GENEALOGY PRO-TIPS SERIES Hello Genealogy Friends. This is the start of an expansive series on the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the use of maps.... Stick with me! There's a lot to learn together. As with all my other Hungarian Genealogy Tips, the series name is put on each tab so you can pull it all up.
INTRODUCTION TO THIS SERIES Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tip #1
A WORD ABOUT THE HISTORY OF GALICIA, CADASTRAL MAPS, and HUNGARY.
You say, "What? I thought Magyar-American BlogSpot was all about Hungarian and Hungarian-Americans! Why are we talking about Galicia? Wasn't that in Poland?
Well... I always advise that a genealogist research the history of the locations that they find their ancestors and use historical records hand in hand with genealogy records. A good part of Poland was part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.
The historical time we are focusing on and that is valuable to Hungarian researchers is when Galicia was a territory that was once owned by the Austrian Crown, and then the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.
Austrian-Hungarian Empire
Österreichisch-Ungarische Monarchie in GERMAN
Osztrák–Magyar Monarchia in HUNGARIAN means Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy
Here's some historical background:
As a territory under the rule of the Austrian Crown and then the Austrian-Hungarian empire, Galicia came into being in 1772, in what was called the 'first partition' (of Poland).
GALICIA was a vast expanse, which is now south-central and south - in what is now Podkarpakie (Subcarpathia) Poland, a tiny bit of what is now Slovakia but was Hungary, and a portion of what is now western Ukraine. (It's not to be confused with the Galicia of Spain though that comes up when you use databases.) The name Galicia is supposed to have come from the word Galizien which was Halychyna in Ukrainian and Halicz in Poland.
Galicia was already an ethnically diverse area with a Polish and Carpatho-Rusyn (Ruthenian) Slavic settlers, who were mostly Roman Catholic or "Greek" Catholic. (The Greek Catholics were not ethnically Greek but were originally converted to Christianity by Christian missionaries from Greece.) However, though mostly Catholic, there were Protestants such as Lutheran Germans.
As time went on, Galicia was a good place to settle for Jews, and the Jews who came in included some Sephardic roots Jews, who had left after being exited from Spain and Portugal, as well as the Ashkenazi 'German' Jews and Russian Jews. Over time, there came to be a became significant Jewish population, mostly merchants.
There were other immigrations of ethnic Germans into what was Hungary, but now this wave of immigration brought them in from Austria. We find the presence of Germanic surnames in Catholic records and Germans marrying Poles. These Austrian-Germans were often also nobles, administrators, and those in a higher status than the traditionally agricultural "peasants' or the men and women who earned their living through making shoes or other useful items that took skill, craft, and artistry.
We also find Hungarian surnames in Galicia and Polish names in Hungary.
l find that the nobility was intermarrying with nobility of other ethnicities for some time - going the distance to make a good marriage - so today there is some confusion or controversy over who was a Slovak, Polish, Ruthenian, Lithuanian, or Hungarian noble. (And some nobles were also at least partly Italian, Czech, or another ethnicity.)
One thing you should consider is that a surname might have been changed to be more Polish, more Hungarian, more German - especially note the endings: ski, sky, skyi, szke...
Through time, there were very many incursions, raids, battles and wars fought in Galicia and for it before the Nazi's. This included the Mongols and the Tatars - who took men, women, and children into slavery and marched them into the Ottoman Empire of Turkey. It also included the Swedes, and - contrary to the thought that Poland and Hungary were "always friends" Ferenc Rakoczi II, Prince of Transylvania, and his army also came into the Podkarpakie area, devastating towns. There were also the Russians coming into Galicia, who are now in war to take Ukraine, as Russia thinks of Ukraine as a historical part of Russia.
On old maps of GALICIA you see the Carpathian mountain range is to the south, running through what is today SLOVAKIA, but was then HUNGARY. The main trade route is from southern "trade route" towns such as Dukla, Poland, through the Dukla Pass around Cergowa, Poland, and into Hungary. Once the whole region was especially significant in the wine business with travel through the Pass into the Hungarian grape growing and wine making region. Some of the Galician market towns had wine cellars for the storage of wine brought up from Hungarian wine country. There was significant trade between Hungary and Galicia of other items as well. This meant that people who identified as Hungarian and people who identified as Polish or another ethnicity were meeting up.
So valuable was this road through the mountains called the Dukla Pass, because it was the pass with the lowest elevation, the easiest to travel, that many thousands died in World War II trying to control it. As the intention to murder the Jews in Poland became clear, many fled Galicia and came into Hungary. As well, the Carpatho-Rusyn (Ruthenians) were also forced to move by the occupying Germans to other areas than their traditional homeland, dispersing them throughout Poland. Since their homeland included places in Hungary (now Slovakia) some fled there - moving south - rather than be moved around Poland.
Regarding World War II, the Nazi's won. They used the Dukla Pass route to invade Hungary, as one of two major routes into the country. Stories were that one day the people were in the fields and markets and the next they were - gone.
It's a difficult history.
Continue on with this series ....
All posts in this series have the tab Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tips
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