Dörnberg: in the Shadow of the Josefsberg: The Families of Somogydöröcske Somogy County, Hungary 1730-1948

By Henry A. Fischer

In the past, the steep, majestic, heavily forested, and somewhat impregnable Josefsberg was the lair of robber bands and brigands following the expulsion of the Turks from the area and all of Hungary. In the future, it would become known as the Jószefhegy. It is one of the highest elevations in northeastern Somogy County. In its lengthening shadow, the village of Dörnberg would emerge in the early decades of the eighteenth century named as such by its German settlers in reference to the abundance of thorns in its lower regions.

These first settlers were in large part of Hessian origin, having joined the Schwabenzug (the Great Swabian migration) of the eighteenth century into Hungary at the invitation of the Habsburg emperor Charles VI. The fact that they were Lutherans would lead to decades in which they were forced to exist as an underground congregation until the Edict of Toleration was promulgated by the emperor Joseph II in 1782, which led to the naming of the local heights as the Josefsberg in his honor. It was sometime later that the county administration renamed the village, and it became Somogydöröcske.

The village would maintain its German character throughout its history until the end of the Second World War when Protocol XIII of the Potsdam Declaration was carried out on April 6, 1948, and the vast majority of the village population was expelled along with the German families in its affiliates in Bonnya and Gadács and sent by cattle car to the then Russian zone of occupation of Germany. Those from Szil followed a week later.

This publication is addressed to the English-speaking descendants of those families that immigrated to Canada, Australia, and the United States prior to the Second World War, as well as the families who were successful in escaping from the Russian zone of Germany to the west and were able to find a new home in English-speaking countries. It provides them with genealogical information about their forebears and additional information regarding their life and history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781546275596

Henry A. Fischer

Henry A. Fischer is the author of several genealogical and historical studies of the descendants of German families that migrated into the Kingdom of Hungary during the early 18th Century. Born in Kitchener, Ontario in Canada, he is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and Waterloo Lutheran Seminary. Following over forty years in the pastorate he began research on his own family history that led to his career as an author. He is married to his wife Jean, the father of Stephen and David and the grandfather of Julianna, John, Evan and Luke the next generation of the Children of the Danube now transplanted to Canada.

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© 2019 Henry A. Fischer. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/18/2019

ISBN: 978-1-5462-7560-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-7558-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-7559-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019900404

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

Somogydöröcske and Its Past

Affiliated Congregations

Satellite Communities

The Emigration

Destination: Steelton, Pennsylvania

The Second World War and Its Aftermath

Sources

Variations in Names

Places of Origin

A Portrait of Life

Some Research Guidelines

Codes and Symbols

Genealogical Information A - L

About the Author

Dedicated to the Descendants

of the Families of Somogydöröcske

and its affiliated congregations

Now Dispersed All Over the World

Who Remember and Cherish

Their Heritage

As Children of the Danube

FOREWORD

Unlike most publications of this nature, Dornberg: in the Shadow of the Josefsberg is addressed to English readers who are descendants of families from Somogydöröcske and its affiliated congregations and communities located in Somogy County in Hungary.

The forebears of Somogydöröcske’s families were participants in what is now known as the Schwabenzug (Great Swabian Migration) of the 18th Century. They left their various German homelands behind and made their way down the wide majestic Danube River into the Kingdom of Hungary at the invitation of a series of Habsburg rulers to establish a new Heimat (Homeland) for themselves and their families. These families came from numerous parts of what is now south western Germany but primarily from the Duchy of Hessen as the genealogical information this work contains clearly indicates.

They maintained their traditions, faith, language and German identity and developed a unique culture all their own in the centuries that followed. The Hungarians would refer to all of these German settlers and their descendants as Svábok which was a reference to the first German settlers who arrived in Hungary during the first settlement period who just happened to have been Swabians from the Black Forest area. Even though the vast majority of the families in Somogydöröcske and its affiliated congregations were of non-Swabian origin they adopted the term for themselves only pronouncing it in the Hessian manner: Schwova. They did not somehow become Swabians but steadfastly remained being Germans. In their own minds they were Ungarn Deutsche: Germans in Hungary or Hungary’s Germans.

In the 1920s an ethnology researcher in Vienna assigned the term Donauschwaben (Danube Swabians) to identify the descendants of the German settlers who migrated down the Danube River into Hungary during the 18th Century. This designation was, however, totally unfamiliar to the families in Somogydöröcske, nor would they have ever identified themselves as such. In order to differentiate this unique branch of the German speaking population in Hungary whose history was vastly different from that of the majority of the Danube Swabians, the author coined the term, Children of the Danube.

For that reason, in this published work, the families are simply identified as being German. It was the language they spoke, the term they would have used in answer to the question of their nationality whenever they were asked by their descendants in the United States, Canada or Australia for whom this work is written and to whom it is dedicated.

INTRODUCTION

There were two major political decisions that were made by the powers that be in Europe that first gave birth to the emergence of the German Lutheran congregations in Somogydöröcske and its affiliates and the later forced expulsion of the major portion of their village populations.

The first of these governmental policies that had far reaching effects was the Edict of Toleration which was decreed in Vienna by the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II on January 2, 1782. The Edict granted a measure of religious freedom to non-Roman Catholics in Hungary by granting them the right to form themselves into recognized congregations if they consisted of one hundred families or more and received the personal consent of the Emperor to do so. This allowed them to call pastors as well as erect facilities in which to carry out their religious observances. But their building could not have a steeple or bells, nor have the outward appearance of a church and could not be located on or face the main street of the community. There were numerous other conditions, hindrances, restrictions and obligations with which the congregations and the pastors also had to comply on an ongoing supervised basis.

The Edict or Patent of Toleration was only one of thousands of decrees, Royal Patents, laws and enactments that flowed freely from the reactionary Emperor’s fertile mind and pen in his attempt to put the aims of the 18th Century Enlightenment into effect in his realm. All of his attempts at reform were met with stiff resistance from vested interests in both Church and State and resulted in numerous setbacks if not political disasters for him so that in the end the Royal Revolutionary as Joseph II was called, completely despaired of his life’s work on his deathbed and repudiated all of them ~ except for one.

That one exception was the Edict of Toleration which rescued the Protestants in his Empire from the death grip of the centuries-old machinations of the Counter Reformation and hundreds of underground Lutheran and Reformed congregations emerged overnight all across Hungary. Somogydöröcske would be one of them.

German Lutheran settlers first appeared in Dörnberg, later known as Somogydöröcske, beginning in the early 1730s. Initially, they were primarily Hessians who had first settled in neighbouring Tolna County along with families from Baden, Württemberg and the Rhine Palatinate. Many of the later arrivals were born in Hungary while a few of the families had recently come from one of the German principalities along the Rhine in the ongoing Schwabenzug. In addition there were also families that came from Kötcse, another Hessian Lutheran settlement just south of Lake Balaton in the northern part of Somogy County that had been established some time before 1725.

At the outset the settlers formed themselves into a Lutheran congregation and one of the settlers acted as the emergency Levite Lehrer, teaching the children and acting as the lay worship leader. He did so secretly and passed himself off as just another peasant farmer. His identity remains unknown to us and there were several others who succeeded him in the decades that followed. At the same time they were placed under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic priest in the nearby parish of Törökkoppány where the earliest references to the Lutherans in Dörnberg can be found in the church records.

A delegation from the villages of Dörnberg, Kӧtcse and Ecsény went to Vienna and sought an audience with the Empress Maria Theresia, which after several delays was finally granted them on May 7, 1775. The delegates presented the Empress with a petition asking for permission to call a theologically trained Levite Lehrer to serve in each of their congregations. In the petition they presented we discover that at that time Dörnberg could boast of a population of 365 inhabitants. This document is preserved in the Royal Imperial Archives in Vienna but regretfully they were unsuccessful in securing the Empress’ approval of their request.

Later, despite the fierce opposition of both the Vatican and the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary the Edict of Toleration was implemented in Hungary beginning in 1782. The newly named Somogydöröcske did not have the necessary one hundred families required to qualify to be recognized as a congregation. It was only in 1787 that they were able to do so and called their first pastor and became one of the hundreds of Tolerance Churches that now began to spring up all over Hungary.

The first entry in the Evangelical Lutheran church records in Somogydöröcske recorded by the first pastor to serve the congregation, Josef von Horváth, is the birth and baptism of Jakob, the infant son of Hartmann Ferber and his wife Eva Katharina Landek on October 30, 1787. On the occasion of the dedication of the new church on June 24, 1794 the majestic and heavily forested Dörnberg which overlooked the sprawling village below was renamed the Josefsberg in honour of Emperor Joseph II.

Following the end of the Second World War, three men met at Potsdam just outside of Berlin in the summer of 1945 in the Cecilienhof Palace. To history they would become known as The Big Three. They were Winston S. Churchill, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Harry S. Truman, the President of the United States of America, and Generalissimo Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union. Part way through their deliberations Clement Atlee became the new British Prime Minister and replaced Churchill. The victorious Allied Powers met in Potsdam to redraw the map of Europe and establish borders that would forever prevent the re-emergence of Germany as a major political and military power. Included in their agenda was the question of what to do about the 15,000,000 Germans living outside of the territory of Germany that were considered to pose an ongoing problem for their host countries.

These discussions would result in the Potsdam Declaration issued on August 2, 1945. Protocol XIII of the Declaration is subtitled, Orderly Transfer of German Populations. It states the following: "The three governments having considered the question in all of its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary will have to be undertaken. They agree that the transfer that takes place should be affected in an orderly and humane manner…" This so-called orderly and humane transfer would cost the lives of 2,000,000 of those who were to be affected. On the basis of the current United Nations’ Declaration on Human Rights this action taken at Potsdam would now be considered a crime against humanity.

The expulsion of the German population in Hungary began on January 4, 1946. Initially it began in the numerous German villages and enclaves around Budapest as well as western Hungary along the Austrian frontier which involved the Heidebauern who were descendants of Bavarian and Franconian peasant families who had been settled there by Charlemagne in the 10th Century and had lived in Hungary prior to the coming of the nomadic Magyar tribes. The first 180,000 German expellees from Hungary were deported to the American Zone of Occupation in Germany. When the American Army officials became aware of how the expulsions were being carried out and saw the sorry state of affairs in which the destitute expellees arrived they protested to their military mission in Budapest.

No response was forthcoming from Hungarian officials and as a result the Americans took action and refused to accept any more deportees from Hungary and closed their borders to them. The Soviets stepped in at this point and arranged for the next 50,000 expellees to be sent to the Russian Zone of Occupation in Germany primarily the State of Saxony. This would become the destination of the expellees from Swabian Turkey, the Counties of Baranya, Tolna and Somogy.

The final round of expulsions began late in 1947 and would end in the early summer of 1948. The initial phase in Somogy County began on April 6, 1948 and included Somogydöröcske, Bonnya and Gadács. The villagers who were affected in Szil would be expelled later on April 13th.

Their fate and destination were unknown to them at the time. Those involved consisted primarily of women and children, teenagers, the elderly and middle aged men. All they could take with them was food for the journey, bedding and the clothing they wore. The criteria to determine which families or individuals were to be expelled were inconsistent and arbitrary and determined at the whim of regional Hungarian Communist officials. Concurrently, Hungarian expellees from Czechoslovakia arrived and took over the homes and properties of those whose names were on the expulsion list that had been posted on the bulletin board at the village community centre.

The expellees from Somogydöröcske and Gadács were taken by horse and wagon to the railway depot in nearby Bonnya. The majority of the German population of Bonnya were also expelled followed by those from nearby Ecsény as well as some from the German Roman Catholic villages in the area. Here they were all packed into cattle cars. There were 2,500 persons in this first convoy from Somogy County that left that night and headed out into the unknown. Huddled in the darkness of the cattle cars the expellees began to sing, "Wer Nur Den Lieben Gott Lässt Walten. (If You But Trust in God to Guide You".) The story of the families of Somogydöröcske and its affiliates ends as it began along the banks of the Danube River at Regensburg when the Hessians who would found the village of Kӧtcse left for an unknown future in Hungary in the Spring of 1723 and had the same hymn on their lips along with steadfast faith in their hearts. It was their legacy to all of their children who would follow. The Children of the Danube now scattered all over the world.

SOMOGYDÖRÖCSKE AND ITS PAST

In the past, the steep, majestic, heavily forested and somewhat impregnable Josefsberg famous for its abundant thorns was the haunt of robber bands and brigands. It is now known as the Józsefhegy. It is one of the highest elevations in north eastern Somogy County. In its lengthening shadow the village of Dörnberg would emerge in the early part of the 18th Century. But a great deal of history preceded that.

The earliest documented settlement on this site was in 1138 and was referred to as villa Durugsa which is obviously the source of its future name. Following the disastrous defeat of the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohács in 1526 the Turks roamed across Hungary at will terrorizing and devastating huge sections of the countryside. The local population was either massacred or sold into slavery while some fled to the forests or became refugees in Western Hungary that was controlled by the Habsburgs. In nearby Törökkoppány a Turkish cavalry unit was stationed where they stabled over 400 hundred horses and from which the Turks exercised military control over the entire region. In the census of 1573 and 1580 the Turkish officials reported a total of nine tax-paying households in the entire District. This represented approximately 40 persons. There was no longer any trace of a population when the Turks were driven out of the area in 1690.

The entire area had reverted back to a wilderness and there were few if any signs of human habitation. One exception was that it had become the lair of robber bands, brigands and deserters. It was a vast panorama of heavily forested rolling hills, deep valleys, a myriad network of creeks and fast flowing rivers, insect infested swamps, black earth, thickets, thorns and underbrush. Strangely enough the hills had a deep layer of red earth that the Romans had first cultivated when the area was part of ancient Pannonia and traces of the vineyards they had planted could still be found.

After its liberation from the Turks, the County was placed under the administration of Austrian officials who attempted to curtail the rights of the numerous Protestant nobles who returned to the area and attempted to reclaim their estates. This conflict would cause them to join the Kuruzen rebellion against the Habsburgs taking place all across Hungary led by the Protestant Hungarian nobles. The town of Igal which was adjacent to the future Dörnberg was the centre of the rebellion in the County and chaos and destruction reigned for a decade until the uprising was put down in 1711.

As was true in all of Hungary the landed estates had been in the possession of Magyar and foreign nobles as well as monastic orders and the Roman Catholic hierarchy. With the expulsion of the Turks they reclaimed their estates while in some cases the families had died out and the Habsburgs made land grants to foreign nobles or leased the land to army officers in lieu of paying them for their war service against the Turks.

The landholdings that would include the future Dörnberg belonged to the Benedictine Order for several centuries until the arrival of the Turks. Following the expulsion of the Turks from the area we discover that in 1703 the estate was registered as belonging to the Zanko brothers who were Slovak Lutheran nobles who in turn lost their landholdings as a result of their joining the Kuruzen rebellion. The estate was divided between Count Harrach and Baron Johann Esterhazy in 1726. Baron Hunjady, a scion of one of Hungary’s most famous noble families, later married his way into land ownership in Somogy County. His mother-in-law’s dowry had included land previously owned by the Benedictine Order that included the future Dörnberg and which came into his possession in 1733 at an estimated value of 70,000 Gulden.

The resettlement of Somogy County began following the Kuruzen uprising. Among the earliest of the new communities that emerged in the former wilderness was Tab which was settled by Slovak Lutherans in 1717. The settlers appear to have been refugees from Serbia and signed a contract with the two noblemen who shared ownership of the estate: György Majthanyi and Siegmund Perszye. One of the conditions in their contract stipulated that they had the freedom to practise their faith. The congregation they formed would be recognised as an Articular Church, one of the two Lutheran churches that were permitted to exist in each County of Hungary at that time. This would have significance for the Lutherans in Dörnberg in their own ongoing struggle for religious freedom.

There was also another settlement established in the County shortly afterwards in Felsö Mocsolád following the arrival of Hessian Lutherans in 1721 who had first settled in Keszöhidegkút in Tolna County. More Hessians and other settlers from the Rhineland Palatinate arrived in Kötcse and established a Lutheran congregation there prior to 1725. There is also documented evidence that Lutherans from Württemberg and Hessen were already established in Bonnya prior to 1730. This indicates that an ongoing migration of the Children of the Danube was taking place into the area. It was only a matter of time before they would also make their appearance in Dörnberg.

The conditions under which the peasants were forced to live in Hungary in the years 1730-1740 got progressively worse. The nobles and landlords were making more and more demands of their subjects often in excess of the conditions stipulated in their contracts. On the other hand they ignored their own responsibilities and the guarantees they had made with their German settlers. Those who rebelled were executed or driven off of their land. When they dared to lodge official complaints they were ignored or their situation was made even worse. County taxes increased year by year because of their industriousness which simply increased the land values of their landlord.

When it came to the question of their German settlers there was one difference the Hungarian nobles had to tolerate. Unlike Hungarian peasants the German settlers arrived in Hungary as free peasants and not bonded serfs who were bound to the land and their landlord. They had the right of migration. They could leave the estate of their noble landlord and seek their fortune elsewhere if they so desired. This was something denied to the Hungarian peasants up until late in the next century. This right also led to the abandonment of their land and newly built houses when attempts were made to force their conversion to Roman Catholicism. Because of the inheritance rights they practiced, younger sons sought a better future elsewhere where new land was available and they were free to go and do so. These are some of the reasons behind the migration from Tolna County into neighbouring Somogy County.

Regardless of their motives a steady stream of German settlers began to converge on the open puszta beneath the shadow of the Dörnberg. It was called the mount of thorns by the first arrivals and the name they would first give to their emerging community.

There are different versions of the early settlement of the future Somogydöröcske which was more commonly known locally as simply Döröcske. Pastor Wölfel had documents that indicated that the German settlers first came as early as 1737-1738. In that time frame the church records of the neighbouring Roman Catholic parish of Törökkoppány have numerous references to Lutherans living in Dörnberg. They had been placed under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic priest there by the Bishop of Veszprém. Despite that they formed themselves into an underground Lutheran congregation with one of them acting as the Levite Lehrer teaching the children and acting as the lay leader in worship. This would be the ongoing situation for the next five decades.

The church records include some of the following familiar family names: Becht, Felder, Ferber, Hedrich, Hermann, Jung, Kiefer, Landek, Leipold, Simon, Stark, Stickl, Tefner and Werbach. They were simply the vanguard. This clearly indicates that there were two streams of German Lutheran settlers arriving in Dörnberg. One stream came from Tolna County to the east and the other from the village of Kötcse to the north which had been settled earlier. For example the Felders, Ferbers, Landeks, Starks, Tefners and Werbachs came from Kötcse.

The task facing these settlers was immense. They paid a fee for the leasing of the land they would work, cleared the land, built their first rude dwellings, paid the County taxes and provided a specified number of days of free labour annually to the landlord. There was always the danger of raids by robbers and army deserters. Wolf packs were on the prowl and a threat to their livestock. The plague and swamp fever took a heavy toll. The hard and sometimes dangerous work of clearing the timber and removing the stumps led to many early deaths among the men while many of the young women fell victim to the perils of childbirth. Infant mortality was just as high. Crop failures and poor nutrition were often the rule of the day and yet somehow they would create an economic miracle if not for themselves then for their children who would follow them.

Although they were legally bound to accept the ministrations of the Roman Catholic priest in Törökkoppány and pay the appropriate fees they continued to hold their lay led worship gatherings in homes and barns and continued to hide the identity of their Levite Lehrers of whom there were several. Most remain unknown. Despite the failure of their attempts to be recognized as a legal congregation by the County authorities they finally did win the right to attend worship at the Lutheran church in Tab in 1762 and were free to send their children to the school there.

With the assistance of Georg Vadkerti, the Slovak Lutheran pastor in Tab, the Lutherans in Dörnberg sought the sevices of a lawyer in Vienna to present a petition to the Royal Chamber for permission to engage a qualified Levite Lehrer to teach in their school and lead in the worship life of the congregation. In the petition the lawyer presented he indicated that there were 356 adults in the assembly and 57 children of school age. This gives us an insight into the steady growth taking place in the village. There was no official response to their request. They made two other unsuccessful attempts in appeals to the Empress Maria Theresia in 1778 and 1779 even sending delegates to Vienna on the latter occasion. In the last petition they indicated that there were 400 adult members in their local assembly with an additional 100 children.

The Edict of Toleration promulgated in Hungary by the Emperor Joseph II occurred in 1781. It would finally take effect in what was now Somogydöröcske in 1787. Following the consecration of their new church on June 24, 1794 the community took action to officially name their local mount the Josefsberg in honour of the Emperor who had granted them their first taste of religious freedom in their new home.

AFFILIATED CONGREGATIONS

Bonnya

The Villa Buduna is first mentioned during the Middle Ages in a royal chronicle and land grant in 1229. The name and designation are obviously Roman. The locale itself is in the area that was the heartland of the Roman province of Pannonia. Along with Dacia, the two provinces were the final eastern frontier of the Empire. Unfortunately neither was able to withstand the oncoming incursions and invasions of the Germanic and Slavic tribes in the centuries that followed who later fell victim to the rampaging hordes of Attila the Hun followed by the Magyars who were determined to stay. They in turn met a monumental reversal of fortune when the Mongols crossed the frozen Danube on Christmas Day in 1200 and massacred the local population throughout the area and put all of the settlements to the torch. Villa Buduna was apparently one of these.

With the departure of the Mongols a period of reconstruction and resettlement followed that also included the former Villa Buduna. In 1337, 1420, 1460 and 1480 Bunnya is mentioned in the official chronicles of the time. It is referred to as a market town. Livestock sales and fairs took place there annually. The community was surrounded by pasture lands and the other chief occupation of the villagers was vineyard husbandry. One chronicle notes that the pruning knife used in the vineyards was identical to the Roman utensil used throughout the Roman Empire during the First Century. This period of peace and prosperity was to be short lived.

For decades Hungary had acted as a foil and defence against the aspirations of the Turks in the Balkans and was regarded as the protector of Western Christendom. But as the 16th century dawned Suleiman the Magnificent cast a covetous eye on Hungary itself. His forces began to move northwards and in 1526 he defeated the Hungarians at the ill-fated Battle of Mohács and his armies rampaged and pillaged all across Hungary ushering in the one hundred and fifty year Turkish occupation of Hungary. A large portion of the population was massacred and an equal number were sold into slavery and it was said that the most common language heard in the streets and markets in Constantinople was Hungarian. A smaller segment of the population fled to Western Hungary which was controlled by the Habsburgs while others hid out in the nearby hills, swamps and forests waiting for things to normalize. When they emerged from hiding they found themselves in the midst of total devastation and destruction. Somogy County had reverted back to a primitive wilderness.

Somehow a community continued to exist on the site of Bonnya tucked away on the floor of its deep valley and surrounding hills and forests. In 1573 and 1574 the Turkish tax lists indicate that there were fourteen taxpaying homesteads. Even though Hungary was under the control of the Turkish Sultan the land and estates were still technically and legally the property of the Hungarian nobles. Most of the nobles had been exterminated at Mohács or had fled to Western and Upper Hungary (Slovakia) and continued to exercise their ownership by taxing their peasants even though they were absentee landlords. After paying that tax the Turkish tax collector came along and took what was left: running off their livestock, confiscating their grain and taking their young people into captivity and slavery.

After the Turks were driven out of the area in 1690 the surviving Hungarian nobles were quick to put in their claim on their former estates. In 1703 the Zanko brothers, Nikolas and Baltasar, were recognized as the owners of the domain that included Bonnya. They later lost their estate due to their participation in the Kuruzen rebellion and the lands were eventually awarded to Baron Harrach and Count János Esterhazy and remained in their possession from 1726 to 1733. The entire domain came into the ownership of the Hunjady family in 1733 and would remain in the possession of their heirs up until contemporary times.

During the early decades of the 18th century several Hungarian and Slovak families were settled in Bonnya as part of the nobles’ attempts to repopulate and redevelop their estate. They would build their first houses on what in future would become known as the Ungarische Gasse by the next arriving settlers, the so-called Swabians, some of whom actually did come from Wűrttemberg; the ancestral home of the Swabians. Who they were and when they came remains something of a mystery. There is, however, one written source that attempts to provide an answer: the Becht family archives.

The Becht family archives claim that Jakob Becht came to Bonnya in 1730 from Wůrttemberg to serve as the Lutheran Levite Lehrer which indicates that German settlers must have arrived there somewhat earlier and formed a congregation. There are traces of Jakob Becht in Bonyhád in Tolna County where he was acting secretly as a Levite Lehrer in that same timeframe. It is reported that he was expelled on the orders of the Bishop of Pécs and that he and his young family fled to Somogy County to serve the Lutherans in Bonnya, some of whom shared a similar origin in Wűrttemberg. All of the future teachers in the Lutheran school in Bonnya would be descendants of Jakob Becht. The position was handed down from father to son to contemporary times.

The only other documented source we have with regard to the early German settlement in Bonnya is the petition presented by delegates from Kötcse, Döröcske, Ecsény and Bonnya to the Empress Maria Theresia in 1774. The document indicates that there were 174 Lutheran inhabitants in the village at that time. The developments that took place in terms of German settlement in Bonnya appear to parallel those in Somogydöröcske and nearby Ecsény. When the Edict of Toleration finally took effect in Somogydöröcske the congregation in Bonnya became its affiliate.

Ongoing migration into Bonnya continued in the first decade of the 19th century from two sources. One source was families from Somogydöröcske made destitute following the massive landslide in 1805 that destroyed a huge portion of the village. The other source was families from Tolna County such as the Kretschmanns from Udvari and Jahns from Murga. But a much more significant migration occurred from Nagyszékely and Gyönk. Unlike the earlier German settlers these families were of the Reformed faith. The vast majority of them came from Nagyszékely, better known among themselves as Gross Säckel. The earliest of these arrivals was Konrad Gerth who settled in Bonnya prior to 1793. He was followed by Johannes Bremmer, Johann Ferber, Johann Tippel and Anton Ehl arriving in 1807 before the migration began in earnest. The Reformed families from Gyönk came afterwards first appearing in 1817 and included the Muth and Stoss families. They formed a congregation as an affiliate of the Reformed Church in Felsö Mocsolád.

The Reformed spoke a dialect that is still spoken in the Vogelsberg District of Hesse. The Lutherans spoke a dialect that was a blend of various strains of the Hessian spoken by their forebears with some features of the dialect spoken in Wűrttemberg. It was inevitable that there were would be intermarriage between the two groups and in most such cases the sons would adopt the religion of their father, and the daughters that of their mother. Initially the Lutherans had a school that also served as their worship space while the Reformed eventually built a church. Following that, in order for the Reformed to send their children to the Lutheran school to be instructed in German, they welcomed the Lutherans to worship in their church and have the Becht Lehrer preach in German conducting Lutheran and Reformed worship services on an alternate basis.

During the railroad building boom throughout Hungary between the years 1908 and 1910, a line was built from Kaposvár to Siófok. One of the largest depots along the line was built just outside of Bonnya and served as a transfer point in the movement of products and goods with connections to Dresden. Strangely enough it would play a role in the future destiny of the German population in Bonnya and all of Somogy County.

In 1902 the Hunjady’s made their hunting preserve nearby available for purchase and a new community emerged on the outskirts of Bonnya known as Bonnyapuszta that eventually had a sizable population of both Germans and Hungarians.

Gadács

The three hundred meter high Josefsberg forms a natural barrier to what lies south of Somogydöröcske. It was there on the other side of the mountain where the future village of Gadács would emerge in the early years of the 19th century.

The village lies close to the border with Tolna County and the area was once part of the domain of the Roman Catholic Primate of Hungary, the Archbishop of Estergom. Following the Turkish conquest of Hungary and their one hundred and fifty year occupation of the country it was a sparsely populated landscape that had reverted back to wilderness. The Turkish tax list of 1542 reports there was a local population at the time. In 1563 the Turks listed nine homesteads and in the subsequent years 1573, 1578 and 1580 there were ten. During that timeframe the area was listed as being part of the domains of the Bakács family. Then it sank into oblivion after 1580 as was true of most of Somogy and Tolna County.

Gadács would re-emerge on the County conscription lists in 1701 and 1703 and was identified as an undeveloped puszta (open prairie) that belonged to the Komaromy family. It later came into the possession of János Fekete in 1726. Then, as was true of most of the land holdings in the area, it would eventually become part of the domains of the Hunjady family in 1733.

The answer to the question of when the settlement of Gadács took place is addressed in an entry in the church records in Somogydöröcske by the resident pastor at the time, Jozsef von Horváth, "This ancient possession, Oreg Gadats, was settled by landless homeowners from Döröcske, subscribing to the Augsburg Confession in the spring of 1816." In all likelihood this entry describes an organized settlement of Gadács carried out by Count Hunjady from 1816-1820. There is evidence to indicate that a sporadic settlement had preceded this possibly as early as 1799 or 1800. This is substantiated by information in the records of the Evangelical Lutheran Seniorat of Tolna, Baranya and Somogy which lists the founding of Gadács in 1800.

There was steady growth in the population not only as a result of settlers who came there from Somogydöröscke but others migrating from Tolna County. Some of those families came from Kistormas, Majos, Kalaznó, Felsönana and Murga to name a few. The congregation that was formed became an affiliate of Somogydöröcske and Count Joszef Hunjady provided the land for the building of a school that also served as their worship centre and Gabriel Linde served as their first Levite Lehrer.

By 1851 there were 235 inhabitants in the village, all of them German Lutherans. The population expanded to 400 residents living in 66 houses by 1888. In the last phase of the life of the German population in the village during the Second World War there were over one hundred houses and a population approaching 600 persons.

Szil

The first documented reference to Szil is the land grant awarding it to the diocese of Estergom by King Bela II in 1138. The ecclesiastical reports for the years 1332 and 1337 indicate that a parish had been established with a resident priest. A sizeable village existed engaged in land cultivation and cattle herding. Following the Turkish conquest and subsequent occupation of Hungary the tax list in 1563 reports the presence of only ten homesteads. By 1580 this number had increased to seventeen taxpaying households. After 1600 there was no longer any trace of a local population.

In 1660 the entire area around Szil was designated as an undeveloped puszta (open prairie) that belonged to Nikolas Zanko. It was an uninhabited wasteland. The County records indicate that in 1703 the puszta was in the possession of Nikolas and Baltasar Zanko. In the first official government survey identifying the local conditions after the expulsion of the Turks it was noted that the area had been uninhabited for some time.

Between 1712 and 1715 a first attempt at resettlement began and 39 households were established by Magyar settlers. This initial settlement was undertaken by the Zanko brothers who later lost their rights to the domain. Baron Harrach and Count Esterhazy shared the ownership of the domain from 1726 to 1733. The Hunjady family took possession of the domain in 1733 and undertook a planned settlement by bringing in Magyar colonists from Nyitra County in what is now western Slovakia. They undertook the task of clearing the land, draining the swamps, fighting disease and robber bands to give birth to a thriving agricultural community that eventually became a market town serving much of north eastern Somogy County.

The first German family to settle in Szil arrived in 1833. The head of the family was Adam Taubert who formerly lived in Bonyhád in Tolna County whose forebears came to Hungary in 1721 and settled in Felsönána and later moved to Izmény. His family origins were in Kreis Nidda in Hessen. The Tauberts would be followed by numerous other families from Tolna and Baranya Counties. It is not clear whether these German settlers came in response to an invitation issued by Count Hunjady or if they simply came on their own and made their personal arrangements with him upon their arrival. The vast majority of them were farmers but there were also numerous tradesmen. They came with various linguistic and regional backgrounds but were overwhelmingly Lutheran but with a few Reformed families from Tolna County.

Szil would become a melting pot of several distinct German dialects, traditions and customs. Numerous families came from Bikács and Györköny in Tolna County and Lajoskomárom in Veszprém County. Their ancestral origins were in Hungary itself. They were Heidebaurn who jealously guarded their traditions and retained their dialect. In addition there were families from Bonyhád whose origins had been in Württemberg. Added to the mix were the Hessians from Tolna, Baranya and Somogy Counties. The German population of Szil were a colourful blend of all these. The one common thread that bound them was their Lutheran faith. They formed a congregation in 1833 and became an affiliate of the mother church in Somogydöröcske. Count Hunjady gave the congregation his former manor house to serve as their church until such time as they could build their own which was completed in 1839.

The original German settlers had come in search of land. The next generation would turn to trades, businesses, shops and household industries. The vast majority of them no longer worked the land but were now involved in the village economy adjusting to a somewhat urban lifestyle. Szil was becoming what in future would become a commercial hub. Fairs were held four times a year and markets were held every week that attracted customers from a wide catchment area of surrounding villages and communities.

Hungarians formed the majority of the population accounting for 60% of the inhabitants while the Germans formed a 40% minority that also included numerous Jewish families. Szil was more like a town than a village with a total population of 3,000 residents. The major portion of the German population lived along the Nemet Utca (German Street) and Igal Utca (Igal Street). They had their own school where the language of instruction was German, their own Wirtshaus (pub) and social activities separate from those of their Hungarian neighbours. Intermarriage with Hungarians was rare.

But it was only a matter of time before the gradual "Magyarization" of the population would begin due to government pressure after the First World War and the desire to succeed in Hungarian society on the part of the younger generation which began to take precedence in their lives. Instruction in German became minimal in their school during the 1930s and Hungarian played a major role in daily conversation in the lives of many families as the winds of war arose in the distance. In the meantime Szil became Somogyszil.

SATELLITE COMMUNITIES

There were numerous communities in the vicinity of Somogydöröcske and its affiliates where families lived that continued to relate to their former home communities and church. They were usually younger families seeking to better themselves by purchasing land elsewhere that was available and cheaper. In many cases this meant living in isolation from other German families in Hungarian or Slovak communities or forming an enclave of their own among their Hungarian neighbours. References to them abound in the genealogical information.

Bűssű

It was an uninhabited puszta from 1721 to 1821. It is located south west of Igal and in close proximity to Szil. The first German families made their appearance there in the 1820s and came from the surrounding area. They were granted a 25 year lease on the land that they were assigned with the proviso they would provide 30 days of free labour annually along with 15 days of the free use of themselves and their horses and oxen for transporting produce to market for their landlord. In addition there were County taxes and a tithe of their crops, livestock and fowl. With conditions like that it is no wonder that there is no evidence of an ongoing presence on the part Germans in the latter part of the century. The German inhabitants referred to the community as Wisching.

Fehér Csárda

The sprawling Hunjady Domain in Somogy County that included Somogydöröcske also consisted of various open and undeveloped pusztas that included Fehér Csárda that was in the immediate vicinity of the village. Landless families from Somogydöröcske took up land there when there was no longer any land available in the tract that was associated with the village. They built their homes and outbuildings there but it did not develop into a separate or sizeable community.

Gerezdpuszta

The Koppány creek passes through the puszta between Bonnyapuszta and Szorosad. There were individual houses and cultivated land but not a recognizable community.

Kapoly

Following the expulsion of the Turks from Somogy County the domain in which Kapoly was located was in the joint possession of the Perneszy family and Tihany Abbey. The first wave of German settlers arrived in 1720 and 1727 and also involved some Slovak families. The majority of the settlers were Roman Catholic but there was also a Lutheran minority. They were followed by numerous Hungarians so that in the census of 1853 we discover a population consisting of 700 Hungarians and 254 Germans. The Lutherans among the Germans related to the congregations in Tab and Kötcse, and unlike the other local Germans they had not assimilated but maintained their German identity.

Kara

Up until 1767 the village had a handful of houses and inhabitants. Count Zichy was the owner and brought in German Roman Catholic settlers in his attempt to redevelop his estate. He later welcomed some German Lutheran families as well. The heavily forested land was not suitable for vineyard cultivation and the community did not prosper as well as he had anticipated.

Lápafö

Lápafö lies just east of Gadács and Szil and is located in Tolna County. Its inhabitants were primarily Hungarian both Roman Catholic and Reformed but there were also a few Lutheran families that related to the Somogydöröcske parish. During the 19th century German Lutheran families also purchased land there and became part of the community. When the deportation to forced labour in the Soviet Union occurred in January of 1945 the men and women from Somogy County spent the night in the local school in Lápafö before being entrained in Dombovár the next day. Several young women from Ecsény and a teenaged boy from Bonnya were successful in escaping and were hidden from the authorities by the local population until it was safe for them to return home.

Magyarod

The puszta of Magyarod lies east of Szil and in close proximity to Gadács. It was first settled by Germans from Somogydöröcske and Kötcse late in the 18th century. Following the opening of Gadács for settlement most of the German families migrated there and their homesteads were taken over by Hungarians.

Németegres

The village was originally inhabited by Hungarians but in the second half of the 18th century they left and an entirely German community emerged. They had established themselves there by 1781 and they were Roman Catholics. The village is situated between Tab and Nágócs and had a population of 485 at the beginning of the 19th century. It was known as Deutsch-Egresch by the German inhabitants.

Pusztaszemes

Count Siegmund Széchenyi’s first colonization efforts with German settlers resulted in the establishment of nearby Köröshegy in 1778. They were Roman Catholics and were assimilated quite quickly. That would also prove true in Pusztaszemes which was settled later, and known as Semesch.

Sérsekszöllös

Numerous German families in Somogy County sought their future elsewhere in the early years of the 20th century due to land costs and the scarcity of any available land in their former communities. In most cases they purchased land in existing Hungarian communities but in Sérsekszöllös they would become the founders of a new community.

Agents were sent out to the German villages in north eastern Somogy County to recruit would-be purchasers of new parcels of land on the Zala Puszta. This occurred in the autumn of 1908. Among the first purchasers were Johann Weing of Somogydöröcske and Peter May from Gadács. There were other families who joined them from Ecsény, Hidas, Kötcse, Lajoskomárom and Varsád. Johan Hild from Somogydöröcske would buy land the following year. More German settlers followed in the spring of 1910. They came from Varalja, Csikóstöttös and Borjád in Baranya County as well as Johann Ledig and Sebastian Stickl from Somogydöröcske and Valentin Tschermack from Gadács.

The first task the settlers faced was draining the swamplands, clearing the forests and building their first crude dwellings and outbuildings. This was accomplished by the communal efforts of the families assisting one another in these formidable tasks that in turn created a sense of community among them. Their industriousness and communal efforts resulted in a measure of prosperity which was not true in the neighbouring Hungarian villages that would lead to hostility and jealousy on their part.

On the occasion of the celebration of their first Kirchweihfest young Hungarians from neighbouring communities marched through the community, assaulted women and began fist fights which led to many of them being beaten up and their parents had to come with their wagons the next day to take them home. None of the village’s future celebrations ever faced a Hungarian backlash again.

The village lay within the jurisdiction of officials in Zala and Tab and each was four or five kilometres away and the children from Szöllös were assigned to schools in one place or the other. In 1913 the settlers in Szöllös made plans to erect a school of their own with their own German teacher. They were prepared to undertake this project even though many of them still lived in temporary shelters or very crude huts. But with the outbreak of the First World War the building of a school was delayed.

Because the vast majority of the German settlers consisted of young families most of the men were called up to serve in the military. Twenty men from the village served in the war, five of whom were killed in action. The women and children had to tend and harvest the crops. All of the land had been purchased through loans which had to be paid plus interest. It is due to the diligence and labour of the women and older children that the village survived. When the war ended they were faced with demands made of them during the Red Republic of Bela Kun when government commandos repeatedly returned to drive off their livestock and carry off their grain.

When the situation eventually normalized the inhabitants of Szöllös took action in 1921 to become a self-governing independent community and cut their ties with Zala. The community was united with the nearby vineyard growing Hungarian settlement known as Sérsek and in 1931 became known as Sérsekszöllös. In 1921 Johann Hild led the effort to build a school and organize a Lutheran congregation in the village as a filial of Tab. The first church father (lay leader) of the congregation was Valentin Tschermack. Later a Baptist congregation was also formed that would also serve adherents from a wide area. The first teacher was Karl Schuh from Oberschützen in Burgenland and the school that was erected in 1922 also served as the Bethaus where he led the worship services.

The 1930s saw the beginnings of the struggle on the part of the German inhabitants to maintain their German identity and heritage in the face of mounting pressure from the Hungarian government to force them to assimilate. This would result in the formation of a local chapter of the Volksbund and set in motion the future destiny of the village and its German inhabitants. In the final phase of the Second World War the Red Army swept into Hungary in the autumn of 1944. On December 1, 1944 eleven families left to join the wagon trek evacuation organized by the Bund that would take them to safety in Silesia. Only months later they had to flee to the west in the face of the onrushing Red Army and they would make their new home in what would become the American and British zones of Germany after the war.

The first Russian troops arrived in Szöllös on December 10, 1944. In the next few weeks women and teenaged girls went into hiding in order to escape being raped by bands of drunken marauding soldiers. The men were forced to dig trenches and bury the dead. Their horses and livestock were confiscated along with their hay and grain. At Christmas 1944 all young men and women between the ages of 18 an 35 years were taken to forced labour in the Soviet Union. The majority went into hiding in Hungarian villages or bribed officials. Only two women from Szöllös, Elisabeth Tschermack neé Weing and Katharina Denz were apprehended and suffered the fate of those sent to Stalino in the Donets Basin of Ukraine to work in the mines. Katharina Denz died of starvation, while Elisabeth Tschermack returned home when she was gravely ill.

All of the men remaining in the village were rounded up and were interned in either Kaposvár or Budapest. House searches were a daily event. Families were evicted from their homes and settlers were brought in to take over their property. The fate of the German population in the village had been sealed.

In March 1948 the expulsion took place. The expellees were taken by wagon to the railway depot in Tab with only the clothes on their backs and enough food to last them for a few days. There they met other Germans from Torvaj, Lulla and Tab as well as other villages. They were entrained in cattle cars and sent to the Russian Zone of Germany where they were to be resettled in Saxony. Many of them would later escape from there to the western zones and make their home there while some emigrated to other countries. Those that remained in Hungary once again faced assimilation.

Szabadi

The Batthány family came into the possession of the domain in 1715 and the future Szabadi was first settled by Hungarian Roman Catholics and German Lutherans in the second half of the 18th century around 1770. The village is nine miles from Dombóvár and is on the border with Tolna County and in the Balatonboglár wine growing valley. The 1849 census indicates that there were 136 Hungarian residents and 200 Germans. There was a great deal of intermarriage with the nearby German Lutheran villages in Baranya County as well as Somogy.

Szentgáloskér

The first reference to the village is in a County chronicle in 1231 and it is referred to as Keer. Numerous noble families held title to the domain which included the village during the early Middle Ages. It eventually came into the possession of nuns of the Benedictine Order until the arrival of the Turks in the 16th century which led to the subsequent destruction of the village. Following the liberation of Hungary from the Turks during the late 17th century Hungarian nobles laid claim to the domain. A resettlement programme with Hungarian serfs was undertaken and a manor house was built by one of the nobles in the village. The large spacious pusztas surrounding the village were cultivated by the various nobles who shared in the ownership of the domain. Landless German families in the area found employment there as harvesters and in the future some would make their home in the village.

Szorosad

Somogydöröcske lies halfway between Szorosad and Törökkoppány. Szorosad was settled by German Roman Catholics from Wűrttemberg in the same timeframe as Dörnberg. There was some intermarriage between the two communities and a few Lutheran families opted to live there. In the local vernacular they referred to the village as Sauerscheid.

Torvaj

The early beginnings and settlement of the Lullapuszta took place in the 18th century involving Hungarian and Slovak families. Between 1905 and 1912 the owners of the domain began selling large parcels of the puszta surrounding what would become Torvaj and the purchasers were German Lutherans from Ecsény and involved 28 families. Their numbers would reach 42 families when the expulsion took place in 1948. But by then they had been joined by families from Somogydöröcske, Gyönk and Lajoskomárom.

In 1924 the Lutherans built a school that also served as their worship centre and became a filial congregation of Tab. This small community suffered the loss of ten men during the Second World War. In April of 1948 six families were expelled and deported to the Russian Zone of Germany and resettled in Saxony. Only one family remained there, the others all escaped to one of the western zones of Germany. In local parlance they referred to the village as Torwel.

Vámos

Like some kind of vigilant sentinel the ruins of a 15th Century Romanesque church and its immense tower stands guard in the middle of the broad fertile valley surrounded by the cultivated fields of the village of Vámos now called Somogyvámos to differentiate it from a village of the same name in another County. Located some 25 kilometres north of Kapsovár and 12 kilometres northwest of Ecsény the village’s origin had its beginnings as a community during the occupation of the region by the warlike Avar tribe in the 6th and 7th Centuries. The first written record of its existence during the Middle Ages was in 1237 when it was identified as Csopaic and was then part of the Domains of the Abbey of Széntmárton and its monastic community, who in all likelihood were the builders of the imposing cathedral-like structure that was left in ruins by the Turks who went on a rampage of destruction throughout the area after the defeat of the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohács in 1526. The County chronicles also indicate that most of the villages in the area including Vámos were put to the torch at that time.

During the Turkish occupation of Somogy County the population was virtually wiped out, enslaved, fled as refugees to western Hungary or eked out a living in isolated groups far removed from areas where the Turkish presence was concentrated. In 1687 just prior to the liberation of Somogy