Archive for September, 2011
The Banat is one of the regions of Europe known as contact zones, where peoples of different ethnicity, religion and language co-existed, and to an extent still co-exist – sometimes harmoniously, sometimes uneasily, as is the case the world over.
Imagined as a Venn diagram, the Banat is perhaps a natural intersection for the Serbs to the west (who had pushed north to escape the Ottomans) and the Romanians to the east. However, there is also an artificial historical factor, caused by the ruling Habsburgs’ intervention and planned settlement of the land in the 18th century and more natural immigration of Imperial subjects in the 19th century. The majority of these were German speakers – they became known as Swabians, although Swabia was only one of various German regions from which they came. In addition to the Germans, the Banat received, among others, Bulgarian, Croat, Czech, French, Hungarian, Italian, Slovak, Spanish, Swiss and Ukrainian settlers – mostly but not exclusively Catholics (there were also Protestants of different persuasions, among them again many German settlers). And further broadening the mix of peoples in the area were Jewish merchants and professionals, Austrian civil servants, and Gypsy (locally Tsigani or Ţigani) settlements.
Resources and professional genealogical research services for those with German Banater ancestry are well-established. In the wake of WW2, rightly or wrongly, the Germans in Yugoslavia and Romania became persona non grata. The descendants of the Banat Germans now live in Germany, in Canada, in USA and elsewhere and, like all displaced and diaspora peoples, show a keen interest in their roots (roots which, of course, pass through the rich black soil of the Banat and extend beyond it to Baden and Lorraine, Westfalen and Württemberg).
However, Bluebird Research, as well as undertaking German genealogy in Serbia and Romania, can assist with your genealogical research in the Banat whatever the nationality or religion of your ancestors. We work in both Romania and Serbia; we are just as interested in the cultural and social history of the Hungarians and the Slovaks of the Banat; we have a special interest in the Jewish communities, now mostly lost; and in the Serbian Orthodox families, many of which can trace their histories back to “continental” Serbia (for instance to Šumadija), or to Herzegovina, or to Montenegro.
If you have ancestors from the Banat, and would like professional assistance with your family history research, please get in touch with us for a free assessment and estimate of costs. Research is affordable and success rates are generally high.
Montenegro, Crna Gora, may well be the most beautiful land in Europe. Everywhere you encounter startling and dramatic natural landscapes. Furthermore, with the exception of certain stretches of coastline which have been despoiled by development – by ugly and insensitive recent hotel and villa building – and the sprawl around the capital Podgorica (late Titograd), the built environment is of great attractiveness and interest.
A journey south-eastwards on the southern side of Lake Skadar is a lovely illustration of this. As you leave the lakeside village of Virpazar where the Crnojević river enters the lake, the road starts to ascend and wind its way slowly up the mountainside; these hairpin bends continue as the narrow road pursues its path high above the lake through rocky terrain and ancient chestnut forests towards the Albanian border.
From the start one can see the old Serbian Orthodox monasteries on the islands which dot the lake margin on this side – Manastir Starčevo, Beška, Moračnik. The siting of monasteries on these rocky outcrops would have served two purposes – both a spiritual retreat from the secular world, and a hope of protection from the periodic threat of the Turks. Tiny single-cell Orthodox or Catholic churches are to be found around the Montenegrin villages on this side of the lake, frequently planted on the tops of peaks or in otherwise seemingly barely accessible defensive and visually arresting positions – every one demands a photograph. As you continue south-eastwards, in the distance across the lake on the Albanian side one can see the city of Shkodër, while here in Montenegro churches start to be interspersed with the modest mosques and delicate white minarets of the local Albanians; soon, these start to be preponderant. The villages of the Rumija mountains that overlook the stillness of Skadar Lake are little more than hamlets, yet each one, Christian or Muslim, has its own rightness and sense of belonging to the landscape.
It is with disappointment that the journey ends; a viewpoint is reached near the international border with Albania, after which the road turns sharply back on itself and heads inland towards Vladimir and ultimately the port of Ulcinj.
The modest population of this corner of Europe has survived the centuries in situ, eking out a slight existence and a still essentially unchanged way of life, despite the modern horrors of politics and nationalism. Some villagers will have made their way out, maybe to other parts of the former Yugoslavia, or across the border into Albania, or to find work in Germany, or perhaps even to USA. Bluebird Research can undertake professional family history research across Montenegro but, if we are honest, we do not expect ever to have a case from Rumija and perhaps that is how it should be.
Bosnia and Herzegovina – BiH – is one of the few remaining places in Europe which are uncharted and unfamiliar to family historians in diaspora. It is also little travelled by tourists, at least beyond Sarajevo and Mostar and the important Catholic pilgrimage site at Međugorje. Visually the country is immensely stimulating but not immediately understood – it takes a few days to gather and process impressions and thoughts and make some sense of what you are experiencing.
Earlier this month I travelled from the Montenegro border crossing at Šćepan Polje, via Brod, Kiseljak and Vitez to Travnik, then back east through Zenica, Visoko, Sarajevo, Rogatica, Višegrad and beyond to the Serbian border at Kotroman. The most striking visual element is of course the prominence in the landscape of mosques (or džamije in what some guidebooks now euphemistically call “the local language”) and Muslim cemeteries. The latter are often sited on hillsides. The slim white grave-markers or nišani are elegant and, while many are simple and unadorned, others may be topped with a stylised representation of a turban or some other symbol such as a coffee pot. Islam requires prompt burial of the deceased and four or five sample grave-markers often lean together outside the cemetery ready to be purchased and put to use. The clusters of sleek gravestones reminded the childhood reader in me of the Hattifnattar in Tove Janson’s Moomin books.
The country is now divided into different entities, with Republika Srpska largely Serbian and the Federation segmented into a number of different cantons which are predominantly Croat and/or Bosniak (or Bošnjak – as most Bosnian Muslims prefer to be known since the War). However, it is incorrect to think of the country as having been neatly partitioned along religious or ethnic lines, and there is still much more mixing of population than media reports tend to suggest. The notion of cantons has been foisted upon Bosnia as if this borrowing from Switzerland could magic up the many privileges of the Swiss with their Catholic and Protestant religious, and French, German, Italian and Romansh language, harmonies, and their laissez-faire affluent burgher lifestyles. Reality in Bosnia is more complicated and not amenable to facile solutions imposed from outside.
But there is of course much ongoing outside influence. In predominantly Bosniak towns, the flow of money from Turkey and Saudi Arabia is apparent in the form of banks, airline advertisements, and investment in new mosques and medresas. Bosniaks have become re-Islamicised; or, rather, the young are embracing a Muslim identity that would have been foreign to the majority of their parents, grandparents and great grandparents in Tito’s Yugoslavia and even before WW2.
Meanwhile, in most towns in Bosnia the locals seem to have arrived at a pragmatic accommodation with one another’s faiths and nationalities. Mixed marriages were common throughout the former Yugoslavia and the bigger the town the larger their proportion. In the small town of Vitez, the population of which is roughly evenly balanced between Croats and Bosniaks, I ate lunch at the home of a Croat who had married a Slovenian and whose half-Russian aunt had married a Serb. This is the complex reality of Yugoslavia then and of BiH still.
The prospects for genealogical research in Bosnia and Hercegovina vary by place. If records survive, and were not destroyed during the various conflicts of the 20th century, it is usually possible to research Bosnian genealogies if one’s ancestors were Croats, Serbs, Sephardic Jews or, for that matter, Austrian Germans or other Imperial staff resident in Bosnia-Hercegovina during the period of Austro-Hungarian rule. The situation with respect to Bosnian Muslim ancestry is less straightforward, while Gypsy family history is regarded as all but impossible – registration of vital events by Gypsies was rare before the mid- or late 20th century and is unlikely to be complete even today.
Bluebird Research may be able to help you if you are in need of professional assistance with your family history research in Bosnia and is always pleased to hear from those investigating their ancestry in Bosnia. Please feel free to contact us for advice or an opinion on the prospects of success and the likely costs of research.
Sasun (also Sasoun or Sassoun) is both a village and the name of the eponymous district in Western Armenia, now Sason in Turkey. Like the surrounding region of the Ottoman Empire – the Anatolian towns of Bitlis, Diyarbakir and Mush – it was ethnically cleansed and systematically depopulated of its Armenians by the Turkish state forces and irregulars. Massacres occurred during 1893/94 and its aftermath, and again in 1904, before the 1915 Genocide and the Great War finally eliminated the Armenians from the land.
Those local Armenians, or Sasuntsis, who were not killed or converted under duress to Islam, went into hiding or fled Turkey. In 1917/18, many of the remaining local families accompanied the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Turkey, some not simply crossing the Russian border but continuing refugee journeys on to Tiflis, to Vladikavkas and to Armavir (the Russian town near Krasnodar which had been founded by Cherkesogai Armenians in the early 19th century). Their descendants are now either in diaspora (for instance, in Russia or having left via Batumi or some other Black Sea port for America) or in the modern Republic of Armenia. In Armenia, they settled especially in villages in the Talin area of Aragatsotn province – places such as Mastara, Nerkin Sasunashen and Shgharshik.
What this small story illustrates is that while it is true that few Armenians in the English-speaking diaspora have roots (= ancestors born) within the current borders of Armenia, it is likely that a significant number have distant relatives living there today. These kin – cousins two or three or more times removed – will be either the descendants of Armenians who fled Turkey directly into Russian Armenia, or returnees (hayrenadarts). Returnees or repatriates are Armenians who emigrated to Soviet Armenia, usually not having been born in the territory, so that the return or repatriation is emotional rather than literal. They came at various times but especially in 1931-33 and again during the 1946-48 Nerkaght or Homecoming. Most had been born, or would have had parents born, in Ottoman Turkey but they came to Soviet Armenia from Cyprus, Egypt, Iran and Syria and also from further afield, from France and Greece and America. Many, especially those tempted by Soviet propaganda, may have been disappointed with conditions upon arrival in Armenia but nevertheless made a life in their adopted homeland.
This week the family history website Find My Past has published the central index to the register of merchant seamen on British vessels. The original record series was created by the then Registrar General of Shipping and Seaman (part of the Board of Trade). It is now held on microfiche at The National Archives in Kew, England and can be seen under shelf references BT348, BT349 and BT350.
The resource takes the shape of record cards which form a central index to seamen registered to serve on British-registered vessels within the period from approximately 1918 to 1941.
What makes the Central Index Register cards interesting from an Eastern European genealogical research perspective is that many of those employed in the British merchant navy were engaged at overseas ports. For example, there are large numbers of records relating to Estonian, Greek and Latvian sailors. Additionally, there are smaller but still significant quantities of seamen from Cyprus, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine and the former Yugoslavia, and even some from landlocked Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Some of these men may have settled and even become naturalised in Britain but presumably a majority remained citizens or subjects of their country of birth.
The front and back of each index card have been scanned and an online index published so that the records of individual merchant marines can be searched for and located. Two, three or more cards of different dates exist for some individuals.
The cards evolved a little over time, from CR1 to CR2 to CR10 types, and the details recorded changed too. However, the basic format remains the same, as does the core detail of name, year and place of birth, rating, Discharge A Number, ship name and/or official registered number, and date. Some cards give physical descriptions, while others sport a black and white passport-style photograph and signature.
The data is handwritten onto the printed index cards. The handwriting is not always legible and may be faint or contain abbreviations. The place of birth information on the cards will reflect the date at which they were created and the spellings current at that time, sometimes anglicised or misspelt. For example, the Estonian islands of Hiiumaa and Saaremaa often appear as Dagö and Ösel respectively (typically minus their diacritics), being their old Swedish names, and similarly the Saaremaa capital Kuressaare is often given as Arensburg.
This online collection is not a complete record of those sailing on British merchant vessels between the Wars. The majority of cards dating from 1913 to 1921 are known to have been destroyed in 1969. Moreover, a fourth record series at The National Archives (shelf reference BT364) is not being published, on account of data protection and personal privacy concerns. The series BT364 also covers the period 1921 to 1941 and was extracted from the materials that now comprise BT348 to BT350 inclusive. It remains possible that this series, which has also been scanned and indexed, may be released too in due course.
A final note: while some of the individuals contained within these records will have seen service additionally in the Royal Navy at some date, it must be emphasised that the majority would have served only on British merchant vessels and were not in the armed forces.