Upper Hungary

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Cassovia - Superioris Hungariae civitas Prima , Kosice , the first city of Upper Hungary (1617)

Upper Hungary was an administrative district in the northeast of the Kingdom of Hungary in the 16th and 17th centuries . When term Upper Hungary is the German translation of the Hungarian expressions Felvidék or Felföld (Slovak Horná Zem "upper area" or "human rights") or originally Felső-Magyarország (Slovak Horné Uhorsko "Upper Hungary"). After the Ottomans were driven out in the 17th century, the administrative unit was dissolved; the term is still used in Hungary to this day to describe the geographical territory of today's Slovakia - usually in connection with the Hungarian minority living there. The other parts of the Kingdom of Hungary were referred to with the opposite term Lower Hungary.

history

In modern publications, the term Upper Hungary is also used as a translation of other medieval ( Latin ) terms that denoted roughly the same area, namely the area of ​​the Principality of Neutra at the time . There were names like Partes Danubii septentrionales (areas north of the Danube) or Partes regni superiores (upper parts of the kingdom). From the latter, the name "Upper Hungary" arose historically.

16th and 17th centuries

After the conquest of present-day Hungary by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, "Upper Hungary " referred to present-day eastern Slovakia and the neighboring areas of present-day Hungary that were not occupied by the Ottomans. This area formed a separate administrative and military field - the Austrian Upper Hungarian border head of team (including Upper Hungarian Grenzgeneralat , lat. Supremus capitaneatus (confiniorum) partium regni Hungariae Superiorum , 1564-1686), headquartered in Kassa (Kosice) within the Royal Hungary .

At that time, “Lower Hungary” primarily meant what is now western and central Slovakia, and exceptionally all of the rest of Hungary.

18th and 19th centuries

From the 18th century (in most of the texts, however, not until the 19th century) to 1918, the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary north of the Tisza and Danube , most of which corresponds to Slovakia , was unofficially but frequently referred to as Upper Hungary . Peoples other than the Magyars used the terms Slovakia (in the sense of "the contiguous area inhabited by Slovaks") and Upper Hungary (as part of the Kingdom of Hungary). The Slovaks, on the other hand, referred to the areas of the Kingdom of Hungary outside Slovakia as Dolná Zem ("Unterland").

20th and 21st centuries

When the First Czechoslovak Republic was established after the First World War , it was required that all of Upper Hungary (i.e. also the area between the Tisza and today's border) should come to Czechoslovakia - because Slovaks lived in the area. Since the creation of Czechoslovakia (1918), the Hungarian term Felvidék has only been used to describe the former Hungarian areas that have become part of Czechoslovakia, i.e. H. before the Second World War Slovakia and Carpathian Ukraine and then only Slovakia. In the narrower sense (and rather seldom), since 1918, Upper Hungary ( Felvidék ) has only been the predominantly Hungarian-inhabited areas of Slovakia, i.e. H. southern Slovakia, designated. The border areas ceded by the Czecho-Slovak Republic to Hungary in connection with the First Vienna Arbitration of November 2, 1938, were designated as Upper Hungary (this border revision was reversed after the Second World War). Especially in Slovakia among Slovaks, the terms Felvidék and Upper Hungary are now considered politically charged and an expression of Hungarian revisionism . In today's Hungary and among Hungarian minorities, the term Felvidék (Upper Hungary) is still used in historical, cultural or tourist contexts.

See also

literature

  • Iván Balassa, Gyula Ortutay: Upper Hungary . In: Hungarian Folklore. , 1979
  • Gertraud Marinell-König (Ed.): Upper Hungary (Slovakia) in the Viennese magazines and almanacs of the Vormärz (1805–1848). Views of a pre-modern cultural landscape. Attempt to take a critical inventory of the contributions on the historical region and its cultural connections to Vienna (= Austrian Academy of Sciences. Philosophical-Historical Class. Session reports. Vol. 711 = Publications of the Commission for Literary Studies. No. 23). Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-7001-3258-1 ( review on Kakanien Revisited ; PDF; 136 kB).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ in 16. – 19. Century also Oberhungarn , Ober-Hungarn , Ober-Hungary