CHILDREN OF THE DANUBE

Just south of the shores of Lake Balaton, and its blue placid waters, the verdant green rolling hills of northern Somogy embrace a village, deep in one of the valleys, watered by a fast flowing brook and some tributary creeks. The soil is rich and red, and row upon row of vineyards snake their way across the hills rising up to meet the next incline and plunge back down to the valley floor where the village lies nestled around a church.  At the crest of another hill the baroque tower of a different church stands as a sentinel over the valley.  The outline of a chalice is cleverly designed into the upper portion of its doorframe.  It is the sign of its identity, and the identity of the people who came to this valley and founded the village of Kötcse.

Kötcse is the cradle of the German settlement of Somogy County, in south western Hungary, part of an area often known as Swabian Turkey. This is where four families will meet, whose stories will weave a tapestry of a common heritage shared by all of those who joined them on the trek down the Danube River in the early 18^th century into a far off land known as Hungary: the Fischers, the Frischkorns, the Bitzs and the Tefners. Each family, in its own way, is related to the life, history and faith of this obscure, out-of-the-way village and its people.  Yet, although Kötcse lies only some thirty miles north of where the major Swabian settlements would later thrive, it was all but forgotten in their memories, recollections and oral history. This is where we took root, grew, eventually flourished and spread.  This was the place of our infancy in Hungary: our cradle in the land we had hoped could become a home for us.

The story of the founding of Kötcse is of course, part of a much larger epic in the annals of the tumultuous history of south eastern Europe.  It is but a brief chapter in the Schwabenzug... the Great Swabian Migration of the 18th century.

Following the defeat of the rampaging Turkish hordes laying siege to Vienna in 1683, the Imperial Austrian Army hurled them back throughout south eastern Europe.  The liberation of Hungary after 150 years of rule by the Turks, exposed the ultimate results of their occupation: devastation, depopulation, wasteland, swamp and wilderness.  The Hapsburg Emperor Charles VI sent out the call for colonists to reclaim the wilderness, and to develop economic life and a new society, in this extension of his domains that now enveloped the Danube basin.  The call was extended and heard throughout what was then the Holy Roman Empire, which included vast areas of what is present-day south western Germany.  Small principalities, fiefdoms, Episcopal sees, provinces and districts related to the Empire were invaded by “public relations” officials who told the land-hungry, peace-starved, over-taxed peasants bound to feudal masters, of a new life, and new hope, and new opportunities in Hungary.  Wherever, that was.  They could buy land of their own.  They would not have to pay taxes for a given period of time. There was less annual free labour owed to their landlords.  And there was so much more. All of the handouts told the same story, “Go east young man!”  And the way to go was down the Danube River.  That is how we became the Danube Swabians:  The Children of the Danube.