(The following information is a summary and partial translation of sections of the Heimatbuch: Závod in der Tolna by Anton Mayer.)
The village of Závod lies 18 kilometres north of Bonyhád, in the vicinity of Mucsfa and located in a series of deep valleys in this section of Tolna County. The name Tolna has its origin in the name of Tolonus the army commander during the Avar occupation of Hungary. Mucsi is slightly northwest of Závod, while Tevel is northeast.
A community existed as early as 1330 but was completely destroyed during the Turkish occupation and Kuruz Rebellion 1703-1711. During the Roman occupation the area was known as Lower Pannonia. Vineyards were extent here in the 6th century AD. Around 890 the Magyars first put in their appearance. Only twenty-one of the five hundred and forty inhabited places in Tolna survived after the Kuruz Rebellion. From 1690-1709 the “pest” or Plague hit the area five times taking countless victims. There was no local population in Závod and Mucsi when the Swabians arrived. There were only a few Serbs and Croats in the whole area. The last of these left in 1720.
Until 1722, Závod along with Kisszékely, Nagyszékely, Mucsi, Apar, Högyesz and thirty open pusztas (prairies) belonged to Count Wigand Michael Wenzelaus Sinzendorf who along with Prince Esterházy, Döry, Johann Monasterly as well as the Magyari-Kossa family carried out the first attempts at settlement in the County. They had little initial success because the nobles of northern Hungary stood in the way of their peasants leaving their estates.
Between 1687-1700 the vast majority of the surviving population in Tolna after the Turks were driven out were Serbs. They engaged in constant feuds with the Magyars and they robbed and plundered one another. With the exit of the Turks, the Serbs soon left. After the Kuruz Rebellion was put down in 1711 there were only a few Magyar villages left. Prince Esterházy whose Ozora Domain constituted half of the County began to enlist new settlers on his lands along with others among the nobles: Döry-Jobahaza, Count Styrum Limburg and Sinzendorf, and the Calvinist Magyari-Kossa as well as Abbot Mérey in Szekszárd, and Franz Jany in Bata (he was of Swiss origin). Mérey settled Germans in Szekszárd early in 1703 because he thought they were more docile than the Serbs and the Reformed Magyars in the area. Döry and his brother-in-law Monasterly sent three groups of immigrants from Württemberg to Tevel in May 1712 who had arrived from Vienna having come by way of the Danube. The third group, however, never arrived. They settled elsewhere. Within one year Tevel was well on the way to prosperity.
The large-scale immigration into Tolna County occurred after 1718. This settlement was planned and systematic. Count Mercy for instance settled his Magyars on the basis of their religious persuasions: the Roman Catholics at Kis Vejke, the Reformed at Kölesd and the Lutherans at Szarszentlörinc. In Diosbereny German and Hungarian Roman Catholics were settled together. When the Germans arrived in Nagymányok, the Hungarians moved on to Váralja. Döry expelled the Reformed Magyars living in Zomba along with Hessian Lutherans and replaced them with Roman Catholics from the Black Forest region (Schwarzwald).
The Serbs still living in Szekszárd who had murdered the Abbot of Báta in 1726 out of revenge were resettled in Alsó Nána by Abott Mérey where he had an Orthodox monastery and some monks who were to serve them and civilize them if possible.
Part of the strategy of the re-settlement programme was to bring Roman Catholics into the area regardless of their nationality. The concept of the landowner determining the faith of his subject tenants was very strong. As a result Reformed Magyars were not tolerated but wherever they managed to settle they were allowed only a prayer house and their children could only be baptized by Roman Catholic priests and be married by them. Only after 1780 and the Edict of Toleration were they allowed to add bell towers to their prayer houses and have pastors of their own. The intolerance of the Bishop of Pécs, Franz Nesselrode II is best expressed in his arrest and imprisonment of Jeremias Schwarzwalder a Lutheran pastor in 1718. He had just returned to Varsád following his ordination in Kremnitz in Slovakia. He was beaten severely and forced to sign a document indicating that he would never return to Hungary again. Later with the help of Count Mercy, a man of great toleration, the Varsád Lutherans got a new pastor. Johann Karl Reichard came as a fugitive from Langenfeld in the Banat with the Count’s assistance along with numerous Lutheran families seeking sanctuary with him.
In 1710 there were no Germans living in the Tolna but by 1720 they made up 12% of the population. In 1718 the first immigrants from Stift Fulda the so-called Stiffoler came to Závod. A great tide of immigration followed.
The first requirement of all emigrants leaving for Hungary was their manumission certificate indicating they had been emancipated from serfdom by their noble. A tax on the value of their property and possessions of 10% had to be paid at that time as their emigration fee. Married couples had to present a valid marriage certificate. All of this was required before signing up with a recruiting agent.
The first settlers set out in the spring of 1718 from north of Fulda by wagon with basic household goods and headed for the ports on the Danube. They had armed escorts. Whether they received travel expenses from the Emperor is still an open question. At Vienna they received their passes to enter Hungary and boarded ships to take them to their destination.
At the time of the arrival of the settlers in Závod it was part of the Apar Domains of Count Sinzendorf. The Patent to approve the re-settlement of Hungary was only passed in 1723 although the nobles instituted it prior to that. Between 1718-1770 some 1,300 persons emigrated from Fulda to Závod and Mucsi from fifty different communities in the Bishopric. Those who left illegally are not included in these figures.
The ruins of churches and huts of the Serbians still existed in the area at the time. The whole area was densely forested. At Vejk there were some twenty-two Magyar families that had survived the Turkish occupation and the Kuruz Rebellion due to their isolation in the forested wilderness. Johannes Jahn was one of the three Germans living in Mucsi along with eight Magyar families. The settlers dug out earth huts or took over abandoned huts left by the Serbs. A former Orthodox monastery and its wine cellars were still there although abandoned by the monks. The task of clearing the forest and cultivating the land became the number one priority of the settlers.
There were about one hundred individuals in the first group of settlers in Závod, some twenty-two families in all. The heads of households were:
Thomas Jordan, Nicolaus Schneyder, Adam Minker, Johann Firster, Paulus Jáger, Perigius Krep, Johann Kresmit, Sebastian Papert, Antonius Angeli, Johann Maul, Johann Korneli, Johann Maul, Conradus Staab, Thomas Miller, Nicolaus Merck, Nicolaus Till, Henricus Fink, Johann Huck, Valentinus Ress (Resch), Johann Seybert, Cornadus Ser, Stephan Miller, Johann Reith, Thomas Papert and Henricus Simon.
Twenty-five new families joined them in 1722 and sixty families went on to Mucsi. Their priest accompanied them from Fulda. Later settlers arrived from the Würzburg area, Hanau and Mainz. Most of them came by ship from Regensburg. Many married along the way to be eligible for settlement and land. These later settlers included:
Bernhardus Korneli, Georg Kress, Johann Georg Titzl, Conradus Schön, Andreas Klih, Cornadus Kremer, Andreas Hahner, Antonius Ponert, Henricus Fink, Nikolaus Reder, Johann Michael Kress, Johann Georg Kremer, Johann Miller, Johann Altmüller, Johann Georg Kornfect, Nikolaus Merz, Henricus Hartung, Johann Breitenbach, Franciscus Papert, Nicolaus Schrimpf, Martinus Weigand, Mattheus Perger, Adamus Weber, Baltasar Titz, Johann Ponner, Stephan Staab, Paulus Pitner, Nicolaus Meierhof, Leopold Till, Sebastianus Klüber, Gasparus Michel, Martini Cornelli, Thomas Sipl, Johann Georg Faust, Sebastianus Merz, Valentinus Enk, Johann Adam Lochhaus, Johann Orff, Gasparus Vingefeld, Johann Rieger and Johann Georg Reith.
In 1722 the son of Count Sinzendorf sold the Apar Domains to Count and General Claudius Florimundus von Mercy for 15,000 Gulden. Mercy later purchased Varsád for 4,500 Gulden and signed his first contracts with his subjects. The settlers were free from paying taxes for three years. Mucsi and Závod were the only Fulda settlements in Tolna County. There were others who moved on to the south and on to Temesvar and the Banat. Although all of the German settlers were called: Swabians only those who settled in Tevel, Apar, Hegyhatmarocz, Kisdorog, Kolbeny and Nagyarpad actually were. In the rest of the Tolna, the German spoken was mainly Hessian and that of the Pfalz.
The Count’s successor was his nephew, Count Anton Ignac Karl August Mercy d’Argentau whom he adopted as his heir. His son was to succeed him but took up a diplomatic career and sold the Domains to Count Georg Apponyi in 1773 for 700,000 Gulden. The Apponyi’s built their castle in Lengyel.
Because the nobles demanded more and more Robot (free labour) of their subjects and the 48 religious holidays plus Sundays did not permit any work peasant uprisings took place throughout Hungary and broke out in Tolna County in 1765. From Diosbereny to Kakasd the Magyar peasants called for a work stoppage and threatened the German population with burning down their homes if they did not follow suit. Only the efforts of one of the priests, Winkler by name was able to persuade Bishop Klimó from massacring the local population. But some two hundred peasants lost their lives and hundreds of others suffered corporal punishments. Maria Theresia set her urbarial regulations into effect in 1767 to address the injustices and brought about an end to the unrest. But the nobles soon found ways around them and took advantage of their subjects.
The census of 1787 reported a population of 133,000 persons in Tolna County. By now the immigration had ended and only small groups and families joined the existing communities. Many of them came to join their relatives who had left earlier.
With Joseph II’ succession to the throne in 1780 he declined to be crowned King of Hungary. Instead he had the crown of St. Stephen brought to Vienna and treated it like an artefact. This irritated the Hungarian nobles. In 1783 he also declared German the language of the government and in all administrative functions. At the time the Hungarians were attempting to elevate their own langue to that same position. By 1790 there was a groundswell of anti-German feeling among the Magyars and by 1798 the first official Magyarization tactics were put into effect. They sought to assimilate the other nationalities, which outnumbered them in their own Kingdom, into the “family”. The Magyars sought to assimilate the Swabians by teaching the Hungarian language in their schools and to adopt the Hungarian way of dressing.
On May 1, 1832 the courts gave local authorities the order that all Swabian males below the age of 30 years who wore knitted stockings had to cut them off at ankle length and to turn in their belts and short knee length trousers. It proved ineffective due to the passive resistance of the Swabians. In 1836 the law was reinforced on the basis that the long stockings created health hazard. These were merely the preliminaries that were introduced with the help and support of the Roman Catholic Church that would lead to the systematic Magyarization of the minorities in Hungary. By 1844 Hungarian was the state language and the language of government, even though only 4,800,000 Maygars lived among the 13,000,000 inhabitants of the Kingdom of Hungary. Only teachers who spoke perfect Hungarian were allowed to teach. The Roman Catholic bishops never allowed German-speaking priests to serve in the Swabian communities.
On March 15, 1848 the new Hungarian government under Louis Kossuth emancipated the serfs and ended the Robot and urbarial contracts. The peasants could buy the land they had been working for generations, while the nobles received compensation from the state. In Kasask the Swabians bought the land collectively.
With the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1848 the County administration called for setting up a National Guard unit of 2,000 men on June 16, 1848 at the order of the Minister of the Interior. They were to break through the Drava River line and drive off the Croatians who had allied themselves with the Habsburgs. Quotas in the larger villages resulted in about thirty men from the ages of 14 to 40 years. Later this was raised to fifty years and as a result 1,200 more men were recruited.
On July 5, 1848 these volunteers dressed in their own clothes marched from Bonyhád to face the Croatian forces with only primitive weapons: pitchforks and scythes. Their courage led to the utter defeat of the Croatians and the Swabians were welcomed home as heroes in their villages. They would be marching off again but the rebellion was crushed when Russian troops came to Austria’s aid and the leaders of the independence movement fled for their lives. The repercussions were severe and the populace paid a terrible price until finally the Compromise of 1867 brought about stability in the relations between Austria and Hungary in the Dual Monarchy.
The First World War resulted in the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Závod in the Tolna was rocked by the Red Revolution of Bela Kun in 1919 and then faced the “counter revolution” of Admiral Horthy whose fierce anti-Semitism was experienced throughout Swabian Turkey with the death of countless Jewish inhabitants: In Siofók 74, Pápa 23, Gyönk 24, Orgovany 200, Marcali 17, Szekszárd 36, Szolcok 19 to name just a few of the centres of the extermination programme. This anti-Semitism in Hungary was alive and well long before Nazism arrived on the scene.
With the fall of the Dual Monarchy and the division of the Empire among the successor states the unity of the German-speaking populations was also destroyed. After the Burgenland went to Austria the Germans in what was left of Hungary numbered 551,211. Western Hungary (Heideboden) 64,064; Szatmar 3,753; the Highlands and Bakony Forest 244,146; Southern Hungary 44,771; Swabian Turkey 183,754 and a diaspora of 10,732.
Dr. Jakob Bleyer who had been born in the Batschka was elected to the Hungarian parliament in 1919 as a spokesman for the German population. He became the Minister of Nationalities and was forced to resign later in 1920 due to the chauvinistic backlash of the Magyar nationalists. In 1921 he published a weekly German newspaper, “Sonntagsblatt” and he continued to serve in parliament to offer his support to the needs and aspirations of the German population. Along with some others he founded an organization on August 3, 1924 that was known as the Ungarnländischen Deutschen Volksbildungsverein, which was later simply called the UDV. Dr. Gustav Gratz was its first president and Bleyer was his executive officer and deputy. The motto of the UDV was: Faithful (loyal) to the Fatherland, Faithful to our national identity.
The organization sought to created district groups in German communities in order to establish libraries, cultural activities such as Trachtenfest, musical events, published song books all in an effort to create a sense of unity among the German-speaking people. The UDV had more than 15,000 members who were charged with “Pan Germanism” by their enemies. They were called traitors to Hungary. Any recognition of their activities on the part of the Churches was frowned upon and discipline was taken against any priests who did. Issues became more strident during the 1930s and Bleyer died in 1933.
On July 27, 1933 the Magyarization of family names was set in motion across Hungary. Teachers and others in public office had to change their names if they wanted to remain in their position. Men who had served in the army during the First World War would lose their pension if they did not change their name. Contemporary novels and popular movies always had a character that represented the “stinking Swabians.” They were portrayed as carpetbaggers and land grabbers. The public campaign in 1934 resulted in 100,000 family name changes.
After Bleyer’s death his successors in the VDU quarrelled over its future orientation. It resulted in a split in 1936 between Dr. Gratz and the “younger” group led by Franz Basch. The new government sought government sanction to organize with the name, Volksdeutsche Kamaradschaft. As a result on November 26, 1938 the Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn was founded. The group would become known as the Bund in the local village parlance. Within a few years it had 50,000 members. A loyalist opposition group was established in Bonyhád opposed to the directions and objectives of the Bund that were highly influenced by National Socialism (Nazism). This resulted in conflict in the Swabian villages between the two rival groups and would go on until 1944 when all Swabian men from 17 to 50 years of age who had not been called up to serve in the Honvéd (the Hungarian National Army) in 1942 were conscripted into the German Waffen-SS and this also included the men who belonged to the loyalist movement. After the war it was discovered that in 1941-1942 during the Hungarian Second Army’s participation in the war in Russia, that nine times as many men of German origin than Magyars were drafted into the army and served on the battlefield where countless numbers lost their lives.
When Hungary attempted to withdraw from the war in 1944, the German Army occupied the country beginning in March 19th. The Regent, Admiral Nicolas Horthy was set aside by the Germans in October of 1944 after Romania surrendered and went over to the Russians and the Germans now faced the task of defending Hungary from the oncoming Russian Red Army onslaught along with some Hungarian units. The morale of the German troops left a lot to be desired as their major concern was food and wine supplies which the Swabians were expected to provide at no cost. All of the Germans not serving in the Hungarian Army were now conscripted and ordered into the Waffen-SS at the beginning of August including all men born between 1922-1928. But it was at the very same time as the harvest had to brought in.
Late in the summer of 1944 the first evacuation treks of Transylvania Saxons and Szatmar Swabians passed through the area on their way to Germany. The bad reports coming from the front lines and the warnings of the retreating German troops alarmed the population which sought to remain at home in spite of their fears about the possible revenge of the Red Army against them. There were still those who spoke of victory and a counter offensive about to be mounted in which “wonder weapons” would be used but most of the local population had no idea of what they might expect.
Hungary capitulated to the Russians on January 21, 1945 but the destiny and fate of the Swabians in Swabian Turkey was already in the hands of the Russians. In Závod it all began on December 30th with the beating of drums by the Klein Richter announcing all women born between 1914-1926 and all remaining men born between 1900-1927 were to report to the school to do two weeks of labour. Each person was to bring 20 kilograms of food and clothing with them. There were some who saw this as a ruse and sneaked out of the village and hid in neighbouring Hungarian villages. In all, at least 35,000 Swabians from Swabian Turkey were involved and were taken to the Soviet Union where 15% of them perished. The vast majority of the slave labourers were women. There were seventy-one persons taken from Závod, fifty of whom were women.
Ever since Christmas of 1944 the Russians in the vicinity operated out of the castle in Lengyel and terrorized the area. The raping of women, young and old was a daily occurrence and as a result they sought safety at night in the cellars, haylofts and wine cellars in the vineyards. The drunken marauders entered Závod on a drinking spree one night raped an 80 year old woman and her daughter-in-law. In their fear and terror they began to blame the Bund members for the punishment they were receiving. The Bund had become a front for the Nazis. Many of the villagers denounced them in their bitterness and outrage. They hoped to gain favours from the Hungarian officials by showing that they were loyal citizens of Hungary. Unfortunately it did not work.
On May 6th 1945 the next actions took place. At 4:00 in the morning the Klein Richter beat his drum in the village streets and announced that all Bund members were to assemble at the village centre at 8:00 in the morning. Whoever did not report would be severely punished. Everyone was to leave a bundle of food on their kitchen table. At the assembly area the loyalists in the village came to observe what would happen at the request of the police officials and they too were included in the expulsion from the village. Their claims of loyalty to Hungary did not help one bit and they joined the hated Bund members in the long and difficult forced march to the castle at Lengyel and were interned there. Old people and invalids were also dragged from their homes and taken to Lengyel.
They were brutalized by the police on the march and then driven into the empty rooms of the castle complex where they had to camp out on the straw littered floors. In addition to them thousands of others from the vicinity were interned with them. Later estimates spoke of 20,000 persons. There was a terrible smell due to the lack of sanitation facilities. Those who had not been expelled attempted to bring food to the camp for their families and friends. Because there were not enough Hungarian guards local men had to take on the job and they were easy to bribe or were helpful in letting people escape. As a result new orders were issued affecting any escape attempts that were unsuccessful. A Nazi “room” was set up to torture and punish them and they would later be put on display to discourage others who might attempt to flee.
While the population of Závod was interned the Csango who had arrived in Mucsi from eastern Hungary moved into their homes. The loyalists still at home also had to take them in. These expulsions were part of the Land Reform Act of March 15, 1945 and the man at the head of the local action was one of the Csango, György Bodor. In his daily report on April 29th he wrote that two thirds of the Swabians in the district had been removed to Lengyel castle for internment because they had been members of the Bund. A statement that was blatantly false. He also reported that by that time he had settled about 1,500 Szekler families, numbering 6,000 persons in the properties and homes of the Swabians. On May 27th Bodor was recalled to Budapest. He had settled his own countrymen in the Swabian villages of the Tolna who had originally been sent to the Batschka from their homes in Bukovina in 1941 who now sought to escape the Serbs. Among these new settlers were several Bukovina German families that had been recently Magyarized and had been sent to Yugoslavia with the Szeklers. It was only months later that they would acknowledge that they were Germans.
The camp at Lengyel castle simply got too big to handle and way had to be found to disperse the population. What they were afraid of was that they would attempt to go back home and demand to have their property returned to them. As a result a programme to scatter the internees had to be found. The Závod group were taken out of Lengyel a week later and were force marched to the train depot at Kurd and there they were loaded on open flat cars and taken to Pincehely. They could go no farther because the tracks beyond had been destroyed. They were unloaded and kept overnight in the meadow next to the station. The next day the guards marched them off to Simontornya where they spent the night in the courtyard of the fortress there. On the third day they were taken to Jurczek Puszta by Simontornya from where everyone attempted to return home on their own because a large number had already escaped along the way and the guards had no interest in keeping an eye on the few people still in their custody.
On arriving in Závod they sought to stay with friends or neighbours or out in the wine cellars. They had no home to go to. Many of them hired out as labourers to the Hungarians at Kurd and other nearby places. Once the war was officially over in 1945, the spies in the village reported on all of the men who returned home from the prisoner of war camps and had them arrested and sent to slave labour in the coal mines at Szasvar or placed in internment camps elsewhere in Tolna County. The new settlers feared that the returning men would one day try to take back their homes and property by force. Some had actually gone into their homes and beat up the interlopers and sent them packing.
In the summer of 1946 the Swabians in Kurd, Mucsi and Zsibrik, were deported to the American Zone of Germany. They were part of the first phase of the expulsion of the Danube Swabians of Hungary that had been ordered at Potsdam. The people from Závod who lived in other nearby villages were rounded up first when the last of the deportations were set in 1948 when 50,000 more Swabians were expelled and sent to the Russian Zone of Germany. This included 150 families from Závod. About 20 families were allowed to remain but gradually moved away seeking a better future somewhere else as had their ancestors almost 250 years before.
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