By
Josef Schramm
Translation by Brad Schwebler
The
discussions between the Turkish sultan in
Constantinople and the Roman-German emperor
in Vienna had begun in 1683 and were brought
to a provisional conclusion in the peace
treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. Prince Eugen
of Savoy had badly beaten the Turks at Zenta
two years before, and so the Turks easily
had to make peace. According to the
determinations of the treaty the Banat
remained Turkish, but the Batschka was
awarded to the emperor in Vienna.
The steppes
of the western Batschka were already ruled
by the city of Sombor in Turkish times. In
the 17th century the city was
described by the Turkish travel writer
Tschelebi as very ornate: the streets were
paved with wood, the homes built of
patchwork, the roofs of shingles. But
unfortunately the drinking water was very
bad, and the Tatar Khan and the poet Ghazi
Gherai wrote in a letter:
“No wonder when the
greeting was bitter before,
Because the water is
bitter in Zombor!”
After the
liberation from the Turks the Sombor (Somburg)
seat was an administrative place of the
court chamber and of the court’s war
council. In the year 1745 the city became
part of Hungary and two years later was
elevated to the imperial free state by Maria
Theresi. In the year 1802 Sombor was the
capital of the land and the construction of
the “komitat house” began, in which the
heads of the administration would be
housed. This first komitat house (county
courthouse) was demolished eighty years
later and in its place a new komitat house
was erected in 1880-1882. In this
magnificent hall of the palace depicted here
one finds the famous painting, “Die Schlacht
bei Zenta” (The Battle near Zenta) by the
great Batschka painter Franz Eisenhut.
Today the Komitathaus houses a valuable
prehistoric and early history museum, a
scientific library, and a part of the
archives of the land. Sombor was always an
important economic center and has banks, a
chamber of commerce, a stock exchange as
well as a large annual market.
At the
center of north Batschka there was a place
which was mentioned many times as a
settlement of robbers and plunderers.
Around 1525 the group’s leader Jovan Crni
(Black Hans) was housed here, who with his
Serbian team once entered for the candidate
to the throne, Johann Sapolya, and once for
Ferdinand of Habsburg. During the Turkish
times a modest little city, Sabathka was a
fortress which was placed under the control
of the court’s war council in Vienna. In
1743 Sabathka was elevated to a city under
the name St. Maria and to the imperial free
city as “Maria-Theresiopolis” in 1779.
The settlement with city ordinances and
privileges was a village with the appearance
of a city. The one story homes on the wide
streets, the herds of beef cattle and pigs
dominated the city scene. Practically only
two streets had a city appearance: from the
train station to the city hall. The city
hall portrayed here was built shortly before
World War I. With its red, white, and green
colors it stressed that it was a Hungarian
city. As the city became a part of the
Kingdom of SHS (Yugoslavia) in 1918 it was
the only settlement of the new nation which
had over 100,000 inhabitants. The largest
village was to be the only large city.
Today
Subotica-Theresiopel still has a border of
915 square kilometers and with this it has a
surface area making it the largest community
of Yugoslavia. However with 118,000
inhabitants the city first stood in sixth
place among the Yugoslavian cities. Neusatz
still had not reached the census of
Theresiopel, but that was soon achieved
because Subotica had the unfortunate
position to be at the nation’s border making
it a dead city.
The center
of the northwestern Batschka is the city of
Baja, lying at the high shore of the
Danube. It was established at the time of
Karl (Charles) the Great in 801 or 803.
More exact statements are missing and in a
document in 1260 it is first called
“Francovilla, or Baja.” Quite modest in the
middle ages and during Turkish time, the
village hardly had 20 homes when it fell
into Hapsburg hands. For strategic reasons
the court’s war council still settled here
during the duration of the hostilities of
the business activities with the farmers, to
have a good stage on the Danube. The city
developed extraordinarily quick so that it
was called Little Pest. The traffic on the
Danube, the shipments of wood and grain, the
products of craftsmen made Baja into a rich
city. The streets and homes have an urban
appearance and still at the end of the 18th
century the Komitat assembly would rather
meet in the beautiful city of Baja than in
the neglected village of Sombor. The
construction of the railroads shifted the
traffic, so Baja remained at the end of the
19th century back behind the
other cities.
After World
War I Baja was the administrative seat of
the rest of the Bács-Bodrog Komitat, today
it is a quiet college town in which there is
also a German speaking grammar school and a
German speaking teaching institute. Many
retirees go to Baja to retire. This city
still has not succumbed to the noise of the
new times and at the Danube there is a
rewarding destination for pedestrians.
At first
the land was administered by the court’s war
council, that is, the war ministry, because
the Kuruzzen rebellion still raged. Where
it was possible, the region was gradually
transferred to the administration of the
court chamber, that is, the finance
ministry. After the Sathmar peace with the
Kuruzzen, the emperor decided to place the
Batschka under Hungarian civilian
administration, the archbishop of Kalotschka
was named top dignitary of the almost
unpopulated Batsch Komitat. But the komitat
administration could only intersperse with
difficulty because once the nobility were
absent as holders of such an administration
and because the second war council and court
chamber still also had a deciding word. The
court’s war council was subject to the
military security of the border against the
Turks, the whole east of the Batschka and
indeed as part of the “Theiß-Marosch
military border”, to which the cities of
Sombor and Theresiopel also belonged. In
1751 the greater part of this region was
transferred to the komitat administration,
the Titel Tschaikist district in the
Danube-Theiß corner was administered
directly from Vienna until 1872. The court
chamber in the Batschka, other than in the
Banat, the only ones who acted as
administrators were the wealthy of the
crown, that is more as private rulers than
as administrative authorities.
All of the
land, for no objection free property rights
could be proven, were declared as the domain
of the crown and placed under the court
chamber. Only through this measure was it
possible in the sense of social and economic
ideas to populate the land with capable
farmers.
Political,
social, and economic crossed the interests
of different forces in the Batschka. Vienna
wanted to have a province near the Turkish
border where in peace and war times grain,
riding and draft animals as well as good
stages and soldiers could be ready. This
goal one believed could be achieved through
true free farmers and craftsmen. The large
Hungarian landowners had other wishes: the
land should not be settled with foreign
people, the settlers should only be serfs
and not property owners. The Serbian herd
owners and oxen traders had still other
interests: the land should remain meadowland
and in no case be divided among the field
cultivating farmers. National and religious
questions played hardly a roll in this
connection. Vienna interspersed its will
extensively and settled Serbs, Croatians,
Slovakians, Ruthenians, Hungarians, or also
Germans. Each diligent person willing to
settle was accepted, each received the same
rights, the same freedom. There was not
racial, national, or religious intolerance,
or even hate among the individual folk
groups until the Hungarian revolution came
in 1848.
On the
roads of the Batschka one saw imperial,
Hungarian, Serbian, Croatian, and Russian
soldiers. After the collapse of the
revolution from the Batschka, the Banat, and
parts of Syrmia the kingdom “Serbian
Woiwodschaft and Temeser Banat” started, yet
it did not exist long, it was dissolved in
1860, and the Batschka was again a part of
Hungary, with the exception of the
Tschaikist district which remained until
1918.
At the end
of World War I the land was occupied by
French and Serbian troops. In the Treaty of
Trianon the Batschka was divided up so that
one sixth went to Hungary and five sixths
went to the newly established kingdom of
Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. In the new
nation the Batschka was very dependant on
Belgrade, then through planned settlements
the Serbian orthodox element was
strengthened. The Hungarians were
suppressed, the Germans were either
encouraged or suppressed.
In April
1941 Hungarian troops marched into the
Batschka. In all aspects the land had a
Hungarian appearance: everywhere the
Hungarian flag flew at half mast, everywhere
one found the lawn map with the outline of
Hungary of 1918, everywhere one heard the
chorus “Mindent visza!” (everything back),
they tried, to create the appearance in the
train stations and state buildings exactly
as it was before 1918, all Serbs coming into
the Batschka after 1918 were referred to the
land as indigenous Serbs and were killed in
large numbers in the Tschaikist region, at
different points of the land the Hungarian
Ischango from Romania settled.
In October
1944 the Russian troops conquered the
Batschka and after their withdrawal the Tito
partisans took over the power. The whole
hatred of these people was directed towards
the Germans and towards the German speaking
citizens who were punished, imprisoned, and
starved for foreign offenses in the name of
a collective guilt. The purpose was to
seize the fortunes of the wealthy citizens,
then no legal judgment was found against the
people who had roamed into the concentration
camps. Administratively the Batschka with
its southern five-sixths now belonged to the
People’s Republic of Serbia and the northern
sixth to Hungary.
At one
place where one comes relatively easily over
the Theiß, Alt-Betsche exists on the right
shore of the river. Up until the most
recent time this place was actually only a
village, although the community numbered
more than 20,000 inhabitants. In Alt-Betsche
Hungarians and Serbs lived next to each
other. In the picture one sees the Serbian
orthodox church. This church could stand
anywhere in Bavaria or lower Austria, and
under these baroque towers hardly anyone
suspected a church with oriental rites. The
grounds to search this fact is in the
imperial Hapsburg decree. There it says
that the orthodox church is also allowed to
build in the Hapsburg lands, but these
houses of God must be built in the “usual
style of the land”, which one understood as
just Baroque at the time. In the interior
of the orthodox churches distinguished
themselves from other Christian churches in
that the choir is separated by a wall of
icons (Ikonostase) from the believers, and
there were no benches and no organ. The
Serbian orthodox believers of the Batschka
belonged to the Neusatz diocese which the
patriarchs in Karlowitz were placed under.
Alt Betsche – Stari Beče) is the most
important marketplace of eastern Batschka.
On the löß and humus the adhesive Theiß
wheat grew, the “fair Theiß” is rich in fish
and on the whole border good livestock
breeding was carried on.
From the
head of the bridge of the Peterwardein
fortress the present day, the city of
Neusatz, capital of theBatschka and the
Vojvodina developed. After the liberation
from the Turks the region belonged to the
Veinnese court’s war council. As Belgrade
again fell to the Turks in 1739, many
Belgrade citizens fled into the Peterwardein
entrenchments and established a new city
there which on the 1st of
February 1748 which received the name
Neusatz from the Empress Maria Theresia.
The new imperial free city soon developed
into an important center for trade and
commerce. The era of the railway and Danube
regulations brought still more advantages to
Neusatz. After World War I Neusatz was the
center of the south Slavic Germans who had
the seat their economical and cultural
organizations here. Also the German press
was represented with two daily newspapers
and several weekly and monthly papers. The
old core of the city lay around the Gothic
city parish church which is seen on the
right side of the picture. As Neusatz was
the administrative seat of the Danube (banschaft?)
in 1929, the new part of the city was built
between the Catholic church and the Danube.
The wide avenue decorated with trees on the
right side of the picture led to the Danube
bridge past modern palaces. The largest
palace is the Banus building, still the
administrative seat today (in the center of
the picture). Here found the leading
voices of the “Autonomous Province of
Vojvodina”, in which allegedly all folk
groups should have their cultural autonomy.
[Published at
DVHH.org 19 Sep 2005 by Jody McKim
Pharr]
Heritage
»
Collections
»
Schwebler
» Schramm
» Society
»
The 1st Swabian Migration (1722-1726)
» The New Time
