Györköny: A Short History
By
Henry Fischer
Published at
DVHH.org,
Nov 11, 2006 by Jody McKim Pharr
The future Györköny was an uninhabited
puszta (prairie) following the expulsion of
the Turks in the latter part of the 17th
century by the Hapsburg armies who drove
them further south and liberated all of
former Hungary from their one hundred and
fifty year occupation. To all intents and
purposes the region had reverted to
wilderness, had been de-populated and
provided shelter for brigands and wandering
herdsmen. The noble families that had lived
on their estates in the area, had abandoned
them fleeing the advancing Turks or if they
had remained, were massacred by them. Many
of these exiled noble families had not
survived the long Turkish occupation or
their descendants were unable to prove their
land claims. As a result the land was sold
and the proceeds were added to the coffers
of the Hapsburg Emperor, or he offered the
land and estates in payment to his military
officers for their services during the War
of Liberation.
Early in
the 18th century, Johann Meszlenyi, a
nobleman from Western Hungary purchased
this uninhabited puszta as well as the
surrounding area. He held prominent
positions in the County Administration in
both Györ and Veszprem Counties and was
known for his progressive ideas and economic
endeavors, of which the future Györköny
would be one. He was also a descendant of
one of the lesser Hungarian noble families
who had remained Lutheran throughout the
Counter Reformation and this fact would play
a role in the settlement of the village.
In 1718
Meszlenyi reported to the County
Administration of Tolna that new settlers
from other counties had established
themselves on his newly acquired estates.
But there is strong evidence to suggest that
they had come as early as 1710, but they had
come on the sly, if not illegally, having
left the estates of the nobles to whom they
were subject, which was against the new
Imperial law imposed by Charles VI. In a
sense they were fugitives because they did
not indicate where they had come from, and
probably Meszlenyi did not bother to ask.
We do know that the original colonists were
Magyars from Györ and Veszprem Counties and
from the vicinity of the city of Sopron, as
well as four German families from the
Heideboden, the so-called Heidebauern. From
later land conscription lists we can
identify the heads of these four families:
A
Lutheran congregation was formed in the
community as early as 1719 when Georg Barany
arrived to be the pastor, serving the mixed
Hungarian and German congregation. The
relationships between the two nationalities
were very close as they had been in the
Heideboden and the church records indicate
many Heidebauern Godparents of Hungarian
children and vice versa, although they did
not intermarry. Meanwhile other families
were arriving from the Heideboden, many of
them from Kaltenstein and Leiden and the
areas surrounding those two villages. They
are now known as Level and Lebeny in
contemporary Hungary. But in 1722 a new
stream of settlers began to arrive, they
were Hessians who spoke the Main Franken
dialect that gives some hints as to their
origins in Germany. They were part of the
Schwabenzug. The Great Swabian Migration of
the 18th century initiated by the
Hapsburg monarchs during that century. With
this large influx of German-speaking people,
Georg Barany established a
Hungarian-speaking parish in
Szarszentlorincz nearby, taking with him
eight of the Magyar families and the
congregation in Györköny called a new pastor
to serve them.
The two
German-speaking groups lived side by side,
worshipped in the same church building, but
with each group having their own pews, and
in a sense leading separate lives well into
the 19th century when
intermarriage between the two groups began
to take place. They each spoke a
distinctive dialect, had their own
traditions and customs as well as dress and
attire and unlike other communities they did
not develop a blended version of their own,
that was unique to themselves. Part of the
reason for that was that the largest portion
of the Heidebauern re-settled in the
neighboring smaller community of Bikacs made
up entirely of Heidebauern. Those who
remained behind gradually then assimilated
with the Hessians.
The
names most common to the Heidebauern in
Györköny can be found in the land
conscription lists of Moson County and the
Church Records of the parish churches, such
as Nickelsdorf, Strasssommerein, Zurndorf,
Kaltenstein, Leiden and Gols. While their
Hessian counterparts came from various
communities in Hesse: Egelsbach, Gross
Gerau, Kaltersbach, Langen, Appesrod and
Maulbach to name a few.
The
whole colonization effort in Hungary was
focused on its economic development, which
expressed itself in agricultural
production. The criterion that was used by
the nobles in securing settlers was their
agricultural skill and know-how. The crops
they raised consisted of wheat, maize,
beets, corn, oats, vegetables and the
Hessians, on their part, brought the potato
with them and introduced it to Hungary. The
village itself was located in a gully. The
western side consists of sandy soil, while
the other side covers limestone. The
settlers saw the implications of this and
planted vineyards on the western side and
dug wine cellars in the hilly limestone
side. Cattle herding and livestock rearing
were carried out in various degrees, and the
owning of livestock was a measure of wealth
and prosperity. Surrounded by forests,
lumbering was a wintertime activity for the
men, while the entire family was involved
and engaged in farming. Even the tradesmen,
the innkeeper and local officials were also
involved in forms of agriculture. All of
these factors would determine the life and
development of Györköny and its people along
with their church life, that was much at the
center of both family and community life.
Following the outbreak of the Second World
War, Györköny shared in the fate of all of
the Danube Swabian communities in the former
Hapsburg Empire as the Red Army moved
relentlessly northward and westward, with
refugee treks out of Romania and Yugoslavia
scrambling to keep ahead of them. These
Swabians followed in the footsteps of their
ancestors who had joined the first
Schwabenzug in the 18th century.
There were only a few families in Györköny
who joined them. The rest would wait it
out. Hungary was their home. They had been
loyal citizens. Their men had served in the
Hungarian Army.
The
Russian troops entered the village in
December of 1944. Under the pretext of
ordering all able bodied men and women to
report for labor in the district, they were
placed in marching columns and led away to
slave labor in the Soviet Union to the coal
mines in the Donets Basin at Stalino. There
were some fifty villagers, mostly women, who
were taken. Many of them came back sick to
death, while others had died in the camps.
In the
summer of 1945 the Big Three met at Potsdam
to decide the fate of the people of Györköny
and all of the Danube Swabians of Hungary.
On the basis of the charge of collective
guilt, every man, woman and child of German
descent in Hungary was part of a fifth
column and had betrayed Hungary and was to
be expelled as part of the “humane transfer
of German populations in Eastern Europe”,
and to provide accommodation for the
Hungarians being expelled from Slovakia and
Yugoslavia. This would involve fifteen
million people all across Eastern Europe and
in the process two million of them would
lose their lives. As a result, 1,400 of
Györköny’s population were ordered to be
expelled as enemies of the Magyar nation as
the Hungarian government in Budapest put
it. But some 600 would be allowed to
remain. But in the process, some 200 would
go into hiding or managed to escape from the
transports and returned home.
There
were to be three separate shipments of
“Swabians” from Györköny. The first took
place on Tuesday, September 2, 1947. Early
in the morning a column of rattling army
trucks entered the village and under their
captain’s orders policemen went from house
to house and took the people on their lists
into custody giving them two hours to pack
their necessities. They were taken by truck
to Dorog and the train station there. Here
every person was subjected to a body
search. They took all the money they found
as well as jewelry, even tearing earrings
from the women’s ears. The expellees were
packed into cattle cars and the transport
left at 3:00 a.m. on September 4th,
1947. One of those in the cattle cars later
wrote: “We were all afraid we were heading
for Russia and we pleaded with our Heavenly
Father that He spare His people from that.”
As the
train was leaving the “new colonists” came
to replace them in Györköny and the next
chapter of the history of the village began.
