About Musci
The Township of Mucsi and its Inhabitants in Milwaukee
Dr. Andreas Gommermann
Taken from ‘Festschrift’ on the Occasion of the 50th
Anniversary Celebration ‘Muscier Familien Verein’ in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, August 1979. Used with permission of the author.
Mucsi is located in the administrative district of Tolna in the western part
of Hungary about fifty miles from Lake Balaton. The area to which the township
belongs had been colonized by Germans in the eighteenth century after 150 years
of Turkish occupation of Hungary (1541-1699). It is called "Swabian
Turkey." Its inhabitants are known as "Danube Swabians" in order
to distinguish them from the Swabians of the motherland, although only a
relatively small number of settlers emigrated from Swabia. The first colonists
who settled in Transdanubia – the western part of Hungary – were invited
into the country by members of the nobility.
One of the most successful colonizers was Claudius Florimundus Mercy. He
bought a domain of 25 townships in the district of Tolna in 1722; central
administrative offices were located in the municipality of Högyész which is not
far from Mucsi. Count Mercy incorporated the deserted villages of Papd, Lazi,
and Herteland into the old Mucsi and called its settlers mainly from the
Bishopric of Fulda (Stift Fulda). Many family names of the settlers (for
example: Hohmann, Seifert, Weber, Bott, Gensler, Keidel, Kuemmel, Ruppert,
Hartung, Gaertner, Schwab and others) can still be found on the gravestones in
the cemeteries of Hilders, Wuestensachen, Poppenhousen, Rothemann in the State
of Hessia. Even the so-called house names whose bearer left no descendants in
Mucsi to carry the name on are preserved in the motherland (such as Noll, Hau,
Auth and Klose).
Mucsi was a Hungarian village with a Slavic minority in 1720. However,
contracts signed with the dominion of Högyész indicate that there were already
some German settlers in Mucsi at the time. But the majority of the inhabitants
immigrated into the township after it was owned by Count Mercy (1722).
The first settlers were farmers. They must have planted vineyards very soon
after their arrival. For according to one source, there was a wooden grape-press
in his press house on which the year 1725 was carved. As a boundary map dated
1791 indicates, vineyards could be found in the areas of "Duschauereck,"
"Kukruzgruendel," and "Freiacker" at that time.
It was long after the colonization that Mucsi finally became an autonomous
Roman Catholic parish. The Catholics of Mucsi belonged originally to the parish
of Högyész and later were affiliated with the parish of Zavod in 1727. The
parish of Mucsi was probably established in 1745, since the registers of birth,
etc., start in that year. The late Baroque church, which is still preserved
today, was built in 1783 under the patronage of Count Apponyi Lengyel who
acquired a part of the domain from Mercy in 1773.
Within the boundaries of Mucsi there is another church called "Maria
Papd."
It is a place of pilgrimage and has always been popular with the German
Catholics of the surrounding area. For decades the pilgrims met here on the
feast of the Birth of Mary (September 8) to honor the Mother of God and to
gather for a family reunion. Since the erection of the new church in the years
of 1930-31, Maria Papd has become one of the most popular German shrines in the
administrative district of Tolna. In 1946 before the expulsion of the Germans,
Mucsi had about 460 houses and a population of 2,318. The majority of its
inhabitants were engaged in farming, wine growing, and cattle breeding. Their
lives were thus very closely connected with the soil and the seasons.
In spring, summer and fall they worked in their fields and vineyards. The
winter was the time of rest and preparation. Hogs were butchered and sausages
made. The sausages were called "Stiffoler" obviously because of the
origin of the settlers in Mucsi. After the first snowfall the men worked in the
surrounding forests and gathered the firewood needed for the whole year. In
addition to their work in the woods, they made poles for the vineyards and ropes
out of straw used to bundle up the wheat, rye and oats. Many of them also made
wooden shoes, which they sold in the township or in the surrounding villages.
The married women spun sheep wool and hemp and knitted the necessary footwear as
well as other articles of clothing.
At the beginning of the 20th century Mucsi could not longer
provide an adequate living standard for all of its inhabitants. The enterprising
young people moved either to cities or emigrated. One of their immigration goals
was Milwaukee, Wisconsin, known as the "German Athens" for its musical
life in the middle of the 19th century. The first settlers from
Mucsi, about 120 persons, arrived shortly before the First World War
(1914-1918), and some shortly afterwards. Many of them planned to stay only a
few years in order to earn some money to buy a house or a few acres of land in
their old country. Before or immediately after the First World War several
families, about 47 persons, returned to their homeland. But the majority of the
immigrants established themselves in their new hometown. They worked hard in
factories or at construction jobs during the week and met in their homes on
weekends, playing cards and drinking their homemade wine. That same card game is
still played today! In 1929 the settlers founded the "Mucsi Family
Club." Up till 1966 they met monthly in a restaurant. They organized their
church festival every year around the 20th of August and held picnics
in the spring.
After the Second World War (1940-45), a great number of people from Mucsi
immigrated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Most of them came directly from the Federal
Republic of Germany between 1949-1955, where they had lived since 1946. The
meeting room in the restaurant didn’t suffice anymore for the needs of the
increased membership and the festivities couldn’t be celebrated in the small
localities.
For preservation and cultivation of cultural values of the Danube Swabians,
the Mucsi Family Club joined three other societies from "Swabian
Turkey" and founded an organization called the Vereinigte Donauschwaben in
1966. In a mutual effort they bought a clubhouse which was named the Schwabenhof.
The four Danube Swabian Societies have met here since 1968. Here they celebrate
their religious and social festivals. This year is the 50th
anniversary of the Mucsi Family Club.
The people from Mucsi were called "Stiffoler," because their
ancestors immigrated to Hungary from the former Bishopric of Fulda. They
preserved in their language the characteristic features of German spoken in the
area of their origin despite the foreign language contacts during a period of
about 250 years. They say abl ‘Apfel’ for apple and use the
diminutive –je, in plural –erje; manje and manerje
‘Maennchen’ for little man or little men. The infinitive is
formed without the endings –en: ich well arwed ‘ich will arbeiten for
I want work; after ‘Koennen’ and ‘moegen’ the prefix ge is
attached; ich khoun gearwed ‘ich kann gearbeiten’ for I am able/I
can work. Characteristic features from the southern region of Fulda are the
open a in the words fald, gland ‘Feld, ‘gelernt’ for field
and learned; the –o of the standard language before r +
consonant changes to u in Khuen, dued, duuerf ‘Korn,
dort, Dorf’ for rye, their, village;
the ch- becomes s in ues, woas ‘Ochse,"
wachsen" for ox and to grow; the interrogatives and adverbs
indicate initially b in baar, boos, bam, banze
‘wer, was, wem, wenn sie’ for who, what, to whom, if
they; haa ‘er’ stands for he.
One of the characteristic language features in the phonology of the settlers
from Mucsi is the change of the standard German –e to an open a: sags,
‘Sechs;’ fald ‘Feld;’ drasch ‘dreschen;’ baaze
‘Besen;’ aade ‘Erde’ for six, field, to thresh, broom and earth.
Since the settlers spoke their mother tongue outside of Germany for more than
250 years, foreign borrowings were unavoidable. The strongest influence of other
languages can be found in the vocabulary. Because of the isolation of the town
of Mucsi, only a relatively small number of Hungarian words were imported. But
now the close contact with their fellow American citizens accelerated the
substitution of loan words, loan blends, and loan translations. The new social
conditions, the environment, etc. required the adaptation of words not found in
the language of the settlers. Still it must be emphasized that even here in
America the language retained essentially the vocabulary of Mucsi. It is also
noteworthy that their mother tongue is still spoken outside the metropolitan
area in Mucsi (Hungary), West Germany, Austria, and Aurora, Illinois.
