Archive for the ‘slovenia’ Category
The Austro-Hungarian, or Habsburg, Empire, also known as the Dual Monarchy, collapsed and fractured during WW1 and new nation states emerged from its ruins, including of course the modest Central European state of Austria itself.
It is difficult to argue against today’s received opinion that empires are bad things and that it is wrong for one people to rule over another. In practice, though, the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire was largely benign. It is true that from time and time, and perhaps particularly although by no means exclusively in areas under Hungarian rule, emerging nationalisms were suppressed; sometimes this was by show of force, but by the late 19th century the Empire had become largely a bureaucratic organism.
The great elegist of the Empire, Joseph Roth, does not attribute the collapse of Austro-Hungary to the rise of Yugoslav and Romanian and Czechoslovak nationalism, but to the overweening pan-Germanic nationalism which was to have such devastating consequences for Europe.
In his 1938 novel The Emperor’s Tomb (translated by John Hoare, pub Granta, 1999), the character Count Chojnicki — a cipher for Roth himself — prophesied before the outbreak of WW1 that “Austria will perish at the hands of the Nibelungen fantasy”1. “It is the Slovenes, the Poles and Galicians from Ruthenia, the kaftan-clad Jews from Boryslaw2, the horse traders from the Bacska3, the Moslems from Sarajevo, the chestnut roasters from Mostar who sing our national anthem “Gott Erhalte”, while the Germans in the Empire sing German martial and chauvinist tunes. Similarly, the narrator and protagonist, Trotta, writes of the “tragic love which the Crown Lands4 bore to Austria”:
“The gypsies of the Puszta5, the Huzulen6 of Subcarpathia, the Jewish coachmen of Galicia, my own kin the Slovene chestnut roasters of Sipolje, the Swabian7 tobacco growers from the Bacska, the horse breeders of the Steppes, the Osman Sibersna8, the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the horse traders from the Hanakei9 in Moravia, the weavers from the Erzgebirge10, the millers and coral dealers of Podolia11: all these were the open-handed providers of Austria.”
After WW1, reflecting on the demise of Austro-Hungary and the mediocrity to which defeated Austria had sunk, Chojnicki bemoans “the fatheads from the Alps and the Sudeten Germans, those cretinous Nibelungen… It was not our Czechs, our Poles, or Ruthenians who betrayed us, but the Germans, only the Germans, at our very heart.”
- Nibelungen: mythological nonsense popularised by Wagner
- Boryslaw: Boryslav, a small town now in Ukraine
- Bacska: properly Bačka, a region now largely in northern Serbia
- Crownlands: provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
- Puszta: the steppes of the Alföld, the great Hungarian plain
- Huzulen: the Hutsuls, a Ruthenian or western Ukrainian people
- Swabian: 18th century German settlers in the Banat in northern Serbia and adjacent Romania
- Osman Sibersna: a phrase not properly translated into English from the original German language die osmanische Sibersna but presumably referring to Ottomans of Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Hanakei: the Moravian people of the Haná region around the town of Olomouc, Czech Republic
- Erzgebirg: the Krušné Hory mountain range, also now in the Czech Republic
- Podolia: here western Podolia is meant, being the region around the city of Ternopil‘, now in Ukraine
When researching Croatian family history in Istria, one should not be surprised to find that names, both Christian names and surnames, do not appear in their expected forms. Just as in the diaspora a name may be changed to make it more pronounceable to an English speaker or to be typed on an English-language keyboard lacking the diacritical marks of Croat (so that Babić becomes Babich or Babitch, and Blažević becomes Blazhevich), so names were changed in Istria under Italian and earlier under Austro-Hungarian rule. The difference is that, under Italian rule, such changes were not always made voluntarily by the subject but imposed upon him or her by the state or the church.
The Italians occupied Istria in November 1918 and within a few years had started to suppress Croatian (and of course Slovenian) national culture. In October 1919, religious education in Croat was forbidden in schools and measures begun to encourage parish priests to use Italian rather than the local vernacular in church services. In October 1923 a diktat was issued closing all Croat-language schools; they could only re-open if education was conducted in Italian. In January 1929, Croat-language newspapers were shut down. Most pertinently for our purposes, in November 1928 parents were forbidden to baptise their children using Slavic names, so in baptism registers from that date one should expect to see only Italian equivalents of Slavic names (unless the local priest defied the ruling). From April 1927, surnames, especially those which Italians regarded as having Italian or Latin roots, or claimed to have been translated from Italian and given Slavic suffixes, were to be italianised as well, so that Babić might become Babicci, and Horvat became Crevato. In April 1936 an official publication was issued prescribing the way in which names should be changed.
These are but the legal manifestations of the pervasive creeping suppression of Croatian nationality in Istria during the inter-War period of Italian rule. Of course, some Croatians emigrated to the new Yugoslavia or to America, while a minority consciously opted for Italian culture. It can be expected that most, especially away from the larger towns, simply wanted to be able to get on with their lives and lived quietly, passively accepting the italianisation of the external forms around them and keeping their essential Croatian national identity intact. Those in positions of authority – such as teachers and priests – doubtless tried to continue using Croat where they could but switched to Italian if they had to. Roman Catholic parish registers – the baptism, marriage and burial registers – and the wonderfully informative status animarum documents, encapsulating a wealth of information about a family, usually evidence the pressure to italianise, and you should expect to see Italian spellings of names. However, this was seldom standardised, so that a single family surname can be rendered in different ways at different times. This demands constant alertness on behalf of genealogists, especially when surnames showed more significant alteration than a tinkering with the surname suffix. For example, one can expect a Croatian surname beginning with a K to be changed to a C, a name beginning with a Cu or a Ču sometimes changing to a Z depending on the spelling convention required when writing it in Italian, a name starting with Krm- or Krt- acquiring a vowel, and so on.
If you have roots in Istria and are interested in knowing more about your Croatian family history and ancestry, please contact us and we would be happy to provide you with an assessment of the research that can be done and an estimate of costs.
What is today the Croatian coast was the site of much controversy in the early 20th century, as Italy sought at various dates and under various pretences to claim it as part of the Italian state.
It is true that Italians lived in some numbers around the Istrian peninsula and along the Croatian littoral and the Dalmatian coast to the Bay of Kotor towards Albania. However, with a few exceptions, these were isolated coastal pockets in an otherwise Slavic country. For example, the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s 1910 census statistics show Italians forming a significant component of the population in Rijeka and Zadar but nowhere in the surrounding hinterland. Moreover, it seems that among those counted as Italians were what were known locally as talijanaši, those urban and more bourgeois Croatians with Italian leanings but with clearly Slavic names and antecedents. Many Croatians in Istria and ports such as Rijeka and Zadar spoke Italian, of course, with varying degrees of fluency, so as to be able to communicate with their neighbours in these ethnically mixed regions. However, some Croats also aspired to Italian culture and/or saw the use of the Italian language as a route to social mobility and prosperity during the years of the long 19th century, during which Hungarian domination suppressed the Croatian language and education and favoured the Italians. These were the talijanaši.
Despite there being an Italian majority in only some of the larger towns of the western seaboard of Istria, from Koper round to Pula, all of the peninsula was awarded to Italy following the carve-up of Austro-Hungary after WW1 and the region did not become part of Yugoslavia till after WW2. The change of state control in Istria of course affected the demographics, as Croatians and Slovenians emigrated during the times of Italian control, while Italians left (en masse, in certain instances, as from Pula) when it became clear that Yugoslavia would govern the peninsula from 1947. Notwithstanding this, Istria is still an unusually diverse region of Europe, with a regional identity strong enough for a proportion of the population to describe themselves as Istrians first and foremost. And, of course, now that Yugoslavia and communism have been dismantled and Croatia’s candidacy for membership of the European Union, there is again a renewed Italian influence along the coast, with investment and property development.
Croatia is a European tourist destination which isn’t yet blessed with a great many British visitors. The general British public prefers to holiday in places where it may enjoy all the delights of home – fish and chips, pubs, fine English conversation – with extra sun. Hence the enduring popularity of the well-worn British package tourist destinations in, for example, Spain and Greece. This is not to single out the British: think of the wonderful concept of the Accidental Tourist range of books envisaged by novelist Anne Tyler in The Accidental Tourist, in which the male protagonist Macon creates travel books which guide American travellers to those places, hotels and restaurants abroad which approximate closest to the comforts of home, and expose them least to the disconcertingly alien.
Over the last few years, however, Croatia has been fast emerging as a destination of choice for British who read broadsheet newspapers and who, for example, enjoy the idea of island-hopping, and have the means to do it; or are fascinated with the historical palimpsest which is Split, or the breathtaking beauty of Dubrovnik, or the notion of slowly touring the long Adriatic coast. Of course, tourists focus primarily on Dalmatia and Istria, and few spend much time in the Croatian heartlands around Zagreb, let alone venture into Slavonia.
The British, as often, are latecomers to Croatia. Our northern and central European cousins wised up earlier. And, of course, the history of holidaying in what is today Croatia has a far longer history than that which has largely developed post-WW2 and especially post-1991 Independence.
One of the first places to attract visitors was Opatija, which like the remainder of Croatia, enjoyed, to varying degrees, being part of the big, baggy Habsburg or Austro-Hungarian multi-ethnic empire. In the late 19th century, Opatija was usually known by its Italian name Abbazia. The two names are translations of one another: both mean simply Abbey (just as Croat Rijeka and Italian Fiume further round the bay both mean River). Opatija came alive during an earlier period of enhanced freedom of and possibilities for travel for those with sufficient resources. Just as today tourists take advantage of cheap flights and discounted package holidays, so in the 19th century a more limited demographic began to travel for leisure, as well as for business or looking for employment, with the advent and spread of the railways. The development of regional railways, and the promotion in tandem of the Adriatic coast as a tourist destination within Austro-Hungary, was what made Opatija possible as a resort. In its pre-WW1 heyday it was not just a resort, but the resort of choice for the fashionable and wealthy of the empire.
Of course, for every Austrian prince or Hungarian noble in Opatija before the Great War, there were many locals who lived and worked rather than played in the town. Opatija is situated on the edge of the Istrian peninsula, which has always had a mixed population of Croats, Italians, Slovenes and others. In this part of Istria, Croats predominated, although, as well as established native Italians, new Italian settlers arrived following Italy’s 1918 annexation and subsequent occupation of Istria until WW2.
Political and military events had their usual impact on the lives of the common people. Before WW1, locals had emigrated from Istria mostly for the usual push and pull reasons: lack of opportunities, or poverty, or pressure on land in the home country, and the draw of a new life and economic possibility in a remote destination such as USA. Of course, even during the 19th century some Croats and Slovenes left their homelands for political reasons, preferring exile to living under Hungarian domination. However, the political dimension to emigration intensified in the 20th century. Under Italian rule and especially Fascist Italian repression, many Croats emigrated; then, following the welcome defeat of Italy in WW2, many Italians, of both long-established and recently settled families, left rather than live within Yugoslavia and under its nascent Communist government.
Undertaking family history in Istria can be complicated for these reasons. In addition, the population, as well as their places of habitation, often had two or more names to suit the occasion and the individual or institution with which they were communicating. Many people were bilingual or even trilingual, able to converse and conduct business in Croat, Italian and/or Slovenian; often, if not entirely fluently, in all three languages. Naturally, the more educated classes during the long years of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy may well have been fluent in Hungarian and/or German as well.
Bluebird Research has tried and tested local research partners in Croatia and would be delighted to assist you with research in Istria or elsewhere in the country. For an assessment, please e-mail or snail-mail us using the contact details on the contact bluebird page.