Transmigration (Austria)

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In the parlance of the Viennese court chancellery in the 18th century, transmigration was an euphemistic term for forced resettlement programs.

General

The official Latin word transmigration can be found in the parlance of the Austrian court chancellery in the 18th century. It is nothing more than a glossing over word for deportation , since it describes, concealing the circumstances of coercion and violence, the removal of subjects from their homeland and their transfer to distant regions of the Reich, from where they are denied any return to their old regions of origin and was refused: "Your Imperial Majesty [di Maria Theresia] decided to isolate these people in the Principality of Transylvania for the reason that the same is most remote from the population to cut off the correspondence ..." (letter from the Transylvanian Court Chancellery from 1. August 1753, Hungarian State Archives, Budapest).

Those exiled to Transylvania were all Lutheran Protestants . However, their expulsion did not happen at the instigation of the Catholic Church , not even mainly for reasons of faith, as the immigration legend has established in the consciousness of the transmigrant descendants to this day.

The Burgenland Roma were also affected by Maria Theresa's coercive measures . Their children were taken away from their parents and distributed to neighboring towns at least every two years in order to ensure official control.

causes

The reasons lay in the state policy of the Habsburgs at the time . Both Emperor Charles VI. and Empress Maria Theresa built their government policy on the unity of faith as a stabilizing and consolidating force in the multi-ethnic state , whereby this state-supporting role was transferred to the Catholic Church as an all-unifying power of faith. In the course of the consistently pursued Counter-Reformation , evangelical worship and denominational instruction in the spirit of Luther were forbidden. Many Lutherans had gone underground. Officially, they were considered Catholic; but on their lonely farms in the scattered settlements of the alpine landscape they put their faith testimony on the Luther Bible and found the correctness of their position confirmed in the numerous polemical writings, "Sendbriefe", the former fighters who emigrated from Austria to the southern German cities for the Protestant Believe. They were therefore also called crypto protesters .

The Protestant nobility and an economically not insignificant bourgeoisie had largely emigrated in the course of the 17th and early 18th centuries. After the Osnabrück peace treaty of 1648, many Protestant farming families had also made use of the emigration law (jus emigrationis) of the Peace of Westphalia and moved to Prussia . Their move to East Prussia brought the economic boom in this province. The ranks of economically powerful emigrants then increased in 1731 and 1732 with over 20,000 Protestants from the Prince Diocese of Salzburg . Prince-Bishop Freiherr von Firmian (1727–1744) had these Salzburg exiles expelled in complete disregard of the emigration law.

The expulsion of the Salzburg Protestants brought unrest and upheavals among those who remained in the prince-bishopric. The revolts also spread to the secret Protestants in the aforementioned hereditary lands of the Crown. Protestant countries reacted to this. The Corpus Evangelicorum , an institution with its seat at the permanent Reichstag in Regensburg, had to watch over the equal treatment of Protestants in the whole Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation . The increased number of letters of intercessions that followed from Regensburg to the highest Habsburg majesty gave the Austrian Protestant problem an additional foreign policy dimension. Vienna reacted by attempting to deter the masses by deporting the “ringleaders”. It was hoped to end the uprisings and unrest among the Protestants and thus eliminate the causes of outside interference. By no longer letting the "agitators and ringleaders" move to other Prussian countries, but instead kept them within the monarchical borders in Transylvania , one wanted to counteract another tax on the population to Prussia , the economic power of the exiled people in the sense of mercantilism within the borders of their own Keep the state structure.

Freedom of religion , which has been respected by the Transylvanian princes since the Reformation as a fundamental political principle , played a part in the choice of the deportation destination. In addition, the economically depressed country had to be rebuilt by adding labor. In addition, the Saxon nation that was economically so important for Transylvania, deploring its own numerical "decline", was trying to attract German colonists. The first transmigrants, however, had the reputation of being “agitators and unbelievers” to Transylvania; they resisted the "odious emigrants" and therefore subjected the first comers to a strict religious test before they were allowed to settle as free citizens on Königsboden.

Transmigrant transports

The first transmigrant transport left Goisern in the Salzkammergut on June 29, 1734 . He initiated an undertaking which was to last until 1737 as "Carolingian transmigration". The raging of the plague in Transylvania and the turmoil of the Austro-Turkish war of 1736–1739 , plus the death of Charles VI. in 1740 put a temporary end to it. 3,960 people were demonstrably (according to Buchinger) deported from their homeland to Transylvania. In two large batches, 1752 to 1757 and 1773 to 1776, during the reign of Empress Maria Theresa, another 3,000 secret Protestants came from the Landl , i. H. the areas around Gmunden , Laakirchen , Vöcklabruck (which led to the name Landler ) and Inner Austria, d. H. from Stadl an der Mur , from Carinthia and Western Styria to Transylvania.

The different circumstances of the transmigration determined the fate of the respective group of deportees and made their settlement in Transylvania a success or a failure. The times of Charles VI. Protestants expelled from the Salzkammergut were usually allowed to take their families with them and to load a container with their own belongings onto the ship. They received money from the Salzoberamt as an advance on the liquidation of their properties. These were all decisive prerequisites for a successful settlement in Transylvania. In contrast, the Carinthian transmigrants had been separated from their families, initially sentenced to arrest as "criminals" and later deported to Transylvania with the military when the opportunity arose. Death held a rich harvest among them as well as among those who were dragged off in later Theresian times. The children were forcibly withheld from the latter.

When Maria Theresa wanted to deport another 10,000 Protestants from Moravia in 1777 , her son Joseph II spoke out against it and threatened not to take over the succession if this went on against his principles and attitudes. At the beginning of his reign he then proclaimed the tolerance patent in 1781 , which, however, did not prevent expulsions everywhere in the future, as the Zillertal Inclinants in 1837 show , for example .

Joseph Däubler from Goisern

The fate of Joseph Däubler / Täubler from Goisern in the Salzkammergut , whose tombstone is in Neppendorf , also belongs to the context of the transmigration of Austrian Protestants to Transylvania . His life and fate as a transmigrant and transmigrant son can be traced from church registers, personal letters and other archive material.

In 1734, it was not the young Joseph, as the funerary inscription indicates, but his father Thomas who was one of the first among the "agitators" to be deported to Transylvania with his two sons Michael and Mathias. The 66-year-old Thomas had lived with his family in Wurmstein in the Goisern parish. In the documents he acts as a "particular servant" (forest worker) of the Wildenstein estate . Son Michael was 36 years old at the time of the deportation, his brother Mathias was only 23. Thomas' wife Rosina stayed behind in the Salzkammergut with their second oldest son Joseph and two daughters. On April 22nd, 1735 the 26-year-old Joseph von Goisern wrote to his "father Thomas Teibler and the two brothers in Transylvania in the village of Heldau":

“We sincerely wish that we could soon come to you and to the right service. It is also written to all evangelicals quickly after your departure [ie those who have publicly acknowledged their evangelical faith and in writing, note d. Ed.] A serious mandate was given by the commission to avoid the meetings of the practice of the word of God and the hymns of praise. But where not far away, they threatened to take the young men as soldiers. "

- Joseph von Goisern

The letter was intercepted by the authorities in Transylvania and later found in the transmigrant files in the Sibiu State Archives. As early as July 30th, the son of a transmigrant was, as he feared in the letter quoted, pressed against the soldiers. Less than three months later, on October 9, 1735, the mother and the two sisters Maria (37 years old) and Sara (33 years old) were taken to the ship and exiled to Transylvania. When Joseph wrote to his family again on January 31, 1736 from Szegedin , Hungary, he knew that his mother and sisters had also been abducted. But he had not (yet) found out about the death of his father and the two brothers in Heltau :

"Dearest parents and siblings, I cannot fail to write to you again and am now writing for the third time from here in the city of Szeged and once I wrote on the trip, that is 4 times. But I have never received an answer from you (...) I tell you that all of us were violently handed over to the soldiers, and there is no other means, unless we are bought out, or another man for could put us (…) Zu Linz [under arrest in the water tower, editor's note. Ed.] We were 4 weeks, after which we were shipped off to Hungary with 200 newly recruited soldiers ... to the city of Szegedin and have now been here for 4 1/2 months. The other time we spent traveling ... As for me, however, I tell you that I have no shortage of physical food. Everything is cheap here and I can cook whatever I want here myself and my job is to stand guard and watch over 24 hours almost all of the time. As far as my health is concerned, it's almost like being at home with me. The cough has subsided a bit, but the headache comes to me for a while, and I've already been to the hospital twice and always been in it for 4 days (...) I order sister Sara that she learns to read hard ... would like to know ... how it is about my brothers and how they fared during this time and when our father is still alive ... I heard that we should march into the woods for spring, but the buying out could perhaps be done with writing every now and then by the keyserlichen Offices.

Josef Deibler Muschgatier from the gilty regiment at Hasslauer gumpeneier in the Szegedin in the new Käessärn. This letter to my dear father Thomä Deibler has left Upper Austria, emigrant in Transylvania to Hermannstadt in Neppendorf. "

- Joseph Däubler

A subsequent letter from Joseph, received in copy, deals again in poem form with the circumstances of his capture and pressure to the soldiers. The news of the death of his own had him at this point, i. i. July 16, 1736, reached:

“The strict gentleman, the nurse at Ischel… brought us to Linz under arrest. We were arrested there for 8 days, when we got to the town hall we were asked all together. What we spent singing and reading brings us to the soldiers. They took us to the soldiers ... We didn't take any cash ... they wanted to conquer us with hunger ... the moon gate was taken from us by force ... They gave the Jews our clothes to buy ... afterwards when we came to Hungary, there It wasn't easy either. We had to learn and drill a lot and should aim to march into the field and hereby dear mother and sisters my life and so many of yours are still alive ... The father and brothers are already at rest, God help us graciously too. He will give us a blissful ending and take our souls in his hands.

Made a poem by Josef Teibler born in Upper Austria in Land ob der Enz im Kayserl. Salt. Kammergut in Goisern, who was 28 years old and was single, who collects 15 comrades for the sake of the evangelical faith as emigrants who were forcibly taken as soldiers ... "

- Joseph Däubler

Joseph Däubler came to Neppendorf under incomprehensible circumstances (probably through ransom?), Where he was entered in the church records as a godfather in 1739. In 1741 he appears as the owner of a meadow property "on Ochsenweg". He married a year later. When he died very old in 1775, the pastor noted in the funeral register: “Honestly throughout his life”. His daughter founded the Neppendorfer family of Köber in Kirchgasse, which has kept the nickname Deiwler to this day.

From deportees to the minority

It took generations and decades before the consciousness of the transmigrants and their descendants changed to such an extent that they no longer felt like deportees, but increasingly as a Transylvanian-German minority in the minority of the Transylvanian Saxons . In 1766 the Saxon University of Nations also took over jurisdiction over them, formally integrating them as free citizens and contributors on Königsboden . In the parlance of the following period, the name “ Landler ” became a collective name for all descendants of the former Austrian transmigrants.

Sources and literature

  • Renate Bauinger-Liebhart: Neppendorf. Volume 1: Monograph of the place. Denkmayr et al. a., Linz u. a. 2005, ISBN 3-902488-22-0 .
  • Mathias Beer: The Landler. An attempt at a historical overview. In: Martin Bottesch , Franz Grieshofer , Wilfried Schabus (eds.): The Transylvanian Landler. A forensics. Volume 1. Böhlau, Vienna et al. 2002, ISBN 3-205-99415-9 , pp. 23-80.
  • Mathias Beer: “Arbitrary behavior contrary to inherited customs and traditions”. For the reception and integration of transmigrants in Transylvania. In: Mathias Beer, Dittmar Dahlmann (eds.): Migration to Eastern and Southeastern Europe from the 18th to the beginning of the 19th century. Causes, forms, course, result (=  series of publications by the Institute for Danube Swabian History and Regional Studies. Vol. 4). Thorbecke, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-7995-2504-1 , pp. 317-335.
  • Erich Buchinger: The "Landler" in Transylvania. Prehistory, implementation and result of a forced relocation in the 18th century (=  book series of the Southeast German Historical Commission. Vol. 31). Oldenbourg, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-486-50351-0 .
  • Alice Csermak: The history of Protestantism in the rule of Paternion up to the tolerance patent in 1781. Vienna 1969 (Vienna, university, dissertation, 1971).
  • Paul Dedic: The secret Protestantism in Carinthia during the reign of Charles VI. (1711–1740) (=  archive for patriotic history and topography. Vol. 26, ISSN  0003-9462 ). Kleinmayr, Klagenfurt 1940.
  • Joseph Ettinger: Brief history of the first immigration of Upper Austrian evangelical brothers in faith to Transylvania ... S. Filtsch, Hermannstadt 1935.
  • Ernst Nowotny : The transmigration of Upper and Inner Austrian Protestants to Transylvania in the 18th century. A contribution to the history of the "Landler" (=  writings of the Institute for Border and German Abroad at the University of Marburg. Issue 8, ZDB -ID 846658-0 ). Fischer, Jena 1931.
  • Irmgard Sedler: The Landler in Transylvania. Group identity as reflected in clothing from the middle of the 18th to the end of the 20th century (=  series of publications by the Commission for German and Eastern European Folklore in the German Society for Folklore. Vol. 87). Elwert, Marburg 2004, ISBN 3-7708-1265-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hansjörg Eichmeyer : Tolerance patent from Emperor Josef II on October 13, 1781  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 86 kB), lecture on October 18, 2006, Evangelisches Museum Oberösterreich@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / museum-ooe.evang.at