Finding Hungarian influences in Burgenland is not an easy task. The same could be said about all the lost lands beyond Hungary’s border, but it feels more pronounced in Burgenland. There are way fewer ethnic Hungarians in Burgenland than there are in southern Slovakia, Transylvania, or Vojvodina. I cannot find a point in the past five hundred years when Hungarians were a majority of the inhabitants in what is now Burgenland. For that matter, there may never have been such a point. The region was generally known as West Hungary prior to the Treaty of Trianon. The more I have learned about the region, the more I have become convinced West Hungary was a misnomer. A better name would be Far West Hungary, the Western Frontier of Hungary or Teutonic Hungary. The last of those acknowledges that this part of Historic Hungary was the intersection of the Hungarian and German peoples. It was the western extent of Hungarian settlement. A region where two very distinct peoples vied for control and stayed in permanent contact for a thousand years. That intersection is still there, but harder to discern because the Hungarian presence has shifted a little further east.
Keeping watch – Border guard sculpture at Oberwart Town Hall (Credit: Papergirl)
Side By Side – A Question of Loyalty
Today, the dividing lines between ethnic Germans and Hungarians are no longer blurred the way they were prior to 1920. The Treaties of St. Germain-en-Laye and Trianon forced Austria and Hungary to take sides behind national borders that roughly followed ethnic lines. Even then, there were Hungarians living in pockets in the newly minted Austrian province of Burgenland. Those Hungarians who stayed through punitive treaties, another world war, and a decade long Soviet occupation of Burgenland are probably not going anywhere. For surviving so many cataclysms they won the economic lottery. Austria has improved dramatically since the first half of the 20th century. It is now one of the world’s most prosperous countries. Ethnic Hungarians have economic reasons for loving life in Burgenland. They also have deep ancestral ties to the area. Hungarians were sent to guard this borderland during the Middle Ages. Anyone looking for ancient ethnic history in East-Central Europe would do well to start in Oberwart (Felsoor).
I first became aware of this border region over a decade ago when I spent several days in Sopron, one of Hungary’s most beautiful cities with its elegant old town. Sopron (Odenburg) had originally been assigned to Austria by the Paris Peace Conference. Ethnic Hungarians in the area took matters into their own hands to change facts on the ground to fit a pro-Hungarian narrative. Their uprising resulted in a plebiscite where Sopron voted to remain part of Hungary. It is still known today as “The Most Loyal Town”. Several other historic Hungarian towns and cities were fortunate enough to find themselves east of the new border. During my visit, I decided to explore one of the more famous. On a Sunday afternoon, I took a train to the historic town of Koszeg, further to the south. Like Sopron it is only a few kilometers from the border with Austria. Along the way I passed through the city of Szombathely, before taking a two-carriage train on the short line to Koszeg.
The most loyal town – Sopron (Credit: Fortepan)
Frontier Defense – A Noble Duty
While watching the scenery pass on this journey, I learned the basic history of the region from a guidebook. I thought about just how close I was to the Austria-Hungary border. For my generation, this was Iron Curtain country. The hard and sometimes deadly border between East and West during the Cold War ran through the region until 1989. I soon learned enough from the guidebook’s potted history to realize the border’s historical importance existed long before there was an Iron Curtain or Austria and Hungary were independent nations. This was the first time I came across the term Orseg, a Hungarian word which means “guard watch.” The Orseg is synonymous with the frontier which was guarded by communities of free border guards. The guidebook mentioned that some of the Hungarian people who lived in the region are the direct descendants of these guards. Now while doing research on my itinerary for the lost lands beyond Hungary’s borders, I have discovered that some of the descendants form a Hungarian language island in the Burgenland. This consists of two villages and the town of Oberwart.
Finding out more about the descendants of the border guards will be one of my goals when I visit Oberwart. The town is the third largest in Burgenland and only has 7,500 inhabitants. It is also the regional center for ethnic Hungarians. They make up a quarter of the town’s population. The town is proud of this legacy. Beside the entrance to Oberwart’s Town Hall stands a sculpture of a border guard. The town’s coat of arms also has a border guard. Those who undertook this duty were raised to the level of nobility. Given this history, it is not surprising their descendants stayed in the region. Interestingly, those closest in kinship to the Orseg’s border guards were on the other side of the Kingdom of Hungary. The Szekely performed the same duties along the border in eastern Transylvania. Linguistic studies have proven kinship between the two groups.
Border patrol – Coat of arms for Oberwart (Credit: Piroska)
Fin De Siecle – A World In Miniature
As for Oberwart, it looks to be the usual tidy Austrian town with a sleepy, provincial air about it. In a sense, Oberwart is deceptive because superficially it looks like nothing special. It is anything but that. Oberwart’s history is complex and multifaceted. The town is a reminder of just how multicultural parts of Europe were prior to World War I. Austrians, Hungarians, and Croatians lived side by side in West Hungary. A few still do today in Oberwart and several other communities in Burgenland. Central and Eastern Europe were an ethnically mixed-up world with Hungarians the ruling class, ethnic Germans the merchant class, and Croatians part of the labor force. Nationalism and the creation of independent nation states following World War I eroded this multiculturalism and aimed to separate people along national lines, supposedly for their own good. World War II and its aftermath served to reinforce this process. This came at the expense of diversity. Some of that diversity can still be experienced in Oberwart by discovering the Hungarian minority. The fact that they are small in number does not matter nearly as much as their continuing existence.
Click here for: The Price You Pay – Counting The Costs in Burgenland (The Lost Lands #56)
Europe Between East And West 