On June 2, 1773 the Domain of Hӧgyész was sold to the
Apponyi family by the last Mercy, Florimundus Claudius Count Mercy-Argentau
(1727-1794). As a busy Imperial diplomat and ambassador to the French Court in
Versailles in the service of the Empress Maria Theresia and her successors,
Joseph II, Leopold II and Francis I/II he saw himself unable to devote time to
the running of his Domain in Swabian Turkey. He saw, "how his officials looked
after his estates to their own advantage but had to rely upon them." In 1767 he
endeavoured to find a buyer but his formal request "for permission to sell my
Hӧgyész Domain in Hungary to someone," was denied on October 5, 1771 by the
Viennese authorities. Maria Theresia, who laid great store by Mercy, personally
took the trouble to bring about a favourable solution to the matter. On
February 10, 1772 the Empress wrote to her "Friend and Minister" Mercy who was
the Austrian envoy to St. Petersburg, Warsaw and Paris at the time, "I am sorry
to say that I cannot tell you any more about Hegyes except for this memorandum:
the death of Grassalkovich and the changes in the Ministry are to blame." Yet
with the help and support of Prince Kaunitz, Mercy was able to sell the Doman of
Hӧgyész that same year to Count Georg Apponyi which was valued at 700,000
Gulden. The "deed for the sale of the Estates of Count Mercy d'Argentau of the
Domain of Hӧgyész or Mezӧhegyes to Count Apponyi" is dated June 12, 17734. The
former Mercy rights of primogeniture were also granted to Apponyi.
At the time of the sale, the Domain of Hӧgyész included
twenty-three communities of which two were market towns and twelve open prairies
with residential buildings. In addition there were 1,546 "farming households"
and 736 "cotter families". With regard to an inventory of the Domain we have
the result of: A Draft of the Domain of Hӧgyész. It states that the Domain
consists of twenty-three communities and twelve open prairies, kitchen gardens,
residential buildings for officials, a wine cellar and 8,000 Eimer of wine, and
in the market town of Hӧgyész a well built castle, fruit garden, two
greenhouses, a large courtyard, Jewish synagogue, Jewish shops, brewery and
distillery, fruit storage, butcher shop, a well-built church and a rectory in
the village. Everything has a tile roof. The inhabitants are German
Catholics. Four market days per year. The Domain has no vineyards and the
tenant subjects have a bit. At the time of this documentation the churches and
rectories in the communities of Duzs, Mucsi and Závod (Calvinist) were extant.
In Duzs there was also a gardener's house, a good mill and four footbridges
across the Kapos River and in Calvinist Závod there is a tavern, a mill on the
Sárvís River, a custom's house and a store. This is followed by an enumeration
of the Lutheran villages in the Domain.
With the change in landlords several significant changes
took place in the Hӧgyész Domain. These changes cannot be simply isolated to
the Hӧgyész Domain because parallel to those changes with their landlord
important developments effecting the relations between the Domains and their
tenant subjects that had existed up to now in the middle of the 18th century
were being questioned. The right of migration on the part of the tenants was
being curtailed more and more and the estate owners felt themselves less and
less bound by the terms of their settlement contracts. The inhabitants of the
villages were once again treated like they were duty bound serfs so that the
demands made of them were always greater. The peasant farmers were no longer
willing to look upon serfdom as something divinely ordained and that it was
possible for them to work for their landlords without the demands of serfdom
being imposed on them. More and more complaints were sent to the State
Commission about the abuses they suffered so that government intervention
became necessary. In 1767 the long overdue Urbarial Regulation was put into
force. It stipulated the following provisions: At the time the regulation went
into effect whatever landholdings the tenant subjects worked could not be taken
away from them by the landlord and assigned to someone else even thought the
land was still the possession of the landlord. For the first time a legal
distinction was made between the land worked by the tenant subject and the land
that was cultivated by the noble himself. The Urbarial Regulation established
new binding agreements between the Domains and their tenant subjects and
provisions for the protection of the rights of the tenants that had been
violated since the first settlement had taken place.
There were also significant changes in the religious and
confessional sphere in the mid 18th century in the form of rigorous restrictions
placed upon the Protestants. The Mercy Domain with its predominant Lutheran
villages came into the possession of the Apponyi family. At that time the
nobles and landlords could not protect or defend their Lutheran tenant subjects
from the massive pressures unleashed by the staunchly Catholic House of Habsburg
(read Maria Theresia). As was the case in other villages in the Domain of
Hӧgyész the prayer houses and schools of the Protestants were locked up and
their pastors and teachers were expelled from the community. It was only three
years after the Edict of Toleration of Emperor Joseph II in 1781 that the
Lutherans were permitted to open their churches once more. In this time frame a
super abundance of letters of homage were written to the Domain owners by their
Lutheran subjects. This is the way that the Lutheran pastor in Kismáyok, Johann
Friedrich Weiss, along with the Richter, of the village, Johann Just Allrutz,
and four Council members in a letter of August 12, 1773 addressed their new
landlord, Count Georg Apponyi with their servile request: "that he would also
be a true father and defender of the Lutherans as were the Counts d'Mercy before
him." All of this bending of the knee was futile because as was to be true in
all of the Lutheran villages of the Apponyi Domain their prayer house was locked
up and their pastor and teacher were driven out of the community.
The emancipation of the peasant subjects of the nobles was
first set in motion during the reign of Joseph II. Alongside of the Urbarial
Regulation of his mother, Maria Theresia, he recognized and accorded the tenant
subjects their freedom of movement and migration in his famous Patent of 1785.
Thereafter the tenants had the freedom to choose where they wanted to live and
work without requiring the permission of the noble landlord nor were they
obliged to have his consent in order to marry or choose a trade.
Sixty years later in the course of the emancipation of the
serfs in Hungary in 1848, land that was worked by tenant subjects became theirs
by legal right. As a result there were some important changes in the former
boundaries--including the villages in central Tolna around Hӧgyész. Changes
that had their beginnings during the period when the Urbarial Regulations were
in effect when the landholdings were designated Domain or tenant landholdings.
At the time of that division Apponyi received mostly forests and pasturing
fields on the borders of the villages of Kalaznó, Felsӧnána and Varsád. Because
the forest bordered the three villages for technical governing purposes Varsád
was annexed to his holdings. After clearing some of the forest and making the
land arable an administrator's residence was built, the so-called Rudolf-Puszta.
The north-westerly portion of Hertelend consisted of forests that along with the
Duzs forest were both connected with the Hӧgyész forest. At the time of the
division that took place as a result of the Urbarial Regulations this
interconnected forest was added to the boundaries of Hӧgyész which was simple to
arrange since they all had the same landowner.
Next 
:
A
Brief Church History in Hӧgyész
