Geography of Our Homeland Community of Beschka 

             For our descendants it would not be natural to know where our homeland community of Beschka is.  It lies in Yugoslavia, about 55 km north of Belgrade, about 5 km south of the Danube River, and about 1 km east of the 20th longitude.  Beschka is no longer our homeland community, but it was for 84 years, from 1860 to 1944.  Before that our homeland was north of the Danube in the Batschka, in nine so-called parent communities, from them to other communities still to be reported.  Before 1784 our home was in Germany which I will be describing as our original home in the following, from which region I was from, in which our forefathers and we lived from 1860 to 1944, was described as our homeland.

     The name Beschka comes from the Turksand means "Five-Hour-Way" in English, probably from the old Peterwardein Fortress, which is found 25 km northwest of Beschka.  But possibly the name also means "Bird flight."  It is certain that the first syllable "Besch" means five.  From my memory the name was interpreted in Beschka's school chronicle as the "Twelve-Hour-Way."  But Five-Hour-Way may be right.

     The ground around Beschka consists of clay which is about 1 m thick and occasionally also a thick layer of humous which was very fertile.  The land was very uneven.  Young strong people could climb almost all the slopes with the bicycle.  Only the Franken Mountains which stretch along the Danube River not far from Beschka, were considerably high up.  Beschka was 126 meters above sea level by the Reformed church and the land had a moderate gradient toward the east.

[Published at DVHH.org by Jody McKim Pharr, 2005]

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