(continuation of a previously published article )

For me the peasant working costume was picturesque, even if very dark. They all wore black boots (Csizmen, Stiefeln), a necessity in the muddy fields. All, men and women, wore dark aprons, and the women wore kerchiefs to keep the dust out of their hair. On Sundays or on pilgrimage the older women still wore the completely black dresses, so common in eastern Europe. Although I found the working Outfits interesting, I gathered that the local farmers did not. One couple refused to let me take their picture (for relatives in New York) as they were. I had to return the next day, when I found them dressed up in "Western" clothes: the man in a jacket and tie. I was disappointed but took the picture. I saw Trachten worn only once and that was at a Croatian festival in Frankenau in 1961. Once I was shown some of the other folk costumes hanging up in a museum closet, but I never saw them worn otherwise. There were no dirndls or any wide bright Hungarian skirts. Most of the money that came into Burgenland did not come from agriculture. Burgenland was uniquely a land of commuters, of Pendler. Hordes of men and young women left the province to find paying jobs elsewhere. Initially there was the mass migration to America; this was partly due to the loss of jobs in Hungarian border towns such as Szentgotthard, and Ödenburg. Although emigration did continue, many families now found their work in Vienna, where they toiled in construction and other non-office jobs. (The Viennese men all wanted to work in offices and caffy brief cases.) The fortunate families who lived in the north commuted on a weekly basis, that is the men would spend the week crowded into small rooms in Vienna and spend their weekends at home. Families did not move to Vienna, as one might expect them to. This was because they had their houses, their friends and relatives in the villages, whereas the cost of housing for families was, to them, exorbitant in Vienna. As the villages became further and further away from Vienna, the times away from home increased; to two weeks or even a month between visits. Needless to say this put a tremendous strain on the families. While the men were away, the women, older people, and young children worked the land. Finally there were the men in the forest-encircled villages of the south who might work as far away as Switzerland; many of these became seasonal commuters. In some of those villages it was said that for many months one could find very few men at home. Most of the Pendler were men, but some young women moved also to become store clerks in Vienna. There was almost no tourism in Burgenland at the time. Podersdorf, which has the only true beach on the Neusiedler See, had only one Gasthaus. A few people came to look at the birds, mostly storks, in Rust and in the reeds around the See. Eisenstadt was was just beginning to "cash in" on Haydn, and Mörbisch was presenting Hungarian-style operettas during the Summer. Almost no visitors, except relatives, went south of Forchtenstein. The one attraction in the south was Bad Tatzmannsdorf, and that was poorly developed at the time. Except for Forchtenstein and Eisenstadt, most of the castles were ignored or unknown; many of them were still in the ruined state in which the Russians had left them. Auf der Straße nach Güssing, 1957 It's fair to say that most Burgenländers did not recognize how attractive their province could be. Several times I was asked, why was I studying Burgenland? Why not Tirol? They could not grasp that a foreigner could be interested. Some were suspicious; after all the Russians were next door in Hungary. More than once I was asked to show my Passport. One family thought that I must be engaged to marry the daughter of a Burgenlander in New York and was there to meet the relatives. My car had a French license plate and I recall one young woman saying in surprise, "Ein Französer!" Automobiles were rare; I never had to worry about traffic problems once I had left Vienna. This was an advantage for me, because it made it possible for me to pick up tired walkers, and ask them my questions about Burgenland in a friendly way. I even picked up a borde guard that way. Once when I was driving an old lady home as it was beginning to get dark, and we were right along the (mined) Hungarian boundary, she offered me a swig of some slivovits she had. When I refused for fear of running off the road, she insisted that this was a really good bottle. When I still refused, with thanks, she thrust the bottle into my mouth and poured the fire water in. I gulped, but managed to keep the car on the road,l -yes, the slivovits was very good. Cameras were also almost non-existant in Burgenland. People, especially children, were not used to having pictures taken. Several times I took pictures of family members, and promised to send them prints later. One peasant in Moschendorf was so pleased with the picture I sent of him with his ox-cart, that he wrote to tell me that he was going to have it enlarged - something he was probable able to do. 1956 was only eleven years since the end of the war, and only one year since the Russians had pulled out. Memories were strong, because the young Burgenland men had mostly been drafted into the infantry. One home I visited had a little votive candle burning under the picture of their son who had been lost in Russia. I remember Walter taking me for a walk in Eisenhüttl and pointing out how many men had been lost from each house we passed. Small villages had long lists of names on their war memorials. The hills behind Deutsch Minihof, where the Raab and Lafnitz rivers join, were part of those quaint old houses were actually new. In one family the mother died while the father was in the army. Her sister took over the care of the children during the final siege. When the father returned from the Russian prisoner of war camp, he married the brave sister-in-law. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, while allowing Strem valley neighbors to get together again, also raised fears that the Russians, chasing the refugees, would return into Burgenland. Some of the older people tied that fear in with the belief that the Hungarians were certain to try to regain Burgenland. One old lady in Edelstal was sure that they would return. Naturally, I was interested in the "minorities". One would have expected the Magyars to make the most demands, but they were quiet. They recognized that they were very few, since the lawyers, teachers, etc. had almost all left for Hungary. They had been the target of all the charges about repression made by the German super-nationalists, and were a bit cowed. Besides, the two Magyar Centers, Oberwart und Oberpullendorf, were governmental Centers, and had to do their business in German. But there was a trace of bitterness underneath. One Magyar priest commented, "Under 400 years of supposed "repression" by the Magyars, the Croats kept their language, music, dances, costumes, and now after 30 years of Austrian "freedom" they have lost much of it." The Croats were greater in number, and had been even more numerous in the past. They were split in two by location and politics. The Croats in the north were mostly industrial workers and therefore had been in favor of becoming patt of Austria; they were Socialists. In contrast the Croats in Oberpullendorf Bezirk, and further south, had poorer ties to Viennese jobs, and were mostly suppotters of the People's Party (ÖVP). They had been mostly in favor of remaining in Hungary, and after coming to Austria, with their leader, Karall, had formed a strong cultural association, making demand for language rights and teaching. These Croats were somewhat in favor of cultural ties with Yugoslavia, but were fearful of being forced either to migrate to Croatia, or to have their areas annexed to Croatia (Yugoslavia). Marshall Tito, ruler of Yugoslavia, had supposedly asked for this area from the Western Allies. There was the fear too that Tito would try to have the 1919 idea of a Slavic corridor joining Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia established. The Croats were strongly against communism, but had been able, because of their Slavic language, to get along better with the Russian soldiers than the German could. During the ten-year occupation Russian was a required language in the schools. Religious groups were not included under "minorities", but I found the Lutherans to be in the trickiest Situation. They believed in the unity of the German people, and so were for the move to Austria, even though Hungary had been more tolerant than Austria had been. They were looking past Austria to an union with Germany. Unfortunately this led them to support Hitler . . . . . . . .Within Austria they felt that they could not support the pre-war Christian Party, or the post-war People's Party, since, in their minds, both were connected to the Catholic Church. Economically they did not want to support the Socialists, nor religiously the ÖVP. They became therefore the supporters of Third Parties. So I found Burgenland: a charming, almost unknown province, rarely visited by other Austrians or anyone else (except relatives). A poor land of hospitable people, where almost all the palaces or other buildings had been stripped bare by the Russians only a year before. lt was still an agricultural landscape, with oxen and horses, but with the young people increasingly seeking paying jobs in Vienna or elsewhere. My mother had on her kitchen wall a reproduction of a famous painting by Brueghel of peasants having their lunch in the fields. Brueghel painted that picture over 400 years ago, yet that is how I first saw much of Burgenland. I thank God that I could see it that way before the great changes of the following 40 years. To be able to see it when I was almost the only visitor in a land that was as foreign as Asia to most of the people of Europe in America.