Description

Albert MIKSA (b. 1901). / VOLKSBUND DER DEUTSCHEN IN UNGARN.

Budapest: Emile Kincs lithografia, [1941].

From 1526 to 1687, the Ottoman Empire ruled the majority of Hungary. During this period, Budapest and some of the major cities thrived, but the agrarian countryside was largely neglected and became underdeveloped. In 1687, the Austrian Habsburgs conquered Ottoman Hungary, whereupon they embarked upon major resettlement and economic development programmes to restore the region to prosperity.

A key element of the Austrian revival of Hungary was the importation of thousands of German farmers and traders who became known as the ‘Danube Swabians’ (Donauschwaben). As many of these German settlers came from Swabia (a traditional region in today’s Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg), their entire population ended being named this way, although many came from other regions (ex. Hessen).

The Danube Swabians settled in various places in modern-day Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Croatia, where they formed sprachinseln (language islands), amidst the indigenous populations of Hungarians, Slavs and Romanians, etc. The German settlers proved to be highly industrious, and they managed to revive agriculture and the market trade in many regions, while providing the Austrians with a bulwark of reliable German Christians (mostly Roman Catholics) to ward off any attempts by either the indigenous peoples or the Ottomans to regain control of the newly conquered territories. From 1711 to 1750, approximately 800 villages were established in Hungary by German settlers.

The largest single sprachtinsel of Danube Swabians was the area known as ‘Swabian Turkey (German: Schwäbische Türkei; Hungarian: Sváb-Törökország), located in southwestern Hungary, between Lake Balaton and the Danube and Drava rivers. Specifically, the German settlers there were concentrated in the counties of Tolna (Tolnau), Baranya (Branau), and Somogy (Schomodei).

During the era of Habsburg rule, the German settlers of Swabian Turkey prospered, and were largely responsible for transforming the region into a prosperous agrarian zone. The community benefitted from being favoured by the crown and their strong links with fellow German-speakers in Austria and Germany.

The dissolution of Austria-Hungary in the wake of World War I, placed Swabian Turkey within the bounds of the newly independent Hungarian state, whereupon the Donauschwaben lost their special privileges in what was a Magyar-dominated country. While some German communities felt perfectly comfortable as they were, in other places Germans faced pressure from Hungarians who resented their presence. Generally, though, despite the tensions, the Hungarian government recognized that the Danube Germans contributed greatly to the national economy, so, for the most part, the sprachtinseln remained. The Hungarian census of 1933 recorded 477,153 ethnic Germans as living in Hungary.

In the run up to World War II, tensions between the Danube Germans and the Magyar population of Hungary intensified, as people struggled to reconcile how they should react to Hitler’s aggressive posture. To create a forum whereby the German communities could be represented (and monitored), the Hungarian government authorized the creation of Der Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn (‘The Association of Germans in Hungary’, VDU), in 1937. At that time, there were approximately 600,000 ethnic Germans in Hungary.

Upon the advent of the war, Hungary, led by Admiral Miklós Horthy, supported Germany, in return for not being invaded by the Wehrmacht. In what was an uneasy alliance, Hungary became an Axis puppet state, and as result participated in Hitler’s diabolical schemes, such as the Holocaust. For fear of offending Germany, Horthy’s regime was careful to show some deference to the Swabian Germans, although many Hungarians (particularly those who disliked their country’s alliance with the Nazis) came to bitterly resent their presence.

In October 1944, Germany invaded and occupied Hungary, upon discovering that Horthy was secretly treating with the Allies. This placed the Danube Swabians in very difficult position, as they were viewed as being Hitler’s bulwark in Hungary.

Upon the Allied victory in the war, in 1945, and Communist takeover of Hungary the following year, the Danube Swabians fell into great disfavour. Many ethnic Germans were formally expelled from Hungary, while others were ‘encouraged’ to leave after facing harassment. Many immigrated to Germany, Austria and the Americas. However, sizable communities, including in Swabian Turkey, remained, such that today there are 131,951 native German speakers in Hungary, while as many as 220,000 Hungarians claim German ethnicity. Today, the Germans of southwestern Hungary preserve dialects of the German language, as well as signature cuisine, customs, architecture and art, although the size of their active community is declining due to assimilation with Hungarians and emigration to Western Europe.

The Present Work in Focus

The present separately issued map showcases all ‘Schwäbische Türkei’, the largest area of German settlement in Hungary. It was published early in World War II, just after Horthy forged his uneasy alliance with Hitler. It was drafted by Albert Miksa (born 1901), a long-time Donauschwaben activist, who by this time was the General Secretary of the Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn. Miksa created this work as part of a series of maps to show the four main German spractinseln in Hungary, the other maps being Shildgebirge u. Bakonyer Wald; Gebiet Westungarn; and Gebiet Ofner Bergland, although these works are seldom found together.

While the work is rather crudely lithographed by a cheap Budapest printer, it is nevertheless a sophisticated ethnographic map, being the best graphic-statistical record of the German population in southwestern Hungary of its era. It embraces the area bordered by Lake Balaton (‘Platten-See’), in the northwest, the Drau (Drava) River in the south, and the Donau (Danube) River, to the east, and focuses upon the counties of Tolnau (Tolna), Branau (Baranya), and Schomodei (Somogy), which comprised the heartland of Schwäbische Türkei. The list in the lower left explains the numbers used to identify the ‘Bezirks’ (districts) within each county. All rivers and roads are delineated, while all towns and villages of any note are labelled, most of which have Hungarian names, although some have dual German-Hungarian names (ex. Dunakömlőd (Kimling), Németkér (Deutsch-Ker), Pécs (Fünfkirchen) and Mohács (Mohatsch)).

Importantly, the symbols used the to depict the ethnographic information are explained in the ‘Zeichenerklärung’ [Explanation of Symbols], upper left. Towns and villages with significant German populations appear as large circles, with six degrees of colour-coding/shading to denote the percentage of Germans who comprise their populations, ranging from 90-100% down to 1-5%. One notices that the great majority of the population of the towns in the centre and left centre of the map is German. Towns with little or no German residents are noted as small circles, with those coloured in gold being majority Hungarian, and those left blank being mainly Slavic, while those that have at least a trace of a German presence are affixed with a ‘D’.

A note, in Hungarian, in the lower left corner reveals that the ethnographic data used to make the map was ‘Prepared based on the data of the 1920 Census, supplemented with the results of research by the Der Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn’. Seemingly to serve as as reassurance to those concerned by the large German presence in the region, another label, in German, to the right reads: ‘This map is not a nationality map, but merely serves as an aid to the organizational work of the Der Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn’.
A Note on Rarity

The present map is very rare, which is not surprising as it would have been issued in only a limited print run, while its fragile nature and the fact that its content would have been politically toxic in Communist Hungary would have guaranteed a low survival rate.

We can trace 6 institutional examples of the map (all but 1 in Germany), held by the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek; Beineke Library (Yale University); Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Leipzig; ZBW – Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft (Kiel); Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung-Institut der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft, Forschungsbibliothek (Marburg an der Lahn). Moreover, we are not aware of any other examples of the map as having appeared in the market.

References: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin: 2K 10950; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: Mapp. IX.374 n. Chr; Beineke Library (Yale University): 43eb 1941C; Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Leipzig: 1943 B 231; Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung – Institut der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft, Forschungsbibliothek (Marburg-Lahn): K 54 III C 1; OCLC: 255279842, 719234543, 718868548.