Currently the name of the village is Mosonszolnak and it is located 30 kilometres east of the Neusiedler See; 70 kilometres from
For centuries the region was known as the Heideboden by its inhabitants who were descendants of German-speaking colonists who first cultivated the grasslands and moors that covered the area. They were later joined by Croatian refugees at the time of the Turkish invasions and conquest of
Many of the villages of the Heideboden were destroyed during the Turkish raids and military campaigns in the area. In all likelihood most of them had earlier been built on previous Roman sites. Zanegg has existed as a community for over one thousand years. During the Middle Ages it was identified as a German-speaking village. The name first appears in 1546 as an Urbarial village of the Habsburg Domain at Ungarisch Altenburg, this document provides information on the contractual relationship the peasants had with their noble landlord.
The earliest identifiable population living in the area were the Celts who were followed by the Romans, Germanic tribes like the
An ancient church that is some eight hundred years old still stands but unlike the church in Kaltenstein it was not meant to serve a monastic community. It is also associated with Queen Maria of
When the Turks first lay siege to
As a result of the first Turkish assault on Zanegg in 1529 only twelve houses were left standing, while thirty-two houses were burned or destroyed and only a few inhabitants continued to live there according to a report in 1532 written to the steward of the Domain of Ungarisch Altenburg. After defeating the Hungarian army at Mohács in 1529 the Turkish army of 300,000 was set loose and cut a swath of destruction to the West and overran
As the frustrated and unsuccessful Turks ended the siege of
Eventually some of the bravest former inhabitants returned or came out of hiding in the forests and swamps and began to rebuild. Most of the larger settlements were reclaimed while the smaller villages reverted to wilderness. The Domain of Ungarisch Altenburg listed nine such destroyed villages all of which were a few kilometres from Zanegg. By 1532 there were perhaps up to fifty people living in Zanegg. Some of them had survived the ravages of the Turks while others came there who could not return to their former farms and sought a sense of security in “larger” Zanegg. It is not known what happened to the rest of the population.
The family names listed in the Urbarial List of 1546 were still common in Zanegg in 1946 when the entire population was deported. Included among them were the Zechmeisters whose origins had been in
During the 150 years of Turkish occupation that followed, the people of the Heideboden lived in constant uncertainty. Turkish raiders and marauders were always on the prowl and attacked the frontier settlements. In 1594 the Turks took the fortress of Raab, a Habsburg defensive position in the area and would hold it for four years. That meant constant danger to the Heideboden and its single fortress at Ungarisch Altenburg. The Hungarian Prince of Transylvania took over
Because of all of these difficulties there was little growth in population or development of the land. Despite of all of these factors by 1659 Zanegg had between 600-800 inhabitants. The vast majority of them claimed to be Lutherans but there were already 300 Roman Catholics in the area who had been “forcibly converted”.
The new attack unleashed against
At
By 1700 Zanegg was considered to be a prosperous village. Fortunately it had not been on the main road to
During the period from the 16th to the 19th century one of the only industries besides agriculture in which the inhabitants of Zanegg engaged was the processing of salt peter needed in the production of gun powder. With all of the wars going on at the time it was essential to process and protect the sources.
As the 18th century dawned now that the Turks were no longer a constant threat to the Heideboden a new menace emerged that created even more damage and destruction than the Moslem hordes had inflicted upon the communities.
There were still many among the Hungarian nobility who did not recognize the Habsburgs as legitimate kings of
Because the Habsburgs were involved in the War of the Spanish Succession against
On December 19, 1707 the Kuruzen under Commander Adam Balogh fell upon Zanegg. At the time the Imperial forces were in winter quarters in Zanegg under Field Marshal Johann Count Palffy a subordinate of General Count Draskovitch. The Kuruzen raiders took the Imperial forces by surprise. The Croatian cavalry fled to Neusiedl without offering any resistance. The Croatian infantry took up positions behind the wall enclosing the cemetery. The Kuruzen quickly occupied the village and plundered the homes and then put them to the torch. Then they disappeared to the east, the direction from which they had come. They drove the cattle ahead of them and many prisoners including the Croatian army band they took along to entertain them.
Peace in the area only came in 1711 when Rákoczy went into Turkish exile.
The rest of the 18th century brought peace and prosperity as well as a renewed development of the Heideboden. Maria Theresia purchased the Domains of Ungarisch Altenburg for her daughter, Baroness Maria Christina in 1763 and it would remain in the hands of the Habsburgs until 1945.
Early in the 18th century there was movement out of the Heideboden to the south in
Napoleon took
When the Revolution of 1848 broke out, although
The peasant farmers in the Heideboden wanted to throw off the yoke of their oppressive nobles. They wanted to own their own land they paid for and worked for generations. The farmers in Neusiedl and Weiden rose up against their nobles in May of 1848 and attacked their manor houses and sent them packing to
Louis Kossuth who stood at the head of the Hungarian reform movement was often described as a radical and demagogue of Slovak origin and like all Magyaronen (Magyar lovers) he tried to be more Hungarian than the Hungarians. He had a dream of a Greater Hungary. Thousands answered his call to the struggle for freedom and liberty. His revolutionary army fought the Imperial troops but the south Slavs (Croats and Serbs) and the Transylvanians opposed his great plan. The Ban (Governor) of
On November 1st the uprising was put down in
In August 1914 all men 20-45 years of age were called up into the army. On Sunday afternoon following mass their final farewells were said after many of them had made their confession and communed. During mass, the chaplain of the Moson Regiment, Julius Fehervari encouraged the men with soul searching words to defend the Fatherland; the village band accompanied the men on their way to the railway station. Many would never return while others would spend years as prisoners of war. Over five hundred were conscripted in the immediate area. Some served in the Honvéd, while others were in German-speaking units. The men from Zanegg served in
Later in 1919 as many of the prisoners of war started returning from
When the Heideboden was divided between
The interwar years followed. Dr. Jacob Bleyer is the man who would play a leading role in what would influence all that was to follow. He sought to preserve the village culture and mother language of the various German-speaking communities in what remained of
A local chapter of the UDV was established in Zanegg in 1925. All of the members were farmers. By 1933-1934 the total membership in
A radical change in climate in terms of the “nationalities question” came with the German annexation of
Hungarian assimilation policies met Hitlerism in a head-on collision in Zanegg. The villagers took sides and a bitter conflict broke out with the formation of a rival organization to the UDV, the so-called Volksbundes Der Deutschen in Ungarn (The Folk Union of the Germans in
Many members of the Bleyer organization went over to the Bund. It was not clear or obvious at first that the Bund was in fact “the lengthened arm of Hitler” to speak for all the German-speaking people of
The vast majority of the members of the Bund were from the poorest classes. Their number one reason for joining was to better their social and material standing. Rather than being German nationalists, what attracted them were the social issues of Nazism. The socially outcast women found position and status in the singing groups and other functions carried out at the local Bund hall. The male leadership, the so-called Fuhrers were worshipped by these socially displaced women.
The Bund was also attractive to others indirectly because of the results of Hungarian government policy and the attitudes of Hungarian society. In the 1930s the social policies of
The clever propaganda of the Nazis was directed to the hopes and dissatisfactions of the German people and brought them on board to their way of thinking. Hitler was portrayed as the “saviour” of the German people. Emotion was placed above reason. Their uniforms, radio programmes and newspaper attracted people. It was the youth who were most impressionable and were the most responsive.
Most of the public officials in Zanegg in 1940 were Hungarians who understood German but only spoke to the population in Hungarian. Some were not extreme nationalists but others like the vice-notary Marko were fanatics. His stock and trade was the chauvinist nationalist motto: “Whoever eats Hungarian bread should speak Hungarian!” The teachers in the village school were more proficient in Hungarian than they were in German. The local priest, however, preached and prayed in German until the Russian occupation in 1945.
The majority of the villagers in Zanegg remained neutral between the two nationalist movements. They turned their backs on both and focussed upon family, daily work and the religious life. The world situation was outside their concerns or life experience. They simply wanted to be what they had always been. Almost all of the population identified themselves as Germans in terms of their nationality and mother tongue in the census of 1941. That was their self-understanding after a thousand years in the Heideboden. Of the 3,171 inhabitants 83% claimed to be German but that figure included the new Hungarian enclaves in the area whose population numbered five hundred. In Zanegg itself, 97% were German.
Few of the farms were owned by members of the Bund and many of the farm labourers were not members either. The Bund members called their opponents: Englishmen and they in turn called them: Hitlerites.
The reason for their opposition to the Bund was centred on a few factors. The farmers and landowners were suspicious of anything that sounded like socialism. (The actual name for the Nazi Party in
This simple, non political population was a football kicked around between the two strident nationalist groups vying for supremacy. As a result from 1938-1943 the men of Zanegg were drafted into the Hungarian Army but in 1944 they were conscripted into the German Army. Men from 21 to 35 years of age served in the Hungarian Army from 1938-1941 when
During the Second World War, Hitler needed soldiers more than anything else. Because the Germans of Hungary were not citizens of the Reich they could not join the German Wehrmacht (Army) and were eligible only for the Waffen-SS. As a result of the Accord with the Hungarian state, recruiters from the Bund were successful in finding thirty young men in Zanegg to volunteer to serve in the Waffen-SS in the spring of 1942. A second recruitment was carried out June 20, 1943 resulting in thirty more volunteers who had been addressed by the Bund leadership. These volunteers served from
These volunteers by and large were young men from the poorer families. Only a handful of them came from landowning families. The reasons behind their choice were varied. Some sought to escape the destiny of their fathers as hired hands and farm labourers. For others it was a sense of adventure. There were others who knew that they would be called up into the Hungarian army where they would be discriminated against because they were German and would simply be used as canon fodder. While on the other hand the propaganda that was used was so effective that they did not even discuss the matter with their families before joining. They really had no understanding of the political implications of their actions or the possible results. The majority of them were not fanatics but were simply caught up in something beyond their comprehension.
On April 14, 1944 an agreement was signed between
The Hungarian officials ordered the men in Zanegg to register for recruitment at the school on July 11, 1944. Some of the men stated that they preferred to join the Hungarian Army but were refused that option. The County administrators assigned all of the men in Zanegg to the SS and handed them over to them. All of the men in Zanegg were at home except for those born in 1920, 1921 and 1922 serving in the Hungarian Army and those who had volunteered to serve in the SS. Within two weeks approximately five hundred men born in 1894 up to 1927 were drafted into the SS. That meant youth from 17 years of age to men who were fifty. By November and December all of them were serving on the front lines. One hundred of them fought at the battle of
The men who were forced into the Waffen-SS were treated like the feared SS who never saw front line duty but did the dirty work of Hitler and his henchmen. In the prisoner of war camps they were segregated from the other prisoners. They were treated badly in the
After they were released in
During the Second World War, one hundred and forty-five men from Zanegg were killed in action. There were also twenty-five civilian deaths as a result of bombings, molestation and beating, explosions and shootings. One out of four of the seven hundred men who served in the military died.
In the last weeks of March 1945 refugee columns were streaming westwards. Refugees from
In the second last week of March the population of Zanegg were encouraged to flee. Only 5% of the population responded mostly officials and Bund functionaries and families with young daughters.
Some left by ship from Ragendorf and travelled up the Danube to
At the end of March 1945 the Germans established a defensive line between Ungarisch Altenburg and Raab (Györ) to protect the main highway and rail lines from
The Germans regrouped in Zanegg and the Russians launched a heavy attack on the village. Aircraft strafed the village and artillery was brought up. The village went up in flames and created a ghastly smoke screen. This was between 16:00 and 18:00 hours. At 18:00 hours the first Russian troops coming from the direction of St. Johann to the south arrived in Zanegg. Shortly before their arrival the German troops had moved out to the north-west towards Strasssommerein. For a short time it was very quiet. Scouts entered the village and when the villagers assured them that the Germans were gone, massive numbers of troops streamed in following a blast of the whistles blown by the scouts. There was no more gun fire. The greatest suffering the village would endure would come in the days that would follow.
The women had the worst to endure as the Russians occupied the village. The frontline troops were disciplined and created no problems during the first night. But the reserve troops who came to replace them went wild. During the second night despite warnings on the part of the village elders, women felt secure after the first night’s experience and very few went into hiding and the Russian troops raped numerous women, some girls as young as 12 years of age and older women who were over 60. The women sought safety in the wine cellars, haylofts, barns and fields but were caught and violated by the armed troopers. Nor was there safety in numbers. The men had all gone off to war, the few who had managed to return home had gone into hiding so that they would not be taken to
Fear and terror reigned in Zanegg at the hands of the Russians who saw themselves as avengers. When the deportations began in 1946 many of the women were terrified of being sent to
With the Potsdam Declaration in place the Hungarian plan to “cleanse” the Heideboden and bring in more Magyar settlers that had first begun in 1938-1939 could now be carried out and done so even legally. This racist policy and inhumanity was already on the agenda of the
The reason given for the expulsion was not the guilt of the Swabians but the goal of the Hungarian government to Magyarize the western border areas. Human rights and the legality of their actions had no place in their thinking.
Four weeks after the Potsdam Conference was over, Zanegg became the assembly camp for all of the German speaking population in the County. The inmates called it the “Zanegg Ghetto.” At the end of August the first to arrive were the inhabitants of Kaltenstein (Level). Without any distinctions being made all Germans were thrown out of their houses. They were loaded on wagons with a few personal effects and were taken to Zanegg and divided up in the homes of the villagers. This first act of course was illegal. It was only on December 22, 1945 that the official decree was passed in parliament. The nationalists were in hurry and had no time or concern for such niceties. In September the population of Maria-Gahling/Kalnók were brought to Zanegg and during the winter portions of the population of Ungarisch-Kimling, Ragendorf, Karlburg, Strasssommerein, St. Johann-St. Peter as well as Moson were brought there as well.
During the winter of 1945-1946 the houses in Zanegg were stuffed with people. In some houses there were three extended families. In the large farm houses there were hundreds of policemen and the officials who would carry out the expulsion and deportation. The food supplies of the villagers became sparser all the time. Heating was very limited. The long wait, the uncertainty, terrified the people who were mostly the aged, women and children.
The people of Zanegg had it somewhat easier. They were still in their own homes. In spite of the confiscation and requisitioning of their property they still had their vegetables and livestock and fowl. Even though they assisted the others their own condition was better. But they were easily manipulated by the local Communists and officials. The men of Zanegg who managed to get home after the war ended were easily apprehended and dragged off to slave labour in Ungarisch Altenburg and Raab. Some of the men fled across the border into nearby
The Germans imprisoned in Zanegg were subjected to more and more repression. Even old men were forced to do compulsory labour, to work on roads or out in the fields. On many occasions they were mistreated, abused and beaten. The worst abusers were the Hungarian police.
During the last weeks prior to the deportation the village was totally sealed off from the outside world. A pass was needed to leave. Police were everywhere. The chief of police was known as Acel meaning steel like the Russian word Stalin. He had an immense hatred for the Germans.
Most of the population refused to believe that they would actually be deported. Especially those who had not joined the Bund, opposed it or had claimed Hungarian nationality at the time of the census in 1941. But the coalition of Hungarian nationalists who governed
On April 7, 1946 the list of deportees was listed at the community centre. The people were ordered to check the list for their names and prepare to leave. According to the official deportation order all persons whose mother tongue was listed as German in 1941 were to be expelled. The farmers who had listed themselves as Hungarian were also on the list because their property was needed. Only those with powerful friends or influence could avoid the deportation. The only exceptions were older persons who were sick or bedridden and numbered three families.
The people packed bedding and clothes and gathered whatever food they could find to take with them. Some women made large quantities of soup for the journey. Each person was allowed fifty kilograms of goods. Small personal keepsakes, china, etc were hidden or buried in the hope of coming back some day. Beginning in February 1946 many deportation trains from the area around
There were to be four transports of deportees from the Zanegg “camp” in April 1946.
The first transport left on April 12th in the afternoon heading for Strasssommerein and Nickelsdorf on the Hungarian Austrian border and by the 18th they were in the American Zone of
The second transport was loaded up on Saturday, April 13th. They left on Palm Sunday at about 2:00 hours in the morning. They crossed the border at
The third transport left on April 17th at 18:00 hours and took the same route to
The fourth transport was boarded on Maunday Thursday and left on Good Friday at 13:30 hours. They also headed towards
My father Max Kuntner died recently, 8th Jan 2012. I have found his birth certificate. He was born in Zanegg/Ungarn 16/2/1927. I wanted to know more about his early life and have read this article. He did not tell me very much and the information I found in the article has helped me gain a better understanding of what my family went through.
I would be very grateful if anyone has any more information.
My mother Theresia Kretz born Graf (1. May 1936) came in 1947 from Zanegg to Mosbach. It. was a touching experience to read the article and think all that she had to go through as a small child. Sadly she died a long time ago on the 10. of august 1993, but she will keep on living in our hearts. She was the sister of Max Kuntner cited in the message above. Greetings to Jennifer from his cousin Uwe.
Jennifer Kuntner, I think we may be related! My grandmother’s maiden name was Kuntner and she was born in Zanegg, Hungary, as was my father! I hope we can figure out a way to share our information with each other. Zanegg was not a large village so I am almost positive we were related I see that you posted your comment about 5 years ago, but if you see this I would love to chat with you!
Hi Katherine,
How very interesting that your Grandmother was called Kuntner. My email address is jenniferkuntner@btinterent.com I would love to hear more about you and your grandmother.
I hope that you get to see this post soon
Best Wishes
Jennifer
Hello everyone. I just wanted to add my name to this article. My grandmother was Maria (Mary) Lang and she was born in Zanegg in 1891. She came to America in 1913 by herself and the rest of her family stayed behind I believe. When I was younger, I could have asked her all of this, but I was a teenager and did not have the interest that I do now. So if anyone reads this article and knows of the Langs, please contact me at treed910@gmail.com with a subject of Lang Family in it. Thank you.