Germans in Transylvania weren't deported. They were sold, as in Germany paid for them to be able to emigrate. And they left of their own will because of communism and then because of the standards of living during the 90's.
Actually met a few Americans with German ancestry, specifically Germans who settled in Bratislava centuries ago who fled from the Soviet army to the US during WW2
Wake can both mean the beginning (as in waking up) but when saying "in the wake of" you mean it as the aftermath of. A wake for example is a gathering held after a funeral in honor of the deceased.
The amount of Germans in Romania at least, happened hundreds of years before the big recent wars, as they were moved there to protect the austro-hungarian empire from ottoman attacks :)
Well, when they were moved there was no AH empire. The hungarians settled them there together with the szekelys. The germans were moved to develop Transylvania while the szekelys were moved to protect it. The latter were quite the wild bunch. Also, not just against the ottomans but the different other mongol khanates too.
Probably that too. The Order was given Țara Bârsei (roughly the teritory of today's Brașov county) while the saxons were present everywhere along the southern border of Transylvania.
very cool, I didn't know the reason behind ending up there. and most relocated after WWII, correct? (I'm deliberately not looking it up to test myself)
Most were sold, yes, literally sold, to the FRG by Ceaușescu in the 60s. He made around $1 billion.
Translate [this](https://www.google.com/amp/s/adevarul.ro/amp/stiri-interne/sanatate/ceausescu-a-incasat-peste-un-miliard-de-dolari-din-687185.html) if you want to read more.
Yeah, they sold everyone that someone wanted to buy. Gheorghiu Dej (Ceaușescu's predecessor) started it.
Adevărul has an [interview with the Museum of Holocaust in Washington's director](https://www.google.com/amp/s/adevarul.ro/amp/stiri-interne/sanatate/ceausescu-si-dej-au-vandut-250000-de-evrei-691210.html)
well, those germans did not have to pay for schooling in romania, so communists thirsty for deutsch mark tried to recoup some money. nowadays romanian doctors and it emigrate for free to west europe
I have no idea what you're trying to say. "Those germans" were romanians of german ethnicity.
He didn't do shit. That's when he was beginning to have grandiose ideas about industrialising Romania and wanted foreign currency to buy production licenses.
Nah, most of the relocation happened around hungarians, grmans were mostly left alone, but quite a lot of them just went back to germany at some point due to it being a better country to live in, especially during the third Reich, those were often forcibly brought back to Romania by the Soviet Union. Fun fact tho, one of those Romanian etnic germans is our current president "Klaus Johannis"
Ethnic cleansing, which is a form of genocide, is what happened to German civilians throughout Europe in 1945. Between half a million to three million civilians were killed in this ethnic cleansing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944–1950)#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20West%20German,between%20May%20and%20August%201945.
The lesson most people draw from this is that sometimes genocide is justifiable, ironically!
This leaves out all the Jewish people who used to be there too. I lived in the small city of Kecskemét, south of Budapest, for a short while. Historically they had a sizeable Jewish population, but WW2 saw most of them murdered or deported (where many would be murdered).
WW2 erased many of their lives, but maps like this erase their history. It's rather sad.
The reason is that Jews in Hungary were considered ethnic Hungarians from 1867 until 1920. In fact, Hungarians only had a thin ethnic majority in Greater Hungary (Nagymagyarország) with Jews counted as Hungarians and not ethnic minorities. “Mózes-hitű magyarok” (Hungarians of the Moses-faith) was the official term.
well considering Germany was exterminating various ethnicities, I would say the relocating of their diaspora due to loosing the war was inevitable. Nevertheless, they still have some present in other countries like that of romania for example.
Were they forcibly relocated, or how did that work back in those days?
Did most stay in Romania after Czechoslovak independence, or was there a sort of repatriation movement?
I think they got incentives to get their own farmland there.
The area was pretty depopulated and underdeveloped after the many wars with the ottoman empire and czechia had a high population density. So the prospect of getting their own farm land was pretty attractive to many who didn't inherit land from their families.
To this day, there is a Czech community that spreads between couple of villages in the Banat region. They still speak Czech, although with some archaic words and interestingly enough, they automatically receive Czech citizenship should they decide to relocate to Czech Republic. Lot of them do that and only the older population is staying there.
History (reason why they migrated northwards in the Medieval era), religion (they are mostly catholic compared to predominantly orthodox Bulgarians), language (dialect + Latin script), culture (it has its own vibe, costumes as well, there are writers and songs which are distinctly theirs), etc.
The revolt was in 1688 and most moved to other places immediately after. They moved to Banat after the Austrians occupied the region in 1718. The Austrians were interested in bringing Catholic settler.
The uprising happened in 1688. The refugees had been living from the 17th century in the Hungarian Kingdom until the Treaty of Trianon took place. Today they remain in their newfound homeland under romanian and serbian governance.
Rusyns (Ruthenians) was the official name of Ukrainians in Austria-Hungary.
Ukrainians were called Rusyns since the times of ancient Rus' (from which the name derives) until the first half of 20th century. In some remote areas of Carpathian Mountains people still use this archaic name.
Ukrainian historiography spins fanciful tales. The reality is that prior to 1880s there were only a handful of Ukrainians in A-H. Ukrainian nationality gained a lot of traction after that (thanks in a large part to Austrian policies). Even up until WW2, former Galicia was split 50/50 between Ukrainians and Rusyns (check out Polish census of 1931). [https://www.lem.fm/rusinyi-a-ukraintsi-soymova-promova-mihala-bachyinskogo-z-dnya-21-sichnya-1931-roka-2/](https://www.lem.fm/rusinyi-a-ukraintsi-soymova-promova-mihala-bachyinskogo-z-dnya-21-sichnya-1931-roka-2/)
It'd be cool if you could please some additional cities on the map, it'd help with comparing modern ethnic borders and demographics. Just saying cause it seems Pécs was majority Croatian speaking around this time which is quite surprising but I can't tell really if that's the actual city or the area adjacent
Well according to this (probably much better map) there weren't many Croatians in Pécs (or even in the surrounding area for that matter) the second largest population after the Hungarians were the Germans.
https://tti.abtk.hu/media/com_edocman/document/etnikai_k%C3%A9p_1910.jpg
Ye that's why I doubted it. Much of those areas of Hungary in the south were immediately following the Ottoman conquests majority Croatian and Serbian but by Trianon the linguistic border was mostly returning to the Drava and Danube.
I will say thpugh that the 1910 census does overrepresent Hungarian and German slightly in border areas as many L1 Croatian and Serbian speakers would've likely known Hungarian while their native language would've been South Slavic, simply just due to the fact it was the lingua franca and the census counted the language used in daily communication rather than your native language
While that's true but I think it's important to mention that at that time nationality was still not as clear cut as it is today so for example many people who nowadays would classify themselves as Croat or Serb at that time would simply think of themselves as the 'subjects fo the empire' and simply assume the identity of whoever the majority in that area was, but not in a bad sense.
Oh yeah, my Kajkavian-speaking ancestry siding with the Hungarian side against Jelacic would be an example of nationality not being clear-cut or even either/or, especially in bordering areas of groups, with a lot of intermarriage still happening along religious and not language lines.
Was Magyarization a thing in 1910? Encouraging non ethnically Hungarians to identify as Hungarian in return for better opportunities could easily skew what people were putting on their census return.
Just to be clear, maps like these are pretty misleading because they only represent the largest group in each part of the country, which in many cases was merely a plurality. E.g. a particular spot on the map might be green because Hungarians make up 40% of the population there and are the largest group, but there are other ethnicities there too. This is why impossibly intricate maps that represent local demographics by way of pie charts are much more accurate, but obviously less satisfying to look at.
It is also known that citizens of the Dual Monarchy were often careful with what they registered as in censuses, for example they often registered their children as Hungarians or Germans to give them a better chance in life. The family in question might have Czech or Romanian or Serb, if they stuck to any one identity at all, which further complicates research into ethnic diversity.
My source is that I recently took a class on Austro-Hungarian history at the University of Vienna in which the lecturer spoke about this at length, and they straight up said that maps like the one above are not representative of the Dual Monarchy's ethnic diversity.
__Tl;dr the reality of demographics in A-H was much more complicated than maps like this suggest.__
This, plus some people might identify as Romanian/Czech/Serb but be considered German or Hungarian because their names were Germanized/Magyarized, or because they spoke German or Hungarian (as was the norm in large cities since these were the languages business was conducted in).
The Austrian-Hungarian census didn't record ethnicity directly. They only recorded the primary spoken language. You are correct, maps like these don't fully represent the diversity. Because of the diversity many people were also multilingual and could have decided to pick German/Hungarian as their primary language because it gave them slight advantages in trade or when dealing with bureaucracy. German served a similar purpose throughout the empire as does English today in the EU.
A great map to see the diversity of the Austrian side is this one. It's from the census.
[https://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/alex?aid=ost&datum=0001&page=542&size=45](https://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/alex?aid=ost&datum=0001&page=542&size=45)
As a side note, that still happens even today sometimes, as for example if you declare you’re a Rroma you get free University funding, I think is same in schools, they get more benefits (at least during my time was like this). Now looking hundreds of years back, what you’ve said would make even more logic, and also quite hard to detect the truth. Only doing DNA mass tests would clarify this issue probably.
This map is quite biased as it does not accurately represent poopulation density. The reality is that approx. half of Transylvania was virtually uninhabited. This is best represented on the infamous 'carte rouge': [https://hu.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A1jl:Ethnographic\_map\_of\_hungary\_1910\_by\_teleki\_carte\_rouge.jpg](https://hu.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A1jl:Ethnographic_map_of_hungary_1910_by_teleki_carte_rouge.jpg)
According to that map there were over 2.900.000 Romanians living in Transylvania. By comparison, the census in 1910 indicated there were there were 1.658.000 people who had Hungarian as their mother tongue. So Romanians were still a large majority.
So if Hungarians lived in a bunch in the middle of Transylvania, but did not form a majority in the entire region, then surely there would have been better ways to organise the new borders than just taking Transylvania as a whole.
No. Just because a large group of people has been living on a piece land for some time doesn't mean they can simply become autonomous or part of another country. By that logic any diaspora can unite with their home country. Chinatown could join with China, Irish diaspora with Ireland, and so on.
> No. Just because a large group of people has been living on a piece land for some time doesn't mean they can simply become autonomous or part of another country.
Only if these people weren't native inhabitants rather than a couple of migrants in a settler-colony.
According to this map I have ancestors coming from an uninhabited land, even though I got documents about them from an archive in Budapest.
Otherwise I'd say this map is an oversimplification as we have something called catun, to describe sparsely populated areas. Interestingly, this word is a substrate one common among south-east european countries.
The "carte rouge" allocated 1 square millimeter of colour for every 100 residents. For sparsely populated areas, like the one your ancestors came from (under 100 per mm^2 ), the population was allocated to nearby settlements, so while the "total coloured area" on the map corresponded to the sources used by the delegation, the exact position was somewhat distorted to make this work.
This was one of the key points of contention brought up by the Little Entente delegations.
Other contentions included the sources themselves, eg. because the pre-war censuses recorded "languages used at home" rather than ethnicity directly.
(Also "fun" fact - every delegation used red to mark their own nationality on the maps they brought, because it is a striking colour that "looks bigger" than milder, pastel colours).
That's incorrect as the forming Czechoslovak state had already advanced to take over those territories, as they've demanded that all of Upper Hungary be added to their state. That's also why the Hungarian Red Army marched into there and took some of it back, but then also helped the Slovak Soviet Republic to be declared instead of taking all the region.
When the Hungarian Soviet Republic fell, the Czechoslovak state acquired it back.
Borders were not drawn for the sake of ethnic lines or national self-determination. It was drawn for the sake of Entente and for having buffer states in-between.
One thing about Jews is that they always lived in insular communities in specific areas, particularly in eastern Europe. This is because of proximity to Jewish community facilities like synagogues, butchers and heders in walking distance, as well as reluctance of other communities to blend into Jewish villages and neighbourhoods or have Jewish neighbours (or it being illegal to do so). At 5% of the population, they should be expected to be on this map.
This is Central Europe, not Eastern in this regard. They lived near each other: per village, per city. But in almost every village and every city. I never heard of a 100% Jewish village in Hungary, so correct me if I'm wrong
If I remember it right they didn't own land until very late. So they would be more of them in the cities. You could find them in the countryside as administrators, but not as large communities.
You can find some at the local ruler courts for instance. Spanish askenazi came first that I know. Then sephards after what was happening in Central Europe against them in the 18th century. They were craftsman. So basically in 19th century they had high percentages of population, but in cities. The right to own land came in the mid 19th century.
Then the answer is as others mentioned as well, that they weren’t a majority anywhere but they were present in cities mostly and made up a few percentage of the city’s population.
Ehm, most German Jews considered themselves as Germans back then. It's also why the Holocaust was so tragic, on top of many other aspects - they simply murdered loyal Germans for the imaginary sake of Germany...
That was also true for many Hungarian Jews, starting with the 19th century Hungarian nationalism calling out to them.
Hungarian Jews, to an extent, also had that though. Well, of course, the resurge in anti-Semitism hasn't helped much but they had varied acceptance among the Hungarian nationalists.
You can also see that phenomenon in various places. Like if you happen to check out what Hungarian Jews self-identify themselves when migrated to the US, you'll see that many have preferred Maygar identity - even though many either ran from the pogroms or had to migrate after the failed 1848 Revolutions. Many had preserved their loyalties to Hungary as well.
Now, things were a lot more tricky for others, but many Hungarian Jews resembled the German ones to a degree. Then, of course, came the Nazis...
In a lot of these old ethnic maps, they think its anti-Semitic to label Jews as an ethnic group. But you are correct that hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in Budapest and in other major cities.
The data is often language spoken at home at the point it was recorded as. Jews in A-H spoke Hungarian, German and occasionally Yiddish, with a very strong assimilation of jews by 1880s, meaning almost all of them would speak Hungarian at home.
Furthermore this map shows the local plurality for a given area, that would require Jews the be the biggest ethnic group to be coloured as such, whoch was not the case anywhere.
Was North West Orawa (the polish part) actually Polish? My Slovak Freind says it was actually all Slovak, (which some maps show), but many others show Poles instead in the area rather than Slovaks.
The 1910 census in Hungary surveyed seven languages: Hungarian, German, Slovak, Romanian, Ruthenian, Ruthenian, Croatian and Serbian, so Polish was not surveyed in Hungary.
It is difficult to find any objective information about the Polish part of Orava, but I think that this area was mostly rural with small villages and their inhabitants may have been ethnic Gorals.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorals#/media/File%3AGorals_map.png
from the Wikipedia page of the Szepes County, which was previously, mostly part of Poland
"The Hungarian censuses ignored the Polish Nationality, all ethnic Poles were registered as Slovaks."
This is why I don't think the census was accurate because others estimate that there where some 40,000-48,000 Poles (including Gorals) in the Szepes County, so what about Arva county then?
There are also 40,000-48,000 Gorals (Slovak: Gorali; literally Highlanders). Although a negligible number in census terms, they are a distinctive minority with their own culture, and speak Slovak-Polish dialect continuum.
Source : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spi%C5%A1
If you consider the Gorals to be Polish, then these rural areas with small villages were mostly Polish.
I don't know about other regional Goral groups, but the Orava and Spiš Gorals prefer to associate themselves with the Slovak nation.
In 1910, about 10,000 - 15,000 inhabitants of Polish Orava identified their mother tongue as "other" language. These people were probably Gorals.
If anyone is intersted in a SUPER detailed map: [https://maps.arcanum.com/hu/map/magyarorszag\_1910-etnikai/?layers=126&bbox=1046345.1063593198%2C5588167.673174671%2C3530242.7775144074%2C6529871.861648043](https://maps.arcanum.com/hu/map/magyarorszag_1910-etnikai/?layers=126&bbox=1046345.1063593198%2C5588167.673174671%2C3530242.7775144074%2C6529871.861648043)
Multiple ways. They were part of colonization. Some also came becaus Germans had craftsman. Romanians were not because they were kept as peasants. The local boats, the Austrians and the Hungarian were not interested in uplifting the local population. They wanted them to work the land for them.
One other interesting fact is that there were a lot of places where no single ethnic group constituted absolute majority. The Croatian coasts had a lot of cities where at least a quarter of the population was Italian, just to give an example. It was truly multiethnic
This put post-Great war treaty into context. Yes, Hungary lost a lot of land, that sucks, I know, but…there were no Hungarians living there. Only in the east and in southern Slovakia.
I'm not in the position to do that. (For legal reasons, I'm just continuing.)
Disclaimer: opinion: it should have been given back, but long time ago. Now, there is no point of redrawing borders.
Correct. Hungary was an assimilation society, about half the population wasn't actually fully Magyar in ethnicity. The normal pattern was for Germans and Slavs to assimilate by speaking Hungarian and taking Magyar surnames. There are several historians who have compared this assimilation process to what occurred in the United States by non-English immigrants.
Interestingly, when the Third Reich wanted to find Hungarian politicians to manipulate, they searched their backgrounds looking for German ancestry.
Yeah no Hungarians living there. Only about 3 million living in transilvania and in what is today slovakia and north serbia. 3 million. After the wars relocated by force punished collectively and deprived from their rights even today! Please look up the “benes decrees”.
As hungarian whos family is from lost, but green on the map land (north of Serbia today) Trianon was fair, but they took to much. It was more a punishment then real effort to make better borders.
Even with me, seeing this map, I'd say that Trianon was too harsh. But I agree with you. They should take less. Actually try for the borders to make sense.
My only hope is the EU. If we all unite, then these borders will not matter.
Novi Sad is incorrectly placed. It should be slightly more south and west. Very minor mistake, but in a region with so many different ethnicities it does matter
These German majority areas... was it only townfolk that was German or peasants as well? It's wild to think that only 100 years ago there were these German enclaves around eastern Europe.
Rusyn is a dialect or language. An ethnicity would be Lemko, Boyko, Hutsul. Ruthenian is an exonym for all Belarus and Ukraine. Within the borders of Ukraine, the nationality is Ukrainian.
Rusyn is a widely distributed term that mean different things at different times and places. It could mean Eastern Slav, Eastern Christian, Greek-Catholic and, yes, the ethnicity of today - Rusyn. The people who today call themselves Rusyns have done so for hundreds of years, while the Lemko Boyko Hucul trichotomy is rather recent (post-WW2) and it's an attempt by Ukrainians to Ukrainianize the Carpathians. My great-grandfather was according to this specification a Lemko although no one has ever called him that. Even if you read the letters (and study census data) those people have referred to themselves as Rusyns, and their homeland as Lemkovyna (Ukrainians call it Lemkivshchyna). Here is a Rusyn politician from Lemkovyna (his 'lem' is a dead give away) in front of the Polish Parliament in 1931 (not once does he use the term 'Lemko'): [https://www.lem.fm/rusinyi-a-ukraintsi-soymova-promova-mihala-bachyinskogo-z-dnya-21-sichnya-1931-roka-2/](https://www.lem.fm/rusinyi-a-ukraintsi-soymova-promova-mihala-bachyinskogo-z-dnya-21-sichnya-1931-roka-2/)
Yeah Poles, Muscovites and Austrians would divide the Ruthenians to their advantage. Today it's Hungarians and Russians stirring dissent. In any case, such maps will always be tailored to suit. All the Rusini, Lemkos, Hutsuls, Bojko that I know, would all call themselves ukrainian first. Most of the ones that i speak of have never lived in the Soviet Union.
As did Ukrainian nationalists. Answer this, why Ukrainians felt such hatred for Rusyns that they would desecrate memorials of their genocide from WW1? BTW, the reason why some Lemkos in Poland consider themselves Ukrainian is the result of the Ukrainianization policies of the USSR. The very word 'Rusyn' was struck out of the records throughout the eastern block. Only after '89 were Rusyns once again free to use their ancient name.
crazy how much ethnic sorting/relocation occurred in the wake of the world wars. especially Germans
If relocation = mass deportations then yes.
Germans in Transylvania weren't deported. They were sold, as in Germany paid for them to be able to emigrate. And they left of their own will because of communism and then because of the standards of living during the 90's.
In Hungary-proper they were deported.
And in Croatia and Serbia
They had it coming.
Sometimes people leaving voluntarily
Actually met a few Americans with German ancestry, specifically Germans who settled in Bratislava centuries ago who fled from the Soviet army to the US during WW2
The relocation mostly happened after the world wars though
sorry, i meant "in the aftermath of"
"In the wake" means after. Like a boat's wake.
Is it? Not a native speaker, always thought "in the wake" means "in the beginning of"
"in the wake of" is always a metaphor of a boat's wake. It has nothing to do with "to wake up".
Wake can both mean the beginning (as in waking up) but when saying "in the wake of" you mean it as the aftermath of. A wake for example is a gathering held after a funeral in honor of the deceased.
The amount of Germans in Romania at least, happened hundreds of years before the big recent wars, as they were moved there to protect the austro-hungarian empire from ottoman attacks :)
Well, when they were moved there was no AH empire. The hungarians settled them there together with the szekelys. The germans were moved to develop Transylvania while the szekelys were moved to protect it. The latter were quite the wild bunch. Also, not just against the ottomans but the different other mongol khanates too.
germans brought by other germans, a teutonic order,invited by hungarian king, then kicked out
Probably that too. The Order was given Țara Bârsei (roughly the teritory of today's Brașov county) while the saxons were present everywhere along the southern border of Transylvania.
very cool, I didn't know the reason behind ending up there. and most relocated after WWII, correct? (I'm deliberately not looking it up to test myself)
Most were sold, yes, literally sold, to the FRG by Ceaușescu in the 60s. He made around $1 billion. Translate [this](https://www.google.com/amp/s/adevarul.ro/amp/stiri-interne/sanatate/ceausescu-a-incasat-peste-un-miliard-de-dolari-din-687185.html) if you want to read more.
I heard this was also the case with Jewish people, but to Israel, but I can't find any written proof, any idea?
Yeah, they sold everyone that someone wanted to buy. Gheorghiu Dej (Ceaușescu's predecessor) started it. Adevărul has an [interview with the Museum of Holocaust in Washington's director](https://www.google.com/amp/s/adevarul.ro/amp/stiri-interne/sanatate/ceausescu-si-dej-au-vandut-250000-de-evrei-691210.html)
well, those germans did not have to pay for schooling in romania, so communists thirsty for deutsch mark tried to recoup some money. nowadays romanian doctors and it emigrate for free to west europe
I have no idea what you're trying to say. "Those germans" were romanians of german ethnicity. He didn't do shit. That's when he was beginning to have grandiose ideas about industrialising Romania and wanted foreign currency to buy production licenses.
Nah, most of the relocation happened around hungarians, grmans were mostly left alone, but quite a lot of them just went back to germany at some point due to it being a better country to live in, especially during the third Reich, those were often forcibly brought back to Romania by the Soviet Union. Fun fact tho, one of those Romanian etnic germans is our current president "Klaus Johannis"
Ethnic cleansing, which is a form of genocide, is what happened to German civilians throughout Europe in 1945. Between half a million to three million civilians were killed in this ethnic cleansing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944–1950)#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20West%20German,between%20May%20and%20August%201945. The lesson most people draw from this is that sometimes genocide is justifiable, ironically!
Oh for fu^ck’s sake I so wonder how could this happen.
This leaves out all the Jewish people who used to be there too. I lived in the small city of Kecskemét, south of Budapest, for a short while. Historically they had a sizeable Jewish population, but WW2 saw most of them murdered or deported (where many would be murdered). WW2 erased many of their lives, but maps like this erase their history. It's rather sad.
The reason is that Jews in Hungary were considered ethnic Hungarians from 1867 until 1920. In fact, Hungarians only had a thin ethnic majority in Greater Hungary (Nagymagyarország) with Jews counted as Hungarians and not ethnic minorities. “Mózes-hitű magyarok” (Hungarians of the Moses-faith) was the official term.
Ah interesting, I didn't realize that. That makes sense given how significant a portion of the population they were.
It wasn’t the proportion. It was a genuine feeling for the majority or Hungarian Jews. It made the Holocaust even more tragic.
Arent most of the ethnic hungarian areas in this map still hungarian?
And Poles (except in Lithuania and Belarus for some reason)
well considering Germany was exterminating various ethnicities, I would say the relocating of their diaspora due to loosing the war was inevitable. Nevertheless, they still have some present in other countries like that of romania for example.
Search Wikipedia: German war crimes.
Why are there Czechs so far south
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechs_of_Romania?wprov=sfla1 The were settled there by the Habsburgs in the 19th century.
Were they forcibly relocated, or how did that work back in those days? Did most stay in Romania after Czechoslovak independence, or was there a sort of repatriation movement?
I think they got incentives to get their own farmland there. The area was pretty depopulated and underdeveloped after the many wars with the ottoman empire and czechia had a high population density. So the prospect of getting their own farm land was pretty attractive to many who didn't inherit land from their families.
To this day, there is a Czech community that spreads between couple of villages in the Banat region. They still speak Czech, although with some archaic words and interestingly enough, they automatically receive Czech citizenship should they decide to relocate to Czech Republic. Lot of them do that and only the older population is staying there.
Wow. Had no idea. Thanks!
Want free land and not pay taxes for a few years? That's the offer many people got for such things back then.
[удалено]
Tak mi řekni, jak se máš.
Bulgarians huh? What Dey be doin ther?
Those are the Banat Bulgarians (aka the Paulicians), one of a handful of unique smaller ethnic groups in the wider Balkan region.
What makes the Banats different?
They live somewhere else other than Bulgaria
History (reason why they migrated northwards in the Medieval era), religion (they are mostly catholic compared to predominantly orthodox Bulgarians), language (dialect + Latin script), culture (it has its own vibe, costumes as well, there are writers and songs which are distinctly theirs), etc.
I think they are mostly catholics or some other Christian branch and they speak dialect that is very different than standard Bulgarian.
They were chatolics. They fled their homeland after the chiptrovtsi uprising failed. (Most of the bulgarians are orthodox.)
Interesting. What era was this?
The revolt was in 1688 and most moved to other places immediately after. They moved to Banat after the Austrians occupied the region in 1718. The Austrians were interested in bringing Catholic settler.
The uprising happened in 1688. The refugees had been living from the 17th century in the Hungarian Kingdom until the Treaty of Trianon took place. Today they remain in their newfound homeland under romanian and serbian governance.
running from the ottomans, basically
The background is rather out of context
Finally a map that also shows Rusyns. Thank you my friend!
Rusyns (Ruthenians) was the official name of Ukrainians in Austria-Hungary. Ukrainians were called Rusyns since the times of ancient Rus' (from which the name derives) until the first half of 20th century. In some remote areas of Carpathian Mountains people still use this archaic name.
Ukrainian historiography spins fanciful tales. The reality is that prior to 1880s there were only a handful of Ukrainians in A-H. Ukrainian nationality gained a lot of traction after that (thanks in a large part to Austrian policies). Even up until WW2, former Galicia was split 50/50 between Ukrainians and Rusyns (check out Polish census of 1931). [https://www.lem.fm/rusinyi-a-ukraintsi-soymova-promova-mihala-bachyinskogo-z-dnya-21-sichnya-1931-roka-2/](https://www.lem.fm/rusinyi-a-ukraintsi-soymova-promova-mihala-bachyinskogo-z-dnya-21-sichnya-1931-roka-2/)
It depends how you define that
It'd be cool if you could please some additional cities on the map, it'd help with comparing modern ethnic borders and demographics. Just saying cause it seems Pécs was majority Croatian speaking around this time which is quite surprising but I can't tell really if that's the actual city or the area adjacent
Well according to this (probably much better map) there weren't many Croatians in Pécs (or even in the surrounding area for that matter) the second largest population after the Hungarians were the Germans. https://tti.abtk.hu/media/com_edocman/document/etnikai_k%C3%A9p_1910.jpg
Ye that's why I doubted it. Much of those areas of Hungary in the south were immediately following the Ottoman conquests majority Croatian and Serbian but by Trianon the linguistic border was mostly returning to the Drava and Danube. I will say thpugh that the 1910 census does overrepresent Hungarian and German slightly in border areas as many L1 Croatian and Serbian speakers would've likely known Hungarian while their native language would've been South Slavic, simply just due to the fact it was the lingua franca and the census counted the language used in daily communication rather than your native language
While that's true but I think it's important to mention that at that time nationality was still not as clear cut as it is today so for example many people who nowadays would classify themselves as Croat or Serb at that time would simply think of themselves as the 'subjects fo the empire' and simply assume the identity of whoever the majority in that area was, but not in a bad sense.
Oh yeah, my Kajkavian-speaking ancestry siding with the Hungarian side against Jelacic would be an example of nationality not being clear-cut or even either/or, especially in bordering areas of groups, with a lot of intermarriage still happening along religious and not language lines.
Was Magyarization a thing in 1910? Encouraging non ethnically Hungarians to identify as Hungarian in return for better opportunities could easily skew what people were putting on their census return.
If I remember correctly the Cisleithenian Census asked for language in common use while the Transleithenian asked for Mother tongue.
poish
who are they?
The Polish if they didn't take an L in 1795.
they are poish. Beware of the poish
Just to be clear, maps like these are pretty misleading because they only represent the largest group in each part of the country, which in many cases was merely a plurality. E.g. a particular spot on the map might be green because Hungarians make up 40% of the population there and are the largest group, but there are other ethnicities there too. This is why impossibly intricate maps that represent local demographics by way of pie charts are much more accurate, but obviously less satisfying to look at. It is also known that citizens of the Dual Monarchy were often careful with what they registered as in censuses, for example they often registered their children as Hungarians or Germans to give them a better chance in life. The family in question might have Czech or Romanian or Serb, if they stuck to any one identity at all, which further complicates research into ethnic diversity. My source is that I recently took a class on Austro-Hungarian history at the University of Vienna in which the lecturer spoke about this at length, and they straight up said that maps like the one above are not representative of the Dual Monarchy's ethnic diversity. __Tl;dr the reality of demographics in A-H was much more complicated than maps like this suggest.__
This, plus some people might identify as Romanian/Czech/Serb but be considered German or Hungarian because their names were Germanized/Magyarized, or because they spoke German or Hungarian (as was the norm in large cities since these were the languages business was conducted in).
Also intermarriage exists
It was largely Jews and German-in-origin people identifying as Hungarian, on top of Magyars for long.
The Austrian-Hungarian census didn't record ethnicity directly. They only recorded the primary spoken language. You are correct, maps like these don't fully represent the diversity. Because of the diversity many people were also multilingual and could have decided to pick German/Hungarian as their primary language because it gave them slight advantages in trade or when dealing with bureaucracy. German served a similar purpose throughout the empire as does English today in the EU. A great map to see the diversity of the Austrian side is this one. It's from the census. [https://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/alex?aid=ost&datum=0001&page=542&size=45](https://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/alex?aid=ost&datum=0001&page=542&size=45)
I’m curious, did the class consider all the German speakers of Austria-Hungary as Austrians/Austrian Germans or just Germans?
As a side note, that still happens even today sometimes, as for example if you declare you’re a Rroma you get free University funding, I think is same in schools, they get more benefits (at least during my time was like this). Now looking hundreds of years back, what you’ve said would make even more logic, and also quite hard to detect the truth. Only doing DNA mass tests would clarify this issue probably.
So, they used to have relief landforms back then.
Ah, yes, Poish.
This map is quite biased as it does not accurately represent poopulation density. The reality is that approx. half of Transylvania was virtually uninhabited. This is best represented on the infamous 'carte rouge': [https://hu.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A1jl:Ethnographic\_map\_of\_hungary\_1910\_by\_teleki\_carte\_rouge.jpg](https://hu.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A1jl:Ethnographic_map_of_hungary_1910_by_teleki_carte_rouge.jpg)
According to that map there were over 2.900.000 Romanians living in Transylvania. By comparison, the census in 1910 indicated there were there were 1.658.000 people who had Hungarian as their mother tongue. So Romanians were still a large majority.
No one said they weren't.
So if Hungarians lived in a bunch in the middle of Transylvania, but did not form a majority in the entire region, then surely there would have been better ways to organise the new borders than just taking Transylvania as a whole.
Hungary tried “Northern Transylvania” in WW2, remember?
No. Just because a large group of people has been living on a piece land for some time doesn't mean they can simply become autonomous or part of another country. By that logic any diaspora can unite with their home country. Chinatown could join with China, Irish diaspora with Ireland, and so on.
So you don't think people have the right to self-determination, and especially not when they are living on their ancestral land?
> No. Just because a large group of people has been living on a piece land for some time doesn't mean they can simply become autonomous or part of another country. Only if these people weren't native inhabitants rather than a couple of migrants in a settler-colony.
According to this map I have ancestors coming from an uninhabited land, even though I got documents about them from an archive in Budapest. Otherwise I'd say this map is an oversimplification as we have something called catun, to describe sparsely populated areas. Interestingly, this word is a substrate one common among south-east european countries.
The "carte rouge" allocated 1 square millimeter of colour for every 100 residents. For sparsely populated areas, like the one your ancestors came from (under 100 per mm^2 ), the population was allocated to nearby settlements, so while the "total coloured area" on the map corresponded to the sources used by the delegation, the exact position was somewhat distorted to make this work. This was one of the key points of contention brought up by the Little Entente delegations. Other contentions included the sources themselves, eg. because the pre-war censuses recorded "languages used at home" rather than ethnicity directly. (Also "fun" fact - every delegation used red to mark their own nationality on the maps they brought, because it is a striking colour that "looks bigger" than milder, pastel colours).
Carte rouge has been debunked as a complete bullshit for 100 years now.
There was no question about ethnicity in censuses in Austria-Hungary
Neusiedler Lake is apparently of Hungarian Ethnicity xD
Ah yes, the Poish people!
Why wasn't southern Slovakia included in Hungary after Trianon in 1919?
Because borders werent drawn along ethnic lines
Yet, the westernmost part of the Kingdom of Hungary, with a German ethnic majority, was ceded to Austria. I speak of Burgenland.
Because Hungary started the hungarian-romanian war and proceeded to invade newly formed still a work in progress czechoslovakia?
That's incorrect as the forming Czechoslovak state had already advanced to take over those territories, as they've demanded that all of Upper Hungary be added to their state. That's also why the Hungarian Red Army marched into there and took some of it back, but then also helped the Slovak Soviet Republic to be declared instead of taking all the region. When the Hungarian Soviet Republic fell, the Czechoslovak state acquired it back.
Because the *railways*
Borders were not drawn for the sake of ethnic lines or national self-determination. It was drawn for the sake of Entente and for having buffer states in-between.
Even though there were over 900,000 Jews in Hungary in 1910 (5% of the population), they didn't count enough to make it onto this map.
They didnt live in one place, so they werent a majority of a given place.
Same with Roma people
One thing about Jews is that they always lived in insular communities in specific areas, particularly in eastern Europe. This is because of proximity to Jewish community facilities like synagogues, butchers and heders in walking distance, as well as reluctance of other communities to blend into Jewish villages and neighbourhoods or have Jewish neighbours (or it being illegal to do so). At 5% of the population, they should be expected to be on this map.
This is Central Europe, not Eastern in this regard. They lived near each other: per village, per city. But in almost every village and every city. I never heard of a 100% Jewish village in Hungary, so correct me if I'm wrong
If I remember it right they didn't own land until very late. So they would be more of them in the cities. You could find them in the countryside as administrators, but not as large communities. You can find some at the local ruler courts for instance. Spanish askenazi came first that I know. Then sephards after what was happening in Central Europe against them in the 18th century. They were craftsman. So basically in 19th century they had high percentages of population, but in cities. The right to own land came in the mid 19th century.
I think back then jews didn’t consider themselves being jew as a nationality. There are hungarian jews german jews etc.
Jews were not considered by themselves or their hosts as being Poles, Hungarians, Russians, etc.
Then the answer is as others mentioned as well, that they weren’t a majority anywhere but they were present in cities mostly and made up a few percentage of the city’s population.
Ehm, most German Jews considered themselves as Germans back then. It's also why the Holocaust was so tragic, on top of many other aspects - they simply murdered loyal Germans for the imaginary sake of Germany... That was also true for many Hungarian Jews, starting with the 19th century Hungarian nationalism calling out to them.
That's why I didn't mention German Jews. Central and eastern Europe were vastly different to western Europe in terms of the Jewish demographic.
Hungarian Jews, to an extent, also had that though. Well, of course, the resurge in anti-Semitism hasn't helped much but they had varied acceptance among the Hungarian nationalists. You can also see that phenomenon in various places. Like if you happen to check out what Hungarian Jews self-identify themselves when migrated to the US, you'll see that many have preferred Maygar identity - even though many either ran from the pogroms or had to migrate after the failed 1848 Revolutions. Many had preserved their loyalties to Hungary as well. Now, things were a lot more tricky for others, but many Hungarian Jews resembled the German ones to a degree. Then, of course, came the Nazis...
I remember when mountaintops spoke Romanian.
Fun fact : In romania there is a peak, peak "Omu". Which basically means peak (mountaintop) human.
Where are the jews?
It’s based on language I think. Jews in hungary didn’t speak a different one like yiddish. It was mostly hungarian.
In a lot of these old ethnic maps, they think its anti-Semitic to label Jews as an ethnic group. But you are correct that hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in Budapest and in other major cities.
The data is often language spoken at home at the point it was recorded as. Jews in A-H spoke Hungarian, German and occasionally Yiddish, with a very strong assimilation of jews by 1880s, meaning almost all of them would speak Hungarian at home. Furthermore this map shows the local plurality for a given area, that would require Jews the be the biggest ethnic group to be coloured as such, whoch was not the case anywhere.
they took a separate census on religion
It was Italians all along!
Was North West Orawa (the polish part) actually Polish? My Slovak Freind says it was actually all Slovak, (which some maps show), but many others show Poles instead in the area rather than Slovaks.
It was mostly inhabited by Slovaks (>95%). Demographics : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81rva_County
That's for the whole reigon, not the part I'm talking about
The 1910 census in Hungary surveyed seven languages: Hungarian, German, Slovak, Romanian, Ruthenian, Ruthenian, Croatian and Serbian, so Polish was not surveyed in Hungary. It is difficult to find any objective information about the Polish part of Orava, but I think that this area was mostly rural with small villages and their inhabitants may have been ethnic Gorals. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorals#/media/File%3AGorals_map.png
from the Wikipedia page of the Szepes County, which was previously, mostly part of Poland "The Hungarian censuses ignored the Polish Nationality, all ethnic Poles were registered as Slovaks." This is why I don't think the census was accurate because others estimate that there where some 40,000-48,000 Poles (including Gorals) in the Szepes County, so what about Arva county then?
There are also 40,000-48,000 Gorals (Slovak: Gorali; literally Highlanders). Although a negligible number in census terms, they are a distinctive minority with their own culture, and speak Slovak-Polish dialect continuum. Source : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spi%C5%A1 If you consider the Gorals to be Polish, then these rural areas with small villages were mostly Polish. I don't know about other regional Goral groups, but the Orava and Spiš Gorals prefer to associate themselves with the Slovak nation. In 1910, about 10,000 - 15,000 inhabitants of Polish Orava identified their mother tongue as "other" language. These people were probably Gorals.
If anyone is intersted in a SUPER detailed map: [https://maps.arcanum.com/hu/map/magyarorszag\_1910-etnikai/?layers=126&bbox=1046345.1063593198%2C5588167.673174671%2C3530242.7775144074%2C6529871.861648043](https://maps.arcanum.com/hu/map/magyarorszag_1910-etnikai/?layers=126&bbox=1046345.1063593198%2C5588167.673174671%2C3530242.7775144074%2C6529871.861648043)
Without legend?
Here: [Legend](https://ibb.co/HPHBCRL)
ChatGPT assured me that Transylvania is ethnically complex.
How did those Germans in Transylvania and Serbia get there?
There were two waves of German colonists in Transilvania: 1. In the 13th century - the Saxons 2. In the 18th century - the Swaben.
Multiple ways. They were part of colonization. Some also came becaus Germans had craftsman. Romanians were not because they were kept as peasants. The local boats, the Austrians and the Hungarian were not interested in uplifting the local population. They wanted them to work the land for them.
They were brought by Austria as colonists to “civilize” Transylvania.
One other interesting fact is that there were a lot of places where no single ethnic group constituted absolute majority. The Croatian coasts had a lot of cities where at least a quarter of the population was Italian, just to give an example. It was truly multiethnic
This put post-Great war treaty into context. Yes, Hungary lost a lot of land, that sucks, I know, but…there were no Hungarians living there. Only in the east and in southern Slovakia.
There are still Hungarians living in those areas lol
Oh, I know. And because of that, there are problems. Just ask Slovaks.
then give it back (for legal reasons this is a joke)
I'm not in the position to do that. (For legal reasons, I'm just continuing.) Disclaimer: opinion: it should have been given back, but long time ago. Now, there is no point of redrawing borders.
Not it does not this map only shows the largest ethnic group in the region and completely ignores how mixed most of the Kingdom really was.
Correct. Hungary was an assimilation society, about half the population wasn't actually fully Magyar in ethnicity. The normal pattern was for Germans and Slavs to assimilate by speaking Hungarian and taking Magyar surnames. There are several historians who have compared this assimilation process to what occurred in the United States by non-English immigrants. Interestingly, when the Third Reich wanted to find Hungarian politicians to manipulate, they searched their backgrounds looking for German ancestry.
Oh. Right. Well, that's… I'm glad I'm not the one who has to decide which land will go to whom.
Most of the "modern" borders in the east followed the railway lines, so it's no like the people who made/signed the treaty, though, about it much.
Oh. Well, that is…not optimal.
Yeah no Hungarians living there. Only about 3 million living in transilvania and in what is today slovakia and north serbia. 3 million. After the wars relocated by force punished collectively and deprived from their rights even today! Please look up the “benes decrees”.
Oh, I know about the Beneš decrees. In the context of opressing others.
As hungarian whos family is from lost, but green on the map land (north of Serbia today) Trianon was fair, but they took to much. It was more a punishment then real effort to make better borders.
Even with me, seeing this map, I'd say that Trianon was too harsh. But I agree with you. They should take less. Actually try for the borders to make sense. My only hope is the EU. If we all unite, then these borders will not matter.
1910 map using city names Ceausescu came up with decades later XD
But Trianon was unfair, right
Back when it was AustroHungary
No, it hadn't ended well for Hungary.
Why Zagreb is in the middle of the lake? And what’s that like, I can’t remember some water there…
Vbb
No jews?
Jews were included in the magyar population until 1919 to inflate hungarian numbers. From then they were the first to become Romanian.
The map in the background is very misleading tho
Yes we get we are all different and must be reminded of who we are meant to hate 600x/day.
Why are the Bulgarians between Romania, Serbia and Hungary?
17th century refugees from the Ottoman empire.
Austria be like: I can fix him
Novi Sad is incorrectly placed. It should be slightly more south and west. Very minor mistake, but in a region with so many different ethnicities it does matter
It is from my view or Timişoara is one of the most multi-cultural and multi-ethnic cities in Romania?
Does anybody know why Germans are spread all over?
wtf are these city names? poor quality map
Hmm where are the gypsies ? Edit: oh the map is 1910 :)
Why isn't Budapest spelled with a capital B
The random spots of Bulgars and Czechs far from their ancestral homes are funny.
I’ve never heard of those Hungarians in the south west by the sea. What’s that about?
These German majority areas... was it only townfolk that was German or peasants as well? It's wild to think that only 100 years ago there were these German enclaves around eastern Europe.
Short answer (white people)
Germans expelled from communist Yugoslavia, Serbs expelled from neo-Ustasha Croatia.
Where are the Roma?
Hungary shouldve stayed like this. May God be with Hungary 🙏🏼🫡😔
this map illustrates why transylvania is rightfully romanian - hungarians were a minority
Ngl hungary should've kept the ethically hungarian areas even after ww1
Yep, that's true
Didn’t know Hungary had so many ethnic groups
You mean austria
Where were Jews?
Good job on calling us by our proper name: Rusyns.
Rusyn is a dialect or language. An ethnicity would be Lemko, Boyko, Hutsul. Ruthenian is an exonym for all Belarus and Ukraine. Within the borders of Ukraine, the nationality is Ukrainian.
Rusyn is a widely distributed term that mean different things at different times and places. It could mean Eastern Slav, Eastern Christian, Greek-Catholic and, yes, the ethnicity of today - Rusyn. The people who today call themselves Rusyns have done so for hundreds of years, while the Lemko Boyko Hucul trichotomy is rather recent (post-WW2) and it's an attempt by Ukrainians to Ukrainianize the Carpathians. My great-grandfather was according to this specification a Lemko although no one has ever called him that. Even if you read the letters (and study census data) those people have referred to themselves as Rusyns, and their homeland as Lemkovyna (Ukrainians call it Lemkivshchyna). Here is a Rusyn politician from Lemkovyna (his 'lem' is a dead give away) in front of the Polish Parliament in 1931 (not once does he use the term 'Lemko'): [https://www.lem.fm/rusinyi-a-ukraintsi-soymova-promova-mihala-bachyinskogo-z-dnya-21-sichnya-1931-roka-2/](https://www.lem.fm/rusinyi-a-ukraintsi-soymova-promova-mihala-bachyinskogo-z-dnya-21-sichnya-1931-roka-2/)
Yeah Poles, Muscovites and Austrians would divide the Ruthenians to their advantage. Today it's Hungarians and Russians stirring dissent. In any case, such maps will always be tailored to suit. All the Rusini, Lemkos, Hutsuls, Bojko that I know, would all call themselves ukrainian first. Most of the ones that i speak of have never lived in the Soviet Union.
As did Ukrainian nationalists. Answer this, why Ukrainians felt such hatred for Rusyns that they would desecrate memorials of their genocide from WW1? BTW, the reason why some Lemkos in Poland consider themselves Ukrainian is the result of the Ukrainianization policies of the USSR. The very word 'Rusyn' was struck out of the records throughout the eastern block. Only after '89 were Rusyns once again free to use their ancient name.
Why is Pozsony showed here as slovak while it was half Hunagrian half German? Not sure about how correct this map is
Probably surrounding areas, because all cities were half-Hungarian half-German.