Archive for May, 2010
Ismail Kadare is the only Albanian writer even modestly known in Western Europe. In English, his works tend to reach us through a French translation, meaning that the English translation is another step removed from the original. Doubtless much is lost in the double-translation, including much of the poetry and many of the nuances of the original; however, enough is retained for a reader to be confident that Kadare is a great writer.
Agamemnon’s Daughter is a collection of three short stories. The edition most easily obtained in UK — David Bellos’s translation published by Canongate — is an example of the English language version being a translation from the French. In the second story, “The Blinding Order”, Kadare writes in passing about a pattern in some Albanian families, especially those of some influence within the Ottoman Empire (in which Albanians often occupied high ranks in the army and civil service). His comments may shed light on some of the complexities of Albanian family history research. The subject is a young woman engaged to be married.
“… the family of her future husband, like many households of Albanian descent, had maintained over the generations the custom of including within its bosom members of different, that is to say opposite, faiths. Her [future] father-in-law Aleks Ura, was a Christian, but one of his sons, who had gone into the navy, had been brought up a Muslim; whereas the other, her future husband, remained a Christian…. the brothers of Aleks had followed two different faiths, and… their forebears and ancestors had always done the same… [She herself] had been given “two first names, each from a different religion. So for her first family and close friends she was Marie; for the rest of the world, including her fiancé, she was Miriam.”
The purpose behind the split faith families is protective and pragmatic. During times of religious conflict or repression, one branch of the family may be able to protect and shelter the other of the different confession; even if they cannot, one line of the family should be able to survive to produce future generations.
Hungary became an equal partner with Austria in the Dual Monarchy following the 1867 Ausgleich, or compromise. Ironically, Hungary, which had been struggling for national self-determination and parity of recognition, then pursued policies which, in trying to consolidate its own nation state, failed to recognise properly the rights of the national minorities within its borders.
A policy of magyarisation was pursued vigorously, with view to welding all regions and peoples into a single nation state, as had been achieved in, for example, France. However, unlike France, Hungary contained within its border almost entire nations, such as the Croat and Slovak, and very significant populations of, for example, Romanians and Serbs living in regions very sparsely populated by Hungarians. The magyarisation project was therefore a doomed enterprise and its measures – for instance, to make Hungarian the exclusive official language of state and the language of instruction in schools, with church services to be held and parish registers kept in Hungarian – quickly aroused resentment and opposition.
The pressure upon non-Magyar Hungarian subjects to assimilate included pressure to change patently non-Hungarian or insufficiently Hungarian surnames. The legal process of change of name was simplified to the submitting of a petition. The fee was reduced from 5 forint to 50 krajcár (half a forint), meaning that poverty could not be pleaded as a good reason to retain one’s true name. These cheap “shilling names” were adopted by many among the professional and business classes. Robert Seton-Walsh, writing in his Racial Problems In Hungary of 1908, states that the “demoralising custom” of change of name “has played havoc with the family history of the Hungarian middle classes; and few countries will supply such a puzzle to the genealogist of the twenty-second century”.
Among the examples he gives:
the Oriental scholar Hermann Bamberger taking the name Ármin Vámbéry; the banker Eierstock taking the name Tőkőlyi; the historian Frankl taking the name Vilmos Fraknói; the ethnologist Hundsdorfer taking the name János Hunfalvy; the painter Lieb taking the name Mihály Munkácsy; the banker Löwenmuth taking the name Báthori; the poet Petrović taking the name Sándor Petőfi; the literary critic Franz Schedel taking the name Ferenc Toldy; and the politician Weinberger taking the name Soma Visontai.
The campaign intensified and was particularly directed at those in official positions, such as local authority civil servants, school teachers, railway employees and post office staff, with a clear implication that those not complying could at the very least not expect promotion within the service. Seton-Walsh also cites a document issued by the Royal Inspector of Schools showing exemplary official changes of name among teachers in Bihar county in 1881, designed to encourage colleagues to follow suit:
August Bruckenthal of Haimagi taking the name Bihari John Modora of Olosig (known as Érolaszi in Hungarian) taking the name Tinodi Nicholas Radovich of Cuzap (Középes in Hungarian) taking the name Keti
Urban German and Jewish Hungarians – who of course were not pushing for their own independent nation state as the Croats and Slovaks were – assimilated more readily than the rural populations of Romanians and Slavs and those family historians with German and Jewish roots from Hungary should be alert to the possibility of a change of name in the nineteenth century whenever research results are not achieved under the expected family name. However, anyone with ancestors from Hungary should be mindful of the change of name campaigns and their possible impact upon their family history research.
Bluebird Research offers professional family history research across Ukraine, including:
- officially recognised Displaced Persons who were resettled from Europe after World War Two
- former members of the Galizien (Halychyna) Division and Ukrainian National Army, many of whom were settled in Britain after the end of WW2
- western Ukrainian (Galician) Greek Catholic, Lemko, Boyko, Hutsul and Roman Catholic (latynnyky) emigrants to North America, especially the waves of Canadian immigrants from 1891 to 1914 and from 1920 to 1939
- families with roots in Kyiv and in Left-Bank Ukraine
- German ancestors from Black Sea, Gluckstal, northern Bukovina, Volhynia etc
- Hungarian families from Transcarpathian Ruthenia (part of Czechoslovakia between the Wars) now Zakarpats’ka oblast’
- Jewish communities from across Ukraine including Galicia, Podolia and Volhynia
- Polish families from western Ukraine (Małopolska Wschodnia: the former województwo lwowskie, stanisławowkie, and tarnopolskie)
For an opinion or estimate of costs for research in any area of Ukraine or any speciality, please feel free to contact us.
On the third of the three legs of the Halkidiki in Greece is Mount Athos, which is the Autonomous Monastic State of the Holy Mountain (Agion Oros).
Lay persons reside almost entirely at Karyés and Dafni; elsewhere on the peninsula only Eastern Orthodox monks live. Although all monks in residence become Greek citizens, and nowadays most of the 2,000 residents are of course ethnically Greek, the monasteries of Mount Athos have always had an international flavour, being one of the great centres of learning in the Orthodox world. Zografou Monastery is Bulgarian; Iviron Monastery is Georgian; Agiou Panteleimonos (or Rossikon) is a Russian monastery and Hilandariou Monastery is Serbian.
Mount Athos is self-governing and a special visa called a diamonētērion is required to visit. Women visitors are generally forbidden, although various of the monasteries have sheltered female refugees in times of crisis, including Jewish families during the Nazi occupation of Greece in WW2.
Athos is also one of the seats of Old Calendarism in Greece. The Greek state abandoned the old style Julian Calendar for the new style Gregorian Calendar in February 1923 and the Church of Greece followed suit, not without some controversy, in March 1924, so that 10th March became 23rd March that year (the old style calendar having slipped 13 days behind by the 20th Century). However, elements of the Greek Orthodox church refused to accept this change and continued to live by the old style calendar. They became known as Palaioimerologitai, or Old Calendarists, sometimes calling themselves, somewhat provocatively, the True Orthodox Christians. The number of Old Calendarists in Greece is not known but is thought to be up to one million, with concentrations in Athens and Attica, with Mount Athos supplying spiritual leadership. The Old Calendarists have endured some discrimination over the years; for instance, the Greek state did not recognise Old Calendarist marriages until as recently as 1969.
The Bunjevci do not feature much in Western commentaries on the complexities and controversies of the former Yugoslavia, which is complicated enough in ethnic and religious terms for most observers without going into granular detail.
Sometimes they are described as “Roman Catholic Serbs”, on the grounds that they are Catholic and (mostly) live within the borders of Serbia. However, most of the Bunjevci do not consider themselves to be ethnically Serbian. Because of their affiliation to Catholicism, over time a considerable number have come or been encouraged to think of themselves as Croats. However, a significant proportion of the people regard themselves simply as Bunjevci, a Slavic tribe with roots in Herzegovina who, some time in the 16th or 17th centuries, relocated to the Bačka region of Serbia (the land between the Dunav – or “Danube” – and Tisa rivers in the northern province of Vojvodina) and adjoining Hungary.
Today they form a minority population in the Serbian municipality of Subotica, especially around the village of Ljutovo and nearby Tavankut and Mala Bosna (“little Bosnia”). The villages sit in a wide open flat agricultural landscape under a massive sky with distant horizons. These villages are typical of those of Vojvodina – linear, built around a wide central road, which the traditionally low, well-spaced houses face narrow end on, with maybe an ancient stork’s nest on its traditional telegraph pole. In the yards there is likely to be an ambar, an open drying shed for maize cobs, or a hay rick, or maybe a small old tractor or an ancient bicycle. The villages have at least two names each: for example, Ljutovo is also known as Mérges in Hungarian. At either end of the village, there will be a yellow “city limits” road sign, giving the village name in Serbian in both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts and in Hungarian.
Towards the close of the nineteenth century, Bosnia and Hercegovina were theoretically Ottoman territories administered by the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, which effectively annexed and occupied them in 1878.
A contemporary traveller wrote of the region as follows:
“The population consists of Mohammedan Beys, being Servians [Serbians] who adopted Islam to acquire or preserve a privileged position, and a Christian peasantry, almost exclusively Orthodox in Bosnia, but partly Catholic in the Herzegovina. Sometimes a family divided itself between Christianity and Islam so as to have friends on the right side whatever happened. In such case the members of the family recognise each other as relatives but generally use different names for the two branches conveying the same meaning in Slavonic [Serbo-Croat] and Turkish respectively – e.g. Raikovich and Jenetich (Rai and Jennet meaning “paradise”), Sokolich and Shahinagich (Sokol and Shahin both meaning “falcon”).”
(Odysseus, Turkey in Europe, Edward Arnold, 1900)
He then added in a footnote:
“It is often curious to observe the genesis of family names among the Southern Slavs. Most of them are very recent. Thus in one case the grandfather kept a tavern and was known by the Turks simply as Sharabji, “the wine man”. The son thought that the rising fortunes of the house required a family name and by adding a Slavonic affix to the Turkish designation became Sharabjieff or Šarabdžiev. The grandson who lived in days when Turkish words were considered barbaric and unpatriotic substituted for Sharabji the Bulgarian equivalent Vinar and became Vinarov. In many parts of Bulgaria a man and his wife still use different family names.”
Of course, these observations were made by an English-speaking Western traveller trying to understand the alien local societies and cultures with only the most limited language, reading and experience available to him. Nevertheless, it is always good to be reminded that family history research in South-Eastern Europe has such complexities, both so as to manage one’s own expectations and to remain alert to the need to be agile in one’s thinking when approaching research problems.