Johann Osswald

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Johann Osswald , also Oßwald , Oswald or Oswalt (* 1712 in Honzrath , Saarland ; † 1752 in Neubeschenowa ( Hungarian Újbesenyő ), Kingdom of Hungary ), recruited German and French settlers to colonize the Banat in what was then the Kingdom of Hungary. From 1748 until his death in 1752, Johann Osswald recruited and accompanied around 1,600 settlers in the Banat, who were absorbed into the then still young ethnic group of the Danube Swabians or Banat Swabians .

life and work

Course of the Danube, 2008
Ulm Box
Historical illustration
Danube in Budapest , 2005
Maria Theresia, around 1752
Martin van Meytens

First journey

In the spring of 1748 Osswald, who had settled with the First Swabian Train as a settler in Neubeschenowa more than 20 years ago, traveled to the Saar and Lorraine in an inheritance matter . He used this trip at the same time to attract new settlers for eleven new land in the then Hungarian Banat by the Habsburg Archduchess , Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary , Maria Theresa of settlers from the western parts of both sides of the western borders of the Holy Roman Empire to Had been made available.

Osswald received official documents that granted him unrestricted freedom of movement within the empire for this company, as well as 2 ducats for compensation. It was also stipulated that Osswald's services would only be paid after the settlers had arrived in the Hungarian Banat. In order to make Osswald's work easier, the president of the provincial government proposed that ships be kept ready on the Danube in the imperial capital Vienna for the immediate onward transport of the recruited people and families after their arrival. It is possible that Osswald made appropriate agreements with the Danube traders on his way to Lorraine.

Osswald recruited 60 families, a total of 296 people, from the areas of Mainz , Trier , and Lorraine to relocate to Hungary, and intensively used his family and acquaintances to build up credibility with relocation aspirants.

At the beginning of June 1748, the settlers, accompanied by Osswald, arrived in Vienna on two ships, and there transferred to two waiting barges , also known as Ulmer Schachteln , for onward transport to Peterwardstein . From Titel , the route then continued over the Bega Canal to Temesvár . From there they were brought by car to what was then Beschenowa and settled here.

Reports on the progress of the trip were regularly sent to the commandant of the Reich War Office in Peterwardstein and the court deputation in Temesvár.

The court deputation decreed that the two barges had to be handed over to the ship bridge lieutenant after they had been used for the transport of the settlers and that the costs for the transport and shipping were to be paid from the funds set aside for settlement. The costs amounted to 96 guilders , of which 24 guilders for the ship's captain , 17 guilders for each of the four servants , and 4 guilders for dressing money . The national leadership called for that amount, together with the two ducats for expenses that Osswald in Vienna had received from the Hungarian colonization s funding program ; the claim was paid by the universal camera pay office.

More trips

Osswald recognized the potential of this "settler trade". With the full support of the court deputation, he was sent again in October 1748 as Reich Commissioner to recruit settlers in Germany, this time with Lothar (Lotharius) Nathermann and Peter Hill, who lived in Ciacova (German Tschakowa , Hungarian Csák , Serbian Čakovo / Чаково ) as assistants or Employee. Osswald then traveled to Lorraine in the spring of 1749, where he recruited 250 families willing to settle with a total of 900 people.

This great success was initially offset by indecision on the part of the authorities about the further use of the settlers. To date, no decisions had been made as to which villages the settlers should be assigned to. An urgent meeting was called by the Redecher Board of Directors, in which the head administrator Stögmann, the counter-writer Fischer, the head Kramer from Lipova (German Lippa ) , and the counter-writer from Lugoj (German Lugosch ) took part, and in which a detailed document with the places and the dimensions of the land allocations.

After the Oberst-Schiffamt initially refused to provide transport , the later Chancellor and Minister, Deputation President Count Leopold Kolowrat, Empress Maria Theresia intervened and drafted formal guidelines for the onward transport of settlers.

In the meantime, Oswald was with the colonists on arrival to Vienna, where he on 10 May 1749 the care of this regiment s hauptmann Serangiolo handed.

Investigation and aftermath

Two reports by the regimental captain Serangiolo dated May 14 and 15, 1749 caused an official investigation ordered by the President of the Deputation Kolowrat. Serangiolo stated in these reports that one of the six ships of the Osswald Group made available by the Oberst-Schiffamt had to stay behind on the Danube in Pest at the beginning of May 1749 due to technical difficulties . Serangiolo stayed with the group and assisted with the preparations for the planting of olive gardens at the actual destination.

Since the families left in Donauwörth , a private broker, a so-called dealer , has attempted to poach as many of the settlers as possible. Despite Serangiolo's presence in Ofen (former name of the city of Buda ), he had not succeeded in preventing 159 settlers from being lured away by a man pretending to be an officer of the Hungarian court chamber president, Count Antal Grassalkovich I , who claimed that Osswald and Serangiolo were liars and it was actually planned to sell the settlers as slaves to the Turks .

In the investigation, regimental captain Serangiolo and his officers accompanying him, the bridge captain Johannes Carl Fromm, the recruiter and mediator Johann Osswald, and a number of Banat citizens were questioned under oath. The evaluations showed that the recruiter, posing as an officer of the Hungarian President of the Chamber (Grassalkovich), had refused to obey Serangiolo's orders, while Serangiolo made efforts to reassure the settlers and make them compliant. Serangioli reported that this person came on board and called:

“ Out who you want to come with us to Buda. We have been ordered to give you money, enough money, and you don't have to go to the Banat and die for it. And don't listen to your guide because he's talking nonsense. "

Serangiolo's task was made even more difficult by the wagons held by the ships for the onward transport of the settlers and their belongings, and the promise of protection for this group by an armed hussar who was supposed to lead them to Pest. Although Serangioli sent a number of soldiers to arrest the settlers and bring them back to the ship, they refused to obey the orders.

Serangioli had asked Grassalkovich through one of his officers in a sharp note to return the settlers immediately so that the journey could continue. Deputation President Kolowrat recommended that the Empress take immediate action against Grassalkovich with military might. Grassalkovich, however, was a favorite of Maria Theresa, who ignored the complaints about his activities.

Grassalkovich had already taken advantage of the chamber mediator Johann Osswald at the beginning by issuing him papers for his unrestricted freedom of movement in the Reich. He saved the logistics of recruiting and transporting these colonists to Buda, and then just stole them on the spot.

Of the 900 colonists escorted by Osswald, 741 continued their voyage on board four ships. Of these 37 died on the way to the Banat, so that only 704 arrived in Temesvár, the settler loss rate was 22 percent.

Distribution of languages ​​in Austria-Hungary
Distribution of Races in Austria-Hungary Historical Atlas , William R. Shepherd , 1911
Settlement phases in Neubeschenowa
Anton Peter Petri , 1963

Competition and conditions

The competition between public and private landowners and their recruiters for settlers, with a high loss of “settler capital” as a result, had developed into a serious obstacle to the Habsburg colonization of Hungary. The court deputation in Vienna used the autumn and winter months of 1750 to deal with the problem.

Mathias Nischbach (or Fischbach ) and Mathias Pleß, two rival agents who recently moved to Beschenowa, also moved to their old home near Trier because of an inheritance matter. They offered to recruit settlers for free on their trip, but asked for a document with the framework conditions of the settlement offer in Hungary, which Maximillian Edler von Rosendorf , Councilor of Temesvár, in the form of an eleven-punctual advertising letter for the settlement of escorted families on 10. November 1749 wrote to both men.

  • Grant of three tax-free years; an extension could be requested in the event of accidents and accidents
  • The journey had to be continued from Vienna by ship on the Danube to the settlement area in the Banat under escort
  • There was a choice between settling in villages that had already been established with their own pastor or founding new villages, in which case the cost of maintaining a pastor had to be borne by oneself
  • Free construction and firewood was provided from the forests
  • Farmland has been provided and other farmland was gradually and adapted to the ability of this to cultivate provided
  • Once wasteland was processed into arable land, it would be entered in the land register as private property
  • Traders had to pay customs and tolls
  • The payment of property tax was due after three years
  • Settlers in Temesvár was a plot assigned
  • You arrive at your own risk
  • After arriving in the Banat everyone had at the local administration to register leave

The core of this document was expressly the guarantee for the settlers by patent that their journey from Vienna to the settlement point was secured, but also a contractual obligation for the settlers, who had to end their journey on the soil of the crown. This should prevent the poaching of intermediaries of private landowners en route. In addition to free travel, further financial support was expressly excluded in von Rosendorf's document.

Although there are no precise figures on the success of Nischbach and Pleß's advertising trip, it can be assumed that the majority of the heads of families registered in Vienna on April 29, 1750 belonged to their group. It should be added that on the same day Johann Osswald registered a group of settlers in Vienna. Based on the community or district origin of these heads of families, Osswald was involved with 18%, Pleß with 25% and Nischbach with 11%, together with 54% in the recruitment of the total number of 141 family heads. This group eventually settled in Neubeschenowa.

It is considered likely that Osswald's advertising trip in 1749 laid the seeds for the idea of ​​recruiting colonists in Nischbach and Pless, since all three were residents of the village of Neubeschenowa. It is assumed in the literature that Nischbach and Pleß were Osswald's apprentices in the trade in human cargo.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Franzosen im Banat  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ), author Franz Etienne names Siersburg near Dillingen, 10 km away, as the place of origin of Osswald, accessed September 2008@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.franz-etienne.de
  2. ↑ a b c d William O'Reilly: Alluding to Alternatives. Sourcing and Securing Colonists in Eighteenth-Century Germany . In: Claudia Schnurmann ; Hartmut Lehmann (Ed.): Atlantic understandings: essays on European and American history in honor of Hermann Wellenreuther . LIT Verlag Münster, 2006, ISBN 978-3-8258-9607-2 , pp. 159-183.
  3. ↑ The name Neubeschenowa came in 1750 to Beschenowa of which also lies in the Banat, Bulgarian populated Altbeschenowa to distinguish
  4. ↑ Neubeschenowa.de, Geschichte ( Memento of the original from March 6, 2005 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. , Accessed August 2008  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.neubeschenowa.de
  5. ^ French in the Banat
  6. ↑ BA, No. 22, fol. 17-18) , page 175, Serangiolo wrote in his report in Italian that “nonsense” was the rather euphemistic substitute description of the actual phrase in the Italian language.
  7. ↑ Grassalkovich Palace
  8. ^ Franz Stanglica: The emigration of Lorraine to the Banat and Batschka in the 18th century . In: Elsaß-Lothringen 12 (1943), page 24 ; as well as in id., The Effects of the Alsace-Lorraine in the 18th Century on Southeast Europe in the Mirror of the Settlement Files, in Elsaß-Lothringen 6/7 (1933) , on page 176 also mentioned as Mathias Fischbach
  9. ↑ Between 1748 and 1752 the settlers in Neubeschenowa fell into the pastoral care of Pastor Anton Martinuzzi in what was then Mercydorf ( Romanian Cărani , Hungarian Mercyfalva ), who was involved in the recruitment of Italian settlers in this area. To further establish the emerging place name Neubeschenowa and to distinguish it from the Bulgarian- settled Altbeschenowa (Romanian Dudeștii Vechi ), which is also located in the Banat , the Vienna Court Chamber decided to provide a pastor. (Source: Anton Peter Petri - Neubeschenowa: History of a Moselle-Franconian community in the Romanian Banat, Pannonia-Verlag, 1963, pages 30-31 )
personal data
SURNAME Osswald, Johann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Oswald; Oswalt; Osswald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Recruitment of German and French settlers to colonize the Banat in what was then Hungary
DATE OF BIRTH 1712
PLACE OF BIRTH Honzrath , Saarland
DATE OF DEATH 1752
Place of death Neubeschenowa , Kingdom of Hungary