This year Burgenland is celebrating its 80th anniversary. When the official ceremonies will be held in Eisenstadt in October, Burgenländers will be reminded of the very exciting history of this region during the last century. Dealing with this situation around 1900, the „Burgenländische Gemeinschaft" is also starting a series about „80 years of Burgenland".

Today, just a few people even im Burgenland itself are aware of the fact that this region had always belonged to Hungary. It was not until 1921 that Burgenland became part of Austria!

As long as the Austrian-Hungarian-Empire was existing (broke down in November, 1918), this western part of Hungary was called „Deutsch-Westungarn", because of the German speaking majority in this place. Ödenburg (Sopron) was its centre. About 1900, some courageous men wanted to improve the living conditions for those „Hianzn", because the children were forced to learn Hungarian at school. Besides this, Hungarian politicians tried to make the Hianzn good Hungarians („magyarok").

After defeat in World War I, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire did not exist anymore, since the Chechs, Slovenes, Italians and other nations have founded their own republican states or have joined those, in which they have found majority of their own population.

In 1921 the Burgenland of today was still part of Hungary. It was a narrow borderland without a name or any common political administration. There was not even a boundary to the East. Because of its German speaking majority and due to the peace treaties of Paris (1919), Burgenland should be handed over by the Hungarians to the young Austrian republic, but it was not until 1921. But, when Hungarian volunteers in arms prevented Austrian police from taking over Burgenland, the latter had to withdraw into Lower Austria. So, in fact, Burgenland was still under Hungarian administration, though it had been determined to be part of Austria. There was only a diplomatic solution left. In October 1921, Hungarians promised to withdraw and hand over the Burgenland, if Austria renounced of Sopron/Ödenburg, which was the only city in that region. When the Austrian army had taken over Burgenland in November, the majority of people in Sopron and surrounding villages voted for Hungary in a plebiscite. In fact, this was quite a remarkable, but peace-bringing result.

In 1923, when the borderline was again corrected, the small village Luising near Heiligenbrunn came to Austria, but 10 other villages were given back to Hungary: Prostrum, Pernau, Deutsch Großdorf, Ungarisch Großdorf, Kleinnahring, Großnahring, Oberschilding, Unterschilding, Oberradling und Unterradling. It was the very first time that the former Deutsch-Westungarn had turned away from Hungary becoming the most eastern part of Austria.

At that time Burgenland was a very poor country. 82% of the population were peasants with only little land property, and there was rarely industry to give people work. There used to be many children in the families, who could hardly be nourished, so emigration especially to the United States seemed to be the only way out of poverty: 6683 Burgenländers emigrated from January to October 1923 to America! In fact, that means that the population of a whole village left each month then! No wonder, considering that in 1939 more than 8000 people born in the district of Güssing were already living in the United States.

When their parents emigrated, the children used to live with their grandparents in Burgenland or were given to a farmer to work there („in Dienst geben"). So one mouth less was to be fed. At that time some of the Burgenländers came to Vienna to work in factories or as maids („Dienstmädchen") in wealthy families.

Burgenländers turned into proud Austrians.

Mag. Walter Dujmovits, jun.

To be continued.