Marchfeld Croats

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The Marchfeld Croats were a population group that lived in Marchfeld in Lower Austria. Its roots go back to the time of the first siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1529, but should not be causally related to this.

Until 50 years ago there were still some Croatian-speaking residents. Today all are assimilated. Only the increased occurrence of Croatian surnames shows the former existence of the Croatian population in this region. The habitat of the Croats was most concentrated in the Marchfeld, while isolated settlements could also be found across the March to Slovakia and north to Moravia .

The northern city gate of Groß-Enzersdorf is still called Croatian Gate today .

Settlement

When the settlement in the places is to be dated is not exactly known. They are likely to have been spread over several decades and only immigrated in small groups. The origins of the Croats who settled here are said to be at the Croatian-Bosnian border river Una , like Velika Kladuša but also Slunj . The oldest existing document from 1524 stipulates the permission for Croatian settlers to settle in what is now Lower Austria.

Since the Croatian settlers in their homeland were predominantly farmers, they settled here again and avoided cities like Bruck , Marchegg or Hainburg . In addition to the Croats, Upper Austrians, southern Germans and even Dutch settled here.

While the Croats mostly settled in empty villages in Burgenland , here the Croats settled in already existing places and each formed a smaller or larger minority. As a result, the assimilation of the population was much faster. No new Croatian place names were formed either, only the German dialect form was adapted to the Croatian language, such as Bratisej for Breitensee or Praštiena for Breitstetten .

The majority in the individual places also developed differently. While the first Croats were mentioned in Wittau as early as 1550, this minority soon died out again. No Croats appeared in Eckartsau in 1605, but by 1666 they had the majority.

It is not clear whether this development is due to different birth rates or different waves of migration. A change of location from one place to another cannot be ruled out. Croats are also likely to have moved back to their old homeland, so that entire villages became extinct again, such as Helma near Deutsch Wagram , which no longer existed in 1558.

The influence of the Croats in Marchfeld became so strong for a time that even children in German-speaking families were named with Croatian first names. A similar influence was felt on the Slovak side of the March by Croatian settlements there.

assimilation

The growth of the Croatian minority caused resistance among the Lower Austrian estates as early as the 16th century. There were efforts to deny Croatians access to judicial offices and other functions.

The Croatians were able to keep their identity in Marchfeld, especially their language, until the second half of the 19th century. In the following 50 years, however, the ethnic group disappeared almost completely. Research revealed a larger number of Croats up to around 1850. Alois Vojtěch Šembera names 6,171 in 25 settlements for 1844, Georg Gyurikovits assumes 5,000 Croatians for the entire state in 1847, ten years later, according to Czoernig , it should have been around 6,460.

In Georg Gyurikovits' book he reports that he did not find any more Croatian-speaking residents in 1847, compared to the situation 50 years earlier. Under Joseph II , the Croats are said to have been forced to speak German. During this time, the increased establishment of German elementary schools also fell, so that the pressure to assimilate was also very high from this side.

For this reason, the Croatians later spoke both languages, although the villages of Zwerndorf , Breitensee and Loimersdorf were purely Croatian. Also Markthof was a Croat majority community. In 1878 Slavko Horvat spoke of the fact that only Croats lived in Engelhartstetten and Loimersdorf.

Former Croatian places

The following places are specified by science as places with a formerly Croatian-speaking part of the population:

literature

  • Ernst Bernleithner: The Turkish Year 1529 and the Marchfeld Croats , in: Our Home , New Series, Volume XX (1949)
  • Karl Keck, Karl and Heinrich Weigl: On the question of the Croatian settlement in the former Lower Austria , in: Our homeland, New Series, Volume XIII (1940), No. 8/9
  • Karl von Czoernig-Czernhausen : Ethnography of the Austrian Monarchy , 3 volumes (1855–57), Vienna
  • Franz Xaver Schweickhardt : The Marchfeld , 1842 Vienna

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Dragutin Pavličević : Moravski Hrvati , 1994 Zagreb
  2. ↑ a b c d e Ivan Brabec: "Govor podunavskih Hrvata u Austriji", in: Hrvatski dijalektološki zbornik, knjiga 2 , 1966, Zagreb
  3. ↑ a b c Kvetoslava Kučerová: Hrvati u srednjoj Europi , 1998 Zagreb
  4. ↑ Otto Schilder: The political district Gänserndorf in words and pictures , 1970 Gänserndorf
  5. ^ Josef Breu: The Croatian settlement in Burgenland and the adjacent areas , 1970 Vienna
  6. ^ A b Anton Schultes: The neighborhood of the Germans and Slavs on the March , 1954 Vienna
  7. ↑ Georg von Gyurikovits: "The Croatian Colony in Lower Austria", in: Austrian papers for literature, art, history, geography, statistics and natural history 4, No. 5/6 , 1847 Vienna.