Banat Bulgarians

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Banat Bulgarians in Romania and Serbia

The Banat Bulgarians (Bulgarian: банатски българи , banatski balgari , Romanian: Bulgari bănățeni , Serbian: Banatski Bugari ) are a Bulgarian ethnic group of Roman Catholic faith in the Banat . They are the descendants of the Paulikians who fled north after the uprising from Tschiprowzi ( Bulgaria ) and settled in the Banat (today in Serbia and Romania ). At the end of the 19th century some Banat-Bulgarian villages emerged in Bulgaria as a result of return migration.

history

Bilingual (Bulgarian / Romanian) house badge in Vinga
Banat Bulgarians in Bulgaria

The Bulgarian Paulikians lived in Eastern Anatolia and were deported to the Balkans , to the area around Plovdiv , by Emperor Johannes Tzimiskes in the second half of the 10th century . Even today a few Paulician villages can still be found in the Plovdiv area. However, some of them moved to northern Bulgaria in the Middle Ages. Here they founded some settlements in the area around Nikopol , Belene and Swishtov . In the late Middle Ages (16th century), the Bulgarian Paulicians converted to Catholicism , but many were assimilated by the Orthodox and Muslim Bulgarians .

In 1688 the Bulgarian Catholics took part in the Tschiprovzi uprising against the almost 300-year Turkish rule . Around 1000 people lost their lives in the process. Another 3,000 fled and settled north of the Danube, in the Banat. There they formed Bulgarian village communities, which still exist today.

The first Banat Bulgarians settled in the Banat of Craiova ( Little Wallachia ). After the Russo-Austrian Turkish War (1736–1739) and the defeat in the Battle of Grocka , large parts of small Wallachia fell back to the Ottoman Empire , which caused the Banat Bulgarians to flee to the Temescher Banat . Here they founded the Bulgarian villages: Beşenova Veche (Stár Bišnov 1738; today Dudeştii Vechi) and Vinga (Tereziopol 1741).

In the second half of the 18th century the population increased, so that further Bulgarian villages emerged through inland colonization: in Serbia: Modoš (1779), Konak (1820), Stari Lec (1820), Banatski Dušanovac (Roggendorf, today a district of Banatski Dvor , 1842), Gjurgevo in 1869 (moved to Skorenovac in 1886 ) and Ivanovo (Šandoru, Sándoregyházfalva) in 1869 . In the area of ​​today's Romania, the villages of Breştea (Brešča) and 1846 Colonia Bulgară (Telepa) were created through internal colonization .

Some Banat Bulgarians emigrated to Bulgaria between 1880 and 1890. Here those who emigrated from Beşenova Veche founded the villages of Bărdarski Gheran , Dragomirovo , Gostilea and Bregare and those who emigrated from Vinga founded the village Asenovo . These villages are all along the Danube in northwestern Bulgaria.

Population development

According to a census from 1770, 8,683 Bulgarians lived in the then undivided Banat. After the communists came to power and the associated expropriation, collectivization of agriculture and nationalization of all means of production, many Bulgarians left their ancestral villages Vinga, Dudeştii Vechi, Breştea and settled in the cities of Timişoara , Arad , Reşița and Sânnicolau Mare to find a new one Building existence. In 1992 there were 1320 Bulgarians in Timișoara and 6466 in Timiș County. In 2002, 6486 Bulgarians lived in Timiș County. and in 1658 in Vojvodina , Serbia.

Writing and language

The Banat Bulgarians speak their own dialect, Banat Bulgarian , and use the Latin script . This distinguishes them from the Bulgarians in the motherland, where the Cyrillic script is used. Under the influence of the movements for the national rebirth of the South Slavic peoples , the Banat-Bulgarian written language emerged in the mid-19th century .

When creating linguistic terminology, the teacher Jozu Rill should be mentioned as a pioneer. He was the first to establish the orthographic and grammatical norms of the Banat Bulgarian written language.

Press and culture

In 1866, Jozu Rill published an annual calendar with the title "Pomen" in Banat Bulgarian. The yearbook Bâlgarsći kalindár by A. Dobroslav was published from 1869 to 1870 .

Leopold Kosilkov played a major role in the development of the Banat-Bulgarian literary language . His numerous new publications served to expand the scope of Banat Bulgarian. The language he used was, in his opinion, “real” Banat Bulgarian, without so-called “Illyrian” (Serbian) and Hungarian influences. He tried to reduce the number of diacritical marks in the Banat-Bulgarian texts. From 1887 to 1894 he brought out the “Banat-Bulgarian Calendar” and in 1881 the first Banat-Bulgarian newspaper “Vínganska Nárudna Nuvála”.

After the First World War , literary activity in the mother tongue was revived. In 1930 Iván Fermendžin published the calendar Banátsći-balgarsći Kalendár za gudinata 1931 in Arad , which Karl Telbisz continued to publish in Temesvár from 1936 to 1940 . At the same time, Karl Telbisz began publishing the weekly Banátsći-balgarsći glásnić , which appeared until 1943.

In 1938 Iacob Ronkov published Istorijata na bâlgarete du Banat (The History of the Banat Bulgarians).

The Banat Bulgarians in Romania have had their own press organ "Naša glas" (Our Voice) since 1990. The newspaper is subsidized by the state.

Faith and Tradition

Festival program of the Banat Bulgarians in Timișoara

The Banat Bulgarians are the only Bulgarians of Roman Catholic faith. The Church has always played an important role in their everyday life. Looking back, the mayor of Dudeștii Vechi, Gheorghe Nacov, says: "I've been able to skip school, but definitely not the Sunday service."

The church was the most important factor that contributed to the preservation of the native language of the Banat Bulgarians. Since they settled in the Banat, the Banat Bulgarians preserved not only their Catholic faith, but also their language, their customs and their unique costume.

The costume is still made by hand by some women from Dudeştii Vechi and Breştea. They are real feats. All attempts at machine production have so far failed. It so happens that the costumes of the Banat Bulgarians are exhibited in museums all over the world: in Budapest , Sofia , the United States of America , England , France , Germany , Austria and even in Australia and Japan .

  • Roman Catholic Church in Dudeștii Vechi, Romania

  • Roman Catholic Church in Ivanovo, Serbia

  • Roman Catholic Church in Bardarski Geran, Bulgaria

politics

The Banat Bulgarians are politically organized in the "Union of Bulgarians in the Banat" based in Timișoara. The Bulgarians in Muntenia and Oltenia are represented by the “Union of Bulgarians in Romania” with its seat in Bucharest . The Bulgarians in Romania have one member in the Romanian Parliament. In the period from 1990 to 1996 and again after 2002, the Bulgarian member of the Romanian parliament was appointed by the Banat Bulgarians.

Personalities

literature

  • Wolfgang Geier: Bulgaria between West and East from the 7th to the 20th century: socially and culturally-historically significant epochs, events and figures , Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d minoritiesromania.blogspot.de , Bulgarians in the Banat
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Geier: Bulgaria between West and East from the 7th to the 20th century: socially and historically significant epochs, events and shapes , Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001
  3. ↑ a b c intercultural.ro ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Interculturality in Romania @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.intercultural.ro
  4. ↑ edrc.ro , Ethnic Population Structure in Romania
  5. ↑ a b c d e f forost.lmu.de , Banater Bulgarian
  6. ↑ a b c romanialibera.ro , The Paulikianer Bulgarians, an island of Slavic Catholics