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• The New Challenges and Situation of an Ethnic Minority within a Local Community in the Light of Social Changes

  151-177

  Gyöngyi Kormányos Katona

  Views:

  54

  Our memory is largely shaped by the way we look at the peoples currently living within the Carpathian Basin. Once a well-known tobacco-growing village in Historic Hungary, Torda (also known as Torontáltorda in Hungarian) is now a dispersed settlement with a Hungarian ethnic majority located in the Banat region of Vojvodina, Serbia.

  The shifting of national borders, the two World Wars, the events of the Yugoslav Wars and migratory movements have collectively changed and decimated the lives of Hungarians who had found themselves outside their motherland’s borders after the 1920s.

  In spite of the decline in population, the emigration of young people, and the everyday struggles resulting from hard living conditions, this village in the Central Banat district could attract further socio-ethnographic interest. In the micro-communities of rural settlements, education and religion play a key role in creating social value, maintaining Hungarian culture in the area and forming a national, local sense of identity within the community. Commemorative rituals, local traditions and national holidays often cross each others’ paths and blend together through education and religion, highlighting the reality and cultural values of the community, as well as the array of connections between community life and ethnic culture. This study discusses Torda’s present in the light of social change and the process of cultural mapping, touching on the importance of the local cultural association in the community’s life. This study also explores the events of the past few decades that have left a deep imprint on the micro-community’s life in a cultural, social and ethnic sense.

• Competing Nationality Politics Targeting German Communities at the Hungarian-Romanian Border Zone after the Great War

  71-86

  Levente Szilágyi

  Views:

  149

  In my study, I focus on the events that took place in the short period after the Great War ended (1918) and before the consolidation of Romanian power in the Hungarian-Romanian Border Commission (1922) from the point of view of the artificially created ethnic category: the Satu Mare Swabians or Sathmar Swabians. The historiography related to the “ethnographic” aspects of these events have appeared multiple times and in several contexts and forms in the years since. However, the question of ethnicity has not arisen in relation to the population of German descent, but rather in relation to the Hungarian-speaking Greek Catholic communities of Romanian and Rusyn/Ruthenian origin who were treated by the Romanian side as Magyarized Romanians. Following this example, the Romanians later began to collect data on the Magyarized Germans, which they then presented to the Border Commission. Germans living in the territory witnessed a strong competition between identity politics and discourse supported by rival Hungarian and Romanian states. One of the key features of this rivalry was the intensive propaganda activity promoted by both the Romanian and the Hungarian authorities to gain territories to the detriment of the other.

• Stereotypes Surrounding the Hungarian Peasantry During the Years of the First World War

  51-70

  Tamás Csíki

  Views:

  163

  The paper examines the use and political, ideological, and social meanings of the term peasant and its synonyms. It reflects on how these meanings were modified as a consequence of the structural and experiential changes in the social situation of the agrarian population.  The textual analysis is based on publications from the press during the First World War and, thus, the concepts, in their contexts, can be under­stood first as instruments for propaganda and mental mobilization, that is to say, as political action. Second, these notions and concepts also incorporated past (histor­ical) phenomena and future expectations, through which they offered arguments for programs and ideas to transform society. Third, the texts frequently prompted debates in the media, which strengthened the discursive nature of the press, the controlled publicity, and the usage of vocabulary and language. By the same token, they can also represent a chance to examine the social stereotypes and the experience of personal relations crystallized in these texts.

• Die Vertreibung als Zäsur im religiös-kulturellen Leben der ungarndeutschen Gemeinde Budaörs/Wudersch?

  87-118

  Viktória Muka

  Views:

  169

  Die Arbeit befasst sich mit der Frage, inwieweit und warum sich die Vertreibung der deutschsprachigen bzw. -stämmigen Bevölkerung aus Ungarn, die 1946 in Budaörs/Wudersch begann, als historische Zäsur in der Gestaltung der dortigen Fronleichnamstraditionen durchsetzte. Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten, zumeist verfasst von Budaörser Ortshistorikern und Ortshistorikerinnen, behaupten, die Vertreibung hätte unmittelbar zur Änderung der Festgestaltung der vermeintlich 300 Jahre alten Budaörser Tradition des Blumenteppichlegens an Fronleichnam geführt. Beschreibungen des Festes in der heutigen Form beziehen sich auf die Vertreibung als die Zäsur, die zur Verkürzung des Prozessionsweges führte, welcher nun nur mehr um die Kirche herum führen durfte. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird die Vertreibung 1946 als einzig mögliche Zäsur in der Festgestaltung hinterfragt. Dies geschieht aufgrund der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Wesen und den Charakteristika von historischen Zäsuren und der Analyse der lokalen politischen und gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungen in Budaörs in den Kriegsjahren. Um diese Entwicklungen auf lokaler Ebene in Budaörs nachzuvollziehen, wird in der Arbeit auf die Rolle von Kardinal József Mindszenty und der katholischen Kirche in Ungarn in den Jahren 1945–1949 eingegangen. Nach der theoretischen Auseinandersetzung mit Alben und ihrer identitätsstiftenden Funktion wird ein bisher zur Forschung nicht herangezogenes Quellenmaterial, ein Album im Erzbischöflichen Archiv in Esztergom/Gran, vorgestellt und analysiert. Das Kardinal Mindszenty 1948 anlässlich der von ihm durchgeführten Firmung in Budaörs zum Geschenk gemachte Album mit Fotos dieses Ereignisses und der lokalen Fronleichnamstradition zeugt davon, dass die Vertreibung nicht unmittelbar zur Veränderung des Prozessionsweges führte. Die Veränderungen in der Brauchgestaltung sind vielmehr als Folgen einer langjährigen Umwälzungs- und Anpassungsperiode an die politischen und sozialen Gegebenheiten zu verstehen, mitunter der sukzessiven Verfolgung der katholischen Kirche, die in der Festnahme von Mindszenty im Jahr 1948 mündete.

• Brauchtumspflege als Zukunftsperspektive? Die Integrationsgeschichte der deutschen Vertriebenen im Kontext von aktuellen Diversitätsdiskursen

  7-31

  Tilman Kasten

  Views:

  99

  Diversität ist ein zentrales Stichwort unserer Zeit, das Einzug in die wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit (historischen) Migrationsphänomenen und deren Folgen gehalten hat. Dies gilt auch für die Geschichte der Zwangsmigration der deutschsprachigen Bevölkerung aus dem östlichen Europa infolge des Zweiten Weltkriegs, welche die sog. Heimatvertriebenen und die „Aufnahmegesellschaften“ vor große, u.a. die „Integration“ betreffende Herausforderungen stellte. Ausgehend von einer kritischen Lektüre eines geschichtswissenschaftlich fundierten Debattenbeitrags zur Bewertung der Integrationsgeschichte der deutschen Vertriebenen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland reflektiert der Artikel die Frage, inwiefern sich aus dieser Geschichte Orientierungspunkte für aktuelle Debatten über ein gesellschaftliches Selbstverständnis im Zeichen von Diversität ableiten lassen.

• Changing Economic Strategies in the Ecsed Marsh: An Example of Renewal in Nagyecsed

  129-149

  Eszter Zoltán-Borzován

  Views:

  108

  The Ecsed Swamp was formed in the New Holocene Era in the lowest areas of Nyírség and Szatmár Plains. Besides the protective nature of the swamp, it was a significant source of livelihood for the local population – loach fish collecting (csikász), bird hunting and egg collecting (pákász) were the main occupations of the “swamp people”. The Ecsed Swamp, which once covered almost 432 km2 was drained at the end of the 19th century that caused significant changes in everyday life and farming. The inhabitants of the so-called “Loach land” (Csíkország) tried to dig up and cultivate marshy areas even before the drainage. Burning, cutting and cleaning were already known among the swamp people, since this was the only way to carry out farming activities in this area. In their frustration the swamp people effected by the drainage tried to obtain land for cultivation. They worked on the lands purchased by the Károlyi noble family. More prosperous ones also built farms on the border of the neighbouring villages, thus the process of homesteading began. In the 21st century, the cultivation of agricultural land in the area of former swamps is causing significant problems since water shortage is now characteristic towhole Europe. Reedfires in the former swamp areais a phenomenon that exists to this day. With the transformation of landscape and ways of farming and living, the need to apply different economic strategies arose, which I will discuss t in my research study with case studies from the 19th and 21st centuries.