we
give thanks for their willingness to provide clues and information:
The leader of the research unit 'Landsleute drinnen und draussen' (Countrymen inside and outside) Herrn Dr. Fritz Braun of
Kaiserslauten; the leader of the research unit in Luxembourg, Herrn
Oberstudienrat (adviser of further studies) Dr. P. J. Müller
of Luxembourg; Herrn Professor Roemer of the Swabian research unit
in Stuttgart; Herrn Professor Dr. Metz of the Alemannischen Institut
in Freiburg i. Br.; Frau Dr. Ennen of the Institut für
geschichtliche Landeskunde der Rheinlande (Study of historical
countries of the Rhineland) at the University of Bonn; Herrn Dr.
Hallier of the Lothringischen Institut für Landes- und
Volksforschung (Lorraine Institute for the research of countries
and their peoples) in Metz; the Landesbibliothek in Luxembourg,
as well as the archives of the areas in question.
In difficult cases we have also
tried to get details of individual families from the parishes on the
basis of the entries in their church registers, although in all
probability the origins would have been questionable. Unfortunately,
they all came to nothing. For example, for the school teacher
Andreas Abendschein, whose place of origin was given as ‘Zeilen’ in
Bavaria in the Bogarosch church registers, we gave up trying to
identify ‘Zeilen’ as ‘Zeiler’, Zeilern’ or Zielheim’ in Bavaria as
the name ‘Abendschein’ does not appear in any of the 18th century
church registers of these places anyway. And so in this case, as in
many others, the solution to the names given in the church registers
of Bogarosch must remain omitted until such time it may be possible
to correct these questionable details of individual families through
further kinship clues at a later date.
Under the column ‘Anmerkungen’
(comments) all the details were gathered from the church registers
of Bogarosch and Lenauheim with regard to origin and marriages,
whereby the comparatively few details in the Lenauheim church
registers were especially noted. With young people it goes by the
names of their parents; with married or widowed people it goes by
the names of their spouses as well as the dates of the marriage
ceremony. There are many second and third marriages for the original
settlers in Bogarosch where the new marriage often occurs within a
noticeably short time after the death of the previous marriage
partner and the second or third choice of partner usually falls to
another inhabitant of Bogarosch. With these clues, important kinship
connections could be made through the marriages of the original
settlers between individual families. All the names mentioned in the
‘comments’ column are in alphabetical order in an index at the end
of the immigration list.
The comments under the line are
references to the ‘Quellen zur deutschen Siedlungsgeschichte in
Südosteuropa’. The consultation of the ‘Quellen’ as a single
publication is justified in as much as the ‘Quellen’ views the
colonization of the Banat from the viewpoint of the emigration
gathering place in Vienna; the immigration list examines the
same questions from the viewpoint of the destination in the Banat.
Both have in their lists many of the same names. Where these could
be connected, a broader result was reached, i.e. amendments to the
details in the church registers as well as details in the ‘Quellen’.
So the references to the ‘Quellen’ include the observation whether
the colonists listed in the immigrants list of Bogarosch in
consecutive order, as well as those names found in the church
registers, appear in the ‘Quellen’. This applies to 154 cases of the
1,381 names (891 in this published list and 490 of them differ in
the comments), whereby however an approximate definite
identification is only possible if one compares the age given in the
church registers to the age given in the original emigration lists
of the Court Chamber Archives. This shows that often tempting
comparisons of identifications of immigrants to the emigrants in the
‘Quellen’ do not pass scrutiny. Therefore they cannot be equated
until more information, such as the exact birth date in the
homeland, again the age given in the emigration lists of the Court
Chamber Archives or the church registers of Bogarosch, is corrected.
In those cases where an identification can most probably be made,
there are three variants:
1. The details in the ‘Quellen’
correspond completely with the details in the church registers. Then
only the date on which the emigrant appears in the ‘Quellen’; is
given in the ‘comments’.
2. The ‘Quellen’ deviates with
regard to the writing of the name or the area or place description.
Then, the details in the ‘Quellen’ are given again in full. When it
is about differences in descriptions of areas or places then the
entries in the church registers have more claim to correctness
because they are statements made on occasions of marriages or
funerals by the persons involved, whereas the details in the lists
of the Viennese Court Chamber Archives must be called into question
as these were often taken from statements made by the leader of an
emigrating group and could have contained errors, i.e. the place of
origin of the leader, e.g. the area of Lorraine, could have been
falsely applied to the whole group, or the leader may himself not
have known the origins of the individual members of his group.
3. The ‘Quellen’ give only the
description of the area, but the church registers also give the
place or town, or vica versa, then the details in the church
registers are incorporated into the ‘Quellen’ and were for kept in
for this reason.
The result of the examination of
the church registers of Bogarosch shows the gain of 891 colonists
names with more certainty of their origins. Of these, 353 fall into
Lorraine, or the area of the present Westmark; 181 into Luxembourg;
53 into the Austrian ancestral countries; the remainder are divided
into the western and southern areas of Germany. On checking the
marriages in the church registers with details of origin of the
recorded colonists a further 490 names were ascertained which point
to German descent, even if their details of origin are missing in
the church registers, so that they do not appear in the immigration
lists in consecutive numbers. Here, the church registers once again
fail as the source for our aim and it will probably only be possible
with the help of the German village clan books (family books) to
ascertain the origins of these colonists beyond question. On the
other hand we believe we have found various clues regarding the
sudden disappearance of several families for the village’s family
research through the immigrant lists of Bogarosch. It appears,
therefore, that a complete stock-taking of the German people on both
sides of the border of the German empire will only be possible
through lengthy cooperation to the contribution of the aim of this
work. We are well aware that we have not had the final say in even
this small part of the immigration to Bogarosch, but instead have
only touched on the edges of the possible after procuring the
revised material. Despite this, we have decided to publish, as this
way we can make the revised material available to a wider audience
through the services of the German Foreign Institute of Stuttgart
and so hope to stimulate further work on the German people in the
South Eastern sphere, similar to the publication of the emigration
lists of the Viennese Court Chamber Archives.
Vienna, in the war-time winter of
1942
Dr. Berta List
(translated by Diana Lambing, 2002) |
