Gábor Koloh
Hungarian Agricultural Museum
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Endrőd is a village in Békés County along the Körös River. A census taken by the local church administration presents the composition of 663 household from 1835. From the perspective of household structure studies, this source is unique in length, age, and complexity. Furthermore, cholera destroyed the settlement the year before and after the census was taken. The census and parish registers offer sources on which one can study the impact of the epidemic on households. The tax register from 1834/1835 allows for the classification of family heads into tax categories, so we can extend the test to the relationship between financial background and mortality rate. This multivariate analysis uses the sources and methods used in epidemic history, social history, and historical demography.

Keywords: cholera, historical demography, tax registers 1834/35, mortality and welfare, spatial patterns

While browsing the archives of the parish of Endrőd, I came across a parish family book (“register of souls”) dated 1835, the first page of which (after the cover decorated with floral patterns) bore the title Az Endrődi Hivek Összeirása 1835ik Esztendötöl Kezdve G[öndöcs] J[ózsef káplán] (“Register of the Believers of Endrőd as of 1835 A.D. [Chaplain] J[ózsef] G[öndöcs].”

Endrőd today forms part of the town of Gyomaendrőd in southeastern Hungary on the banks of the Körös River. According to András Vályi’s description, it is a “Hungarian village in Békés County, the lord of the manor is Baron Harucher, the inhabitants are Catholic, situated near Gyoma and Ötsöd, belonging to the estate of Gyula, its arable lands are mostly good, meadows similarly, pasture is suitable for cattle of several herds, though some parts of its arable lands are flooded and some parts are nitrous, few woods and reeds, mill is negligible, marketplace is second-class due to its distance.”1 It would require a separate analysis to determine what Vályi meant precisely by “Hungarian village.” In fact, Johann Georg Harruckern, council member of the Hofkammer (the Exchequer of the Habsburg Empire), who received the settlement as part of the estate of Gyula, settled Hungarians and Slavs here in the 1720s and 1730s, mainly from the north of the Kingdom of Hungary, but following the initial period, during the work of parish priest Sámuel Pálfy (1772–1780), celebration of the mass in Slavic languages stopped,2 and as Elek Fényes put it in the mid-nineteenth century, “Slovaks also came, but they have now become entirely monolingual Hungarian.”3 In Fényes’s description, the arable lands are not only “mostly good,” but “they have such fertile, black clay soil mixed with sand that its winter wheat produces 15 seeds and its spring wheat produces 20.”4 Almost all (according to Fényes, 98 percent) of the inhabitants were Roman Catholic. The lord of the manor in the period under examination was baron Flórián Drechsel’s wife, Countess Karolina Stockhammer of the naturalized Stockhammer family.5 Regarding its geographical location, the village is a blank spot for analyses from the perspective of household structure, historical demography, or a deeper social history; only local ethnographic research has produced some serious results.6

The scholarship on household structure is “confusingly rich,”7 so I can present here only a very brief overview. In his book Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen 1700–1870, which was published in 1990, David Warren Sabean outlined the following evolution of household structure research: he named Frédéric Le Play and Wilhelm Riehl as the prominent representatives of the first generation of researchers in the field.8 Although the closely related Hungarian literature considers Le Play a sociologist, Sabean emphasizes the ethnographic character (Volskunde) of the research and conclusions of the first generation, where Le Play and Riehl saw the original patriarchal structure of the family9 as a continuous and functional whole with a head and dependent members.10 Le Play defined the stem family (famille-souche, when a married child remains in the parents’ household) and Riehl the enclosed household estate11 (das ganze Haus) as transformations of this patriarchal structure. According to Le Play’s concept, the parent couple lived together with one of their children and his or her family, while the others left the household.12 Sabean regards Karl Bücher as a member of the second generation of researchers. According to Bücher, the basis of the functioning of a household is production and consumption, producing for its own needs, and the family members do not participate in the production of goods. Like Bücher, Alekxander Chayanov, in his analysis of Russian peasant society, also saw the key to the functioning of the household in the close interrelationship of production and consumption.13 The third approach was built on these concepts. It originated in the study of historical demography, mainly in the work of Peter Laslett, who by that time had serious doubts as to the reliability of the widely known concept formulated by Le Play.14

Laslett questioned the “statements regarding the average size and structure of pre-industrial families and households and the historical change they allegedly underwent.”15 He objected to the fact that, although it had not become an exclusively accepted concept (research by Marion Levy explicitly refuted this hypothesis), it still was a recurrent “stereotype to talk about structures consisting of 30–40 members and three to ten families. When, however, historians analyzed the totality of households of a settlement or estate on the basis of surviving census records, it turned out that in reality, most peasant households were significantly smaller than this.”16 Laslett et al. conducted research covering England and northwestern Europe in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, which revealed a generally higher rate of nuclear families. Deviating results were found in analyses of family structures in the Balkans, where larger, more complex households occurred relatively often.17 The concept of patriarchal (married sons living in the same household with the parents) and stem family cohabitation was thus refuted, facilitating an understanding of the profound economic and social (including demographic) processes taking place in the nineteenth century. At the same time, Laslett’s typology of household structures and John Hajnal’s typology18 (its excessive complexities notwithstanding) also highlighted the relevance of cultural differences and the composition of the community, even if the acceptance of the role of the latter has now been overshadowed.19 The greatest difficulty faced in the research, hence, lies not in the various concepts, hypotheses, and further research prospects, but rather the lack of usable, reliable, and in particular dynamic sources. Although it is true that a dynamic analysis of the evolution of households would and could be more practical for the purpose of understanding the quality of cohabitation and also more meaningful than the mere exploration of regional samples, unfortunately these kinds of analyses can only be done in exceptional cases. Albeit Chaplain Göndöcs also started the parish family book with high hopes in 1835, by 1836 he mostly had recorded only the births up until that time and the information concerning those who had died of cholera (and not even everyone who belonged to this latter group!), and by 1837 only a small number of new or corrected entries had been added, and none were added in 1838. The national census of 1869 is the nearest in time to this period, but its record sheets have not survived from Endrőd (Mezőberény is the only settlement in the county for which the records survived).20

But this is just, so to speak, one of the basic problems regarding the analysis of households. The relevant literature has been discussing the problems of the term “household” for a long time. Gyula Benda used a succinct and witty definition, so it is worth quoting it in its entirety: “The household, i.e. basically a group people living under the same roof and of the same bread, is both an economic and social basic unit before industrialization. In the case of family estates, which were still dominant in the Early Modern period (whether agricultural or artisan in nature), the unit of production (and thus taxation) is also this cohabiting group. The family and the household are also the basal cell of accumulating and transferring wealth—their characteristics are closely related to the systems of inheritance. Finally, it is also a unit of consumption, everyday life is organized in its context.”21 Tamás Faragó, comparing the definition of the household with the definition of the family, wrote that the “household is different from the family both in its concept, content, organization, and system of activities, particularly in the pre-industrial era. Its members are bound by kinship (consanguinity, affinity, or fictive kinship) and by legal relationships (e.g. servants) and functional ties. Its core is usually but not necessarily a family.”22 Understanding and using the term becomes more difficult when it becomes apparent that households have various structures and different sizes even within individual settlements. In such cases, according to Benda, different models are developed which attempt either to present the different variations in their entirety or to present the shades of the various types through in-depth qualitative research, both on the international and domestic levels.23 The interpretation of the function of the households poses another set of problems. More than half a century ago, József Tamásy regarded them as mere economic communities, while Faragó emphasizes that the household group creates the necessary living conditions and ensures the socialization of new members, providing a material and mental “home space.”24 The more recent research of Péter Őri and Levente Pakot highlights the demographic and economic roles of the household, which are easier to grasp in quantitative terms.25

Tamásy highlighted the cohabitation of Croatian extended families in the eighteenth-century Kingdom of Hungary, where the average number of people in one household was over eight, while in Transylvania, Transdanubia, the Great Hungarian Plain, and the northern region of the country not many more than five people lived in the same household (with only minor differences in the different regions).26 Later domestic macroanalyses confirmed the proportion of households with an average of more than five people from the second half of the eighteenth century to the first decades of the nineteenth. Although the nuclear household could still be regarded as the dominant type, “the proportion of complex (extended and multiple-family) households was not insignificant, and at least in some areas, the majority of the population lived in such types of households type in one or another stage of their lives (...).”27 Furthermore, it is important to note that “households with a great number of people and a complex structure occurred primarily among serf peasantry, and only very rarely among landless layers of society.”28 Even though Faragó emphasizes the lack of sources, he did demonstrate the dynamic transformation of the household structure in the period of more than half a century in question. He concludes that in order to avoid the fragmentation of estates, becoming a landless serf (zsellér), or impoverishment, the proportion of complex households increased between 1787 and 1828, but at the same time, the household structures of different villages show various differences on a regional and ethno-cultural level.29 Micro research both confirmed the above conclusions and may have also refined them with restrictions to local circumstances. Such research includes the study conducted by Andorka and Sándor Balázs-Kovács in Sárpilis, where they repeated the above with respect to the size and composition of the households. Faragó broke down his data according to social strata in his examples from Pest county, but his micro findings verify the nationwide conclusions. The study by Magdolna Balázs and László Katus focusing on Central Transdanubia emphasizes the similarity with the Balkan and eastern household structure, while Gyula Benda’s analysis in Keszthely also establishes the dominance of the nuclear family and the more complex structures observed among farmers, serfs and merchants. Thanks to her sources, Ildikó Husz was able to perform an in-depth analysis of the households of Zsámbék in their dynamics, and she confirmed Faragó’s conclusion regarding the temporary increase in households of a more complex composition, similarly to Balázs Heilig’s analysis in Szőlősardó.30

My source, in the absence of any reference to a higher order, is a “church register of souls,” or a status animarum.31 In the source, the households are not distinguished from one another consistently, which also reinforces the foregoing. At the beginning of the family book, the relationships to the head of the household are accurately described, and later the indication of relations perceived as unambiguous (i.e. children) is omitted. In the second half of the book, even the status of alien persons (mainly servants) is often omitted. The heading of the family book is the following: Háznak a’ száma, Vezeték és Kereszt Nevek, Sorsa, Kora (Eszt., Holn., Nap), Egy Házi Család Száma, Idegen Vallásúak, Észrevételek, or House Number, Family and Given Names, Fate, Age (Year, Month, Day), Number of People in the Household, Foreign Faith, Comments. As regards people who belonged to a so-called foreign faith, József Göndöcs recorded their number but failed to provide more details. Taking house number 9 as an example, we can first see the name of Mihály Bentsik (Fate: Landowner farmer), followed by his wife and daughters, then a female servant. Without any separation, the records continue with György Vaszkó (Fate: tenant) with his wife, daughter, and siblings. This row is then closed by a horizontal line, the Number of People in the Household is 10, then István Bálint (Fate: in the great vineyard) with his wife and two children. The family number thus increases to 14 people. As far as I know, there were no close family relations between Mihály Bentsik and György Vaszkó, but still, the two family heads were not separated from each other in the family book. In another example, in the case of house number 96, tenant Imre Fülöpp starts the row, followed by his wife, then Mihály Denitska, furrier, tenant, and his wife and daughter. The row is separated by a line from István Farkas (Fate: in the great vineyard), his wife, and son. Then, another line separates them from György Batsa, homeowner farmer, and his family, who should have been in the first place according to the generally applied logic of the family book.

If one compares the values of the earlier censuses and our source, although the number of households would probably have approximated the previous values if I had calculated the number of households along the lines drawn by the chaplain, due to the inconsistencies indicated above, it seemed more practical to apply the considerations of Őri and Pakot. While processing and coding the data, I considered one household where even though several family nuclei lived together, it was clear that they were close relatives, and I distinguished them from those in which, though not separated by a line, the tenants, gardeners, servants, and other employees were not relatives, but had a family.32 According to this method, a total of 960 households could be unambiguously distinguished.

Table 2. Average size of households and the number of married men per household, Endrőd, 1835

Source: Believers of Endrőd 1835. GySzIPL

The average size of households in 1835 does not indicate a cardinal deviation from the value of slightly more than five, which is treated as average in the literature. Therefore, the values of Endrőd correspond to the national average, so they (including the number of married men per household) can be considered representative values.

I used the Laslett–Hammel typology to classify the households in which (as seen from Table 3) 65 percent were nuclear households, which fits well in the series of literature refuting the theory of the dominance of stem families. According to the source, in addition to then 25-year-old homeowner farmer, Mátyás Juhász, who was in the lower category of taxpayers with his tax of 3 forints and 5 kreutzer, three widows lived alone: Mrs. István Palócz aged above seventy, Mrs. Mátyás Roncsek nearing her fortieth year of age (Widow Landowner), and Mrs. Mátyás Tímár (aged 22) spent their year of mourning in the period of the family book (October/November 1835).33 Those living in households with no family included János Lábos, the parish priest of Endrőd between 1825 and 1840, the Curator of the Church (caretaker) József Szölösy, and the unmarried manservants working at the slaughterhouse. Lábos’s household included the author of the source, the 28-year-old chaplain József Göndöcs, as well as chaplain János Piringer, the priest’s sister, and two servants. I considered “unclassifiable” the House of the Lord of the Manor, the House of the Village, and the Arany Patkó lodging house, which Göndöcs records as a separate house, even though he also notes that its tenants have been recorded under house no. 2. In the case of another two houses, albeit the Tenants themselves are known, the source only comments on the others that “at this house live a total of ununited Vlachs: 7.” In these cases, the relationships were impossible to explore.

The rate of 19.7 percent of households with multiple families is nearest to the 1808 value of Tiszacsege (18.4 percent), so corresponding to the classification of Faragó with the help of the Laslett–Hammel system, it constituted a temporary group.34 This is worth noting because for Faragó’s group, this temporary nature can be demonstrated in both Calvinist and Roman Catholic settlements, as well as in both Hungarian-speaking and Slovak-speaking settlements, and in this regard, Endrőd has all these attributes. It was predominantly Catholic but with a significant proportion of neighboring Calvinist settlements; it was Hungarian but part of the population was of Slavic origin. The average size of households (obviously) increased with the complexity of the households, and in comparison with the 1869 value, the values of Endrőd (apart from nuclear households) are on average higher by one person.35

Table 4. Breakdown of households according to the gender and age of the household head, Endrőd, 1835

Source: Believers of Endrőd 1835. GySzIPL

If we look at the distribution of household heads according to gender, the dominance of male household heads is apparent. Men aged between 25 and 44 constituted the main body. More than half of all the men belonged to this age group, while this ratio is only 6.4 percent in the case of men above 64. However, only rarely were older men living in the family not the head of the household as well: in all seven such cases, the man (whether he was the household head’s father or other) was 70 years old or older. In the case of women, a greater number in the older age group of 45–64 became household heads upon becoming widows. The age of non-head cohabiting elder women was 65 or higher.

Table 5. Households according to the household head’s gender and the main categories of household structure, Endrőd, 1835

Source: Believers of Endrőd 1835. GySzIPL

The correlations between the household types and the household head’s gender are shown by the percentages in table 4. These indicate that higher rates of men are heads of nuclear and multiple-family households, while women have greater proportions in the other variations. The situation of female household heads belonging to the first type has been discussed above. Households with no family show higher values for women only because of the proportions: this is actually one woman, 23-year-old Ágnes Goda, who lived in a household with her siblings. In the case of households with complex families, we can speak about households in which widows lived together with one or more of their married children and the widow did not transfer the household headship to one of her children. This was the case for Mrs. András Cz. Tóth, the widow of a landowner farmer, who paid taxes on nine acres of arable land, 5.5 acres of meadow and 1.5 acres of vineyard and lived together with her two sons, András (25) and István (20) and their wives and children. Accordingly, the conclusions deriving from the values in the table correspond to the findings of the MOSAIC project.36

Table 6. Household structure according to the age groups of male household heads, Endrőd, 1835

Source: Believers of Endrőd 1835. GySzIPL

The conclusions suggested by the values contained in table 6 also correspond to national trends. Male household heads under 54 years of age dominate in the case of nuclear households, while men in higher age groups are heads of multiple-family households. Those who became household heads young either became heads upon getting married and leaving the parents’ home or inherited the household after their parents had died. They most often were the heads of nuclear households. Less often, if they were not yet married, they lived alone or maybe with other unmarried persons.”37 Aging men, however, lived together with their married child(ren) and their families in increasing proportions.

Table 7. Household structure according to the age groups of female household heads, Endrőd, 1835

Source: Believers of Endrőd 1835. GySzIPL

In accordance with the above, the ratio of female household heads was continuously shifting from the nuclear to the complex household structure over time. In the latter cases, typically the widowed mothers were the heads of the households, so they continued to manage the household after their husbands deaths. The dynamics of change according to age groups can be seen in the case of both the male and female household heads. In Endrőd, too, younger household heads typically managed the simple (nuclear) households, while elders managed the complex households. It was less typical but did occur occasionally that the aged household head passed the management of the household on to one of his or her children.

For the analysis of the distribution of household structures according to social (specifically, social, occupational, and ethnic) strata, I followed the category system derived from the source, with minor simplifications. This resulted in a total of nine social strata (groups). I analyzed the Roma separately, although they primarily belonged to the landless serf (zsellér) or farmhand (béres) categories.

Table 8. Household structures according to the social / occupational situation of the household heads, Endrőd, 1835

Source: Believers of Endrőd 1835. GySzIPL

The results of Table 8 reflect the findings of previous microanalyses and macroanalyses. Typically farming serfs (or “farmers” to use the term used in the source) lived in this era in multiple-family households in larger proportions, although I should note that their majority in comparison with nuclear households is only relative. For intellectuals, living in households with no family (as seen from the examples above) was characteristic of the lifestyle arising from the nature of their occupations. Local intellectuals were not connected to the local society as regards their family relations. They formed a passing stratum, so to speak: the tenants of the parish house, including the parish priest and the chaplains, were replaced over time, and they typically did not integrate into the local society from the perspective of their family relations. While approximately 36 percent of homeowner landless serfs and Roma lived in more complex households, the ratio was much lower or zero for the others.

The distribution can be refined by performing the above classification also based on the data of the tax census of 1834–1835. Albeit there seemed to be several ways to classify tax censuses, all of them require a more comprehensive processing work encompassing multiple sources, which is currently not possible. Relying on the correlations of production volumes and the amount of taxes paid,38 I evaluated the first nine, then the subsequent one hundred, two hundred and the other taxpayers based on tax values.

By connecting the tax censuses and the household heads, I managed to achieve a two-thirds identification rate. There are some taxpayers in the censuses from Csejt-puszta: administratively, they belonged to Endrőd at this time, but Göndöcs did not record them in his parish family book. The identification was made quite difficult by the fact that in the case of some family names that are very common locally, it was impossible to identify the correct persons without a full analysis of the registers: Hornoks, Tímárs, and Uhrins lived in the settlement in great numbers, and even if the taxpayer was distinguished by an indication of the father’s given name, this was not always adequate to remove all the doubts.

Table 9. Household structures according to the taxation category of the household heads, Endrőd, 1835

Source: Believers of Endrőd 1835. GySzIPL; MNL BéML IV. A. 6. 1834–1835.

It should be noted for the interpretation of Table 9 that the taxpayers’ serial number was the same in the case of equal tax amounts, and that is why each group of hundreds could contain more than one hundred taxpayers. However, due to the two-thirds identification rate indicated above, I was not able to include everyone in my analysis. The value of the tax amount was determined by converting the kreutzer to forints and adding it to the forint value. The table indicates that the biggest taxpayers lived in multiple-family households in an outstandingly large proportion (75 percent), but the majority of household heads belonging to the first hundred taxpayer classes also lived and farmed in this form of cohabitation. István Hanyecz paid the most taxes in the tax year of 1834–1835: 237 Forints and 38 kreutzer. He is followed by military officer Imre Mészáros, then Mihály Gubucz. Hanyecz lived together with his wife, two sons, and daughters-in-law, as well as his grandchildren, his sibling, and their family, as well as a 16-year old servant boy. Imre Mészáros lived with his wife, children, and the family of one of his sons, as well as one manservant and one female servant. Mihály Gubucz lived and farmed together with his two sons and their families.

All taxpayers in the first tax class are landowners, while the second class also includes a gardener, Imre Vaszkó, and a homeowner landless serf (zsellér), Imre Farkas. Both lived in nuclear households. The number of landless taxpayers increases in the third class, there is a growing number of homeowner landless serfs and also artisans. So, in fact, the tax census indicates that a direct proportionality can be identified among those living from agriculture between the extent of their farming activity and living in households of complex families.

Table 10. The proportion of households employing external labor according to household structure categories, Endrőd, 1835

Source: Believers of Endrőd 1835. GySzIPL

Households often employed external laborers for a shorter or longer period of time. Upon examining the household categories with families, one sees that the proportion of the households employing external labor increased together with the complexity of the household. These laborers, in most of the cases, were male or female servants. Gáspár Czinger, the town clerk, had two Lutheran housekeepers (though he belonged to a household with no families, while being in the second tax category), while the nobleman and cantor Károly Balla, who lived with his wife, son, and mother, had not only a female servant but also a coachman. The average age of manservants was 17. That of the female servants was 15.

Table 11. Ratio of average household size and households employing external laborers according to the household head’s age, Endrőd, 1835

Source: Believers of Endrőd 1835. GySzIPL

Table 11 indicates that as the household head’s age increased, external laborers became increasingly involved in the management of the household. The higher percentages appearing in the older age groups suggest that aging household heads tried to replace the younger members of the family having left the household this way.

Regarding the year 1836, Historia Domus of Endrőd recorded the conditions according to which Kornélia Stockhammer leased her estates in Endrőd to the village, as well as (and especially) the assets the church purchased. It also noted that Mátyás Habdza had a wooden cross erected on the outskirts of Endrőd, for which he established a foundation of 50 Forints.39 Homeowner landless serf Mátyás Habdza died in July 1836, aged 75 according to the registers and 80 according to chaplain Göndöcs. The cause of death was senectus, which could be translated today as old age.40 Whether it was he who had the cross erected as a form of thanksgiving for his long life (particular for the era) or his son Mátyás (if one accepts that middle-aged Mátyás Habdza was the son of the deceased, Göndöcs’s error would be quite a big deviation, almost 10 years!) is impossible to determine based on this information: the Historia Domus did not record the month and the day. Either way, according to contemporary popular belief, erecting a cross could be justified by the fact that cholera, which had ravaged in Endrőd in the summer of 1836, had spared Mátyás Habdza’s household.41

Göndöcs made, among others, the following entries at the end of the book: Approx. 200 died in the Year 1831 A.D. in Cholera, and a little below that: in (Year) 1836 A.D. Again approx. 100 died of Cholera. As I have mentioned, Göndöcs completed the family book with, among others, the names of those died in the 1836 cholera outbreak in the following year. Comparing this with the entries of the death register, 75 people died between July 6 and August 21, 1836. In the parish family book, Göndöcs added cholera as the cause of death subsequently for 60 people. Collating the people’s data found in the register and the family book, Göndöcs indicated that a person died of cholera in 10 cases where this is not indicated in the register, and the register mentions cholera as the cause of death in a further 26 cases where it is not added to the family book. This means that a total of 86 people are known to have died of cholera, of whom 71 could be connected to the household register.

Table 12. Ratio of households with a member who died of cholera according to household structure categories, Endrőd, 1835

Source: Believers of Endrőd 1835, Register of Deaths of Endrőd, 1835–1836. GySzIPL

Our sample makes it possible to compare the ratio of households with a member who died of cholera and the composition of the households. Cohabitation, which meant frequent contact among multiple people, constituted a higher risk factor for the spread of diseases, as reflected by the values of Table 12. Those who died of cholera in the families were in larger proportions women (54.7 percent) than men (46.3 percent). A significant group of the deceased included those aged 1–3 and 45–65.

In this paper, I conducted a closer examination of a geographical area hitherto unexplored in terms of household structure analyses, namely the settlement of Endrőd in Békés County. It was useful to process the previously dormant parish family book to get a better understanding not only of the geographical space, but also of the period after 1828. I was able to use a complete source which is rather rare from the 1830s, or even the immediately preceding or subsequent decades, which could be used well both in terms of the richness and (with some reservations) the quality of the data. In summary, the results correspond nicely to the findings of earlier macroanalyses and microanalyses, and therefore the main conclusions can be extended to this region. My findings confirm the dominance of nuclear households. However, I was able to point out that due to the relatively higher proportion of complex households, the village has an interim character, so we may have managed to record a state in the ongoing process of the simplification of households. We can regard as a characteristic specific to this settlement that older household heads employed an external person in significantly larger proportions than the younger generations, which can be explained by the departure of the younger members of the family and thus can also be interpreted as a manifestation of disintegration. Furthermore, the analysis according to tax classes refines the uniform belief that typically peasant families lived in multiple-family household structures. The ratio of this type is much higher where the household head paid more taxes. The health risk arising from the cohabitation of multiple people is also worth noting, the real threat of which is reflected by the relevant difference in the number of deaths from cholera in each household structure.

Archival Sources

Békés County Archives of the Hungarian National Archives (MNL BéML)

IV. A. 6.: Békés vármegye adószedőjének iratai [Documents of the Tax Collector of Békés County] 1834–1835. Accesed on September 25, 2018. https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/435710?availability=Family percent20History percent20Library

V. B. 326. d.: Mezőberény nagyközség iratai [Documents of the Village of Mezőberény]. Census doc. 1869.

Archives of the Szent Imre Parish of Gyomaendrőd (GySzIPL)

Endrőd, Register of Deaths. Accessed on September 25, 2018

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0ByjN02LbwH6sb2FNdlg0NWFmdm8? usp=sharing

Believers of Endrőd 1835: Az Endrődi Hivek Összeirása 1835ik Esztendötöl Kezdve G[öndöcs] J[ózsef káplán] (Register of the Believers of Endrőd as of 1835 A.D. [Chaplain] J[ózsef] G[öndöcs]).

Historia Domus: Historia Ecclesiae, et Parochiae Endrődinensis conscriptu Anno 1833.

Bibliography

Printed sources

Fényes, Elek. Magyarország geographiai szótára, mellyben minden város, falu és puszta, betürendben körülményesen leiratik [The Geographical Dictionary of Hungary That Describes Each Town, Village and Farmland in Alphabetical Order and in Detail]. Published by Elek Fényes. Pest: Vazul Kozma, 1851. Accessed on 25.09. 2018

https://www.arcanum.hu/hu/online-kiadvanyok/ValyiFenyes-orszagleirasok-81A15/fenyes-elek-magyarorszag-geographiai-szotara-84F88/e-859AE/endrod-85A1C/

Vályi, András. Magyarországnak leírása I. [Description of Hungary I] First facsimile edition. Méry Ratio, Šamorín, [1796] 2003.

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Andorka, Rudolf, and Tamás Faragó. “Az iparosodás előtti (XVIII–XIX. századi) család- és háztartásszerkezet vizsgálata” [Analysis of the pre-industrial (eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century) family and household structure]. Agrártörténeti Szemle 26, nos. 3–4 (1984): 402–37.

Andorka, Rudolf. “A család és háztartás nagysága és összetétele 1800 körül két dunántúli faluban (Alsónyéken és Kölkeden): Kísérlet P. Laslett elemzési módszerének felhasználására” [The size and composition of the family and the household c. 1800 in two Transdanubian villages (Alsónyék and Kölked): An attempt to use P. Laslett’s method of analysis]. In Gyermek, család, történelem: Történeti demográfiai tanulmányok [Child, family, history: Studies of historical demography], edited by Tamás Faragó, 147–80. Budapest: Andorka Rudolf Society of Social Sciences. [1977] 2001.

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Derosas, Renzo, and Saito, Osamu. “Introduction.” In When Dad Died: Individuals and Families Coping with Family Stress in Past Societies, edited by Renzo Derosas, and Michel Oris, Bern: Peter Lang, 2002. 1–16.

Erdei, Aranka. Békés megye társadalma és gazdasága 1828-ban [Society and economy in Békés County in 1828]. Forráskiadványok a Békés Megyei Levéltárból 13. Gyula: Békés County Archives, 1986.

Faragó, Tamás. “Rokonsági viszonyok a magyarországi falvakban a 18. században” [Family relations in the villages of Hungary in the eighteenth century]. Demográfia 4 (1996): 241–62.

Faragó, Tamás. “Nemek, nemzedékek, rokonság, család” [Genders, generations, kinship, family]. In Magyar Néprajz VIII: Társadalom [Hungarian ethnography VIII: Society], edited by Mihály Sárkány, and Miklós Szilágyi, 393–483. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 2000.

Faragó, Tamás. “Különböző háztartás-keletkezési rendszerek egy országon belül: Változatok John Hajnal téziseire” [Different household formation systems in Hungary: Variations on John Hajnal’s theses]. In A KSH Népességtudományi Kutatóintézetének Történeti Demográfiai Évkönyve [Historical Demographic Almanac of the Demographic Research Institute of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office], 19–64. Budapest: Központi Statisztikai Hivatal [Hungarian Central Statistical Office]: Népességtudományi Kutatóintézet Demographic Research Institute [Demographic Research Institute], 2001.

Faragó, Tamás. “Humanitárius katasztrófák Máramaros vármegyében a középkortól az első világháborúig” [Humanitarian disasters in Maramureş County from the Middle Ages to the First World War I]. In A KSH Népességtudományi Kutatóintézetének Történeti Demográfiai Évkönyve [Historical Demographic Almanac of the Demographic Research Institute of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office], 19–78. Budapest: Központi Statisztikai Hivatal [Hungarian Central Statistical Office]: Népességtudományi Kutatóintézet Demographic Research Institute [Demographic Research Institute], 2006.

Fauve-Chamoux, Antoinette. “Strategies of Household Continuity in a Stem-Family Society: From Heirship to Headship.” In When Dad Died: Individuals and Families Coping with Family Stress in Past Societies, edited by Renzo Derosas, and Oris Michel, 121–40. Bern: Peter Lang, 2002.

Gecsei, Lajos. Cholera morbus: Az 1831. évi kolerajárvány eseményei Gyulán és Váriban [Cholera morbus: The events of the cholera epidemic of 1831 in Gyula and Vári]. Békéscsaba, Gyula Város Tanácsának Egészségügyi Osztálya. Tevan Andor Nyomdaipari Szakközép- és Szakmunkásképző Iskola [Health Department of the Town Council of Gyula, Tevan Andor Printing Vocational High School and Trade School], 1985.

Hajnal, John. “European Marriage Patterns in Perspective.” In Population in History, edited by David Victor Glass, and David E. C. Eversley, 101–43. Edward Arnold, London, 1965.

Hajnal, John. “Two Kinds of Preindustrial Household Formation Systems.” Population and Development Review 8, no. 3 (1982): 449–94.

Heilig, Balázs. “Paraszti háztartások és háztartásciklusok Szőlősardón a 19. század második felében” [Peasant households and household cycles in Szőlősardó in the second half of the nineteenth century]. In A KSH Népességtudományi Kutatóintézetének Történeti Demográfiai Évkönyve [Historical Demographic Almanac of the Demographic Research Institute of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office], 2000. 225–65.

Horváth, Gergely Krisztián. Bécs vonzásában: Az agrárpiacosodás feltételrendszere Moson vármegyében a 19. század első felében [The gravity of Vienna: The conditions of becoming an agrarian market in Moson County in the first half of the nineteenth century]. Budapest: Balassi, 2013.

Husz, Ildikó. Család és társadalmi reprodukció a 19. században: történeti-szociológiai tanulmány egy Buda környéki mezőváros társadalmáról a családszerkezet változásának tükrében [Family and social reproduction in the nineteenth century: A historical sociological study on the society of a market town near Buda in the light of the changes in the family structure]. Budapest: Osiris, 2002.

Iványi, László, ed. 200 éves az endrődi Szent Imre templom [The 200th anniversary of the Saint Emeric Church in Endrőd]. Gyomaendrőd: Saint Emeric Parish, 2004.

Karácsonyi, János. Békésvármegye története II. kötet [The history of Békés County Vol. 2]. Published by the Public of Békés County. 1896.

Kövér, György. A tiszaeszlári dráma: Társadalomtörténeti látószögek [The drama of Tiszaeszlár: Social historical perspectives]. Budapest: Osiris, 2011.

Mádai, Lajos. “Kolerajárványok és az általános halandóság trendjei Európában a 19. században” [Cholera epidemics and general mortality trends in Europe in the nineteenth century]. Demográfia 26, nos. 2–3 (1983): 330–51.

Mádai, Lajos. “Hat nagy kolerajárvány és a halandóság Magyarország dél-dunántúli régiójában a 19. században” [Six great cholera epidemics and mortality in the South Transdanubian region of Hungary in the nineteenth century]. Demográfia 33, nos. 1–2 (1990): 58–95.

Magyary-Kossa, Gyula. Magyar orvosi emlékek: Értekezések a magyar orvostörténelem köréből [Hungarian medical memories: Treatises from Hungarian medical history]. I–IV. Budapest, 1929–1940.

Márkus, György, ed. Békés vármegye [1936: Békés County]. Budapest: Editorial and Publishing Office of the Monography of Békés County, 1936.

Melegh, Attila. “A tizenkilencedik század eleji városi háztartások Buda Újlakon” [Early nineteenth-century urban households in Buda-Újlak]. In Történeti szociológiai tanulmányok a 19-20. századi magyar társadalomról [Historical sociological studies on 19-20th-century Hungarian society]. Szociológiai Műhely Tanulmányok 5, edited by György Lengyel, 135–78. Marx Károly Közgazdaságtudományi Egyetem Szociológiai Tanszék [Karl Marx University of Economics, Department of Sociology], Budapest, 1987.

Oris, Michel, and Emiko Ochiai. “Family Crisis in the Context of Different Family Systems: Frameworks and Evidence on ‘When Dad Died’.” In When Dad Died: Individuals and Families Coping with Family Stress in Past Societies, edited by Renzo Derosas, and Michel Oris, 17–80. Bern: Peter Lang, 2002.

Őri, Péter, and Levente Pakot. “Háztartásszerkezet a 19. századi Magyarországon: A MOSAIC-adatbázis elemzésének első eredményei” [Household structure in nineteenth-century Hungary: First results of the analysis of the MOSAIC database]. Korall 65 (2016): 164–92.

Pesty, Frigyes. Békés megye Pesty Frigyes helynévgyűjtésében [Békés County in Frigyes Pesty’s collection of place names]. Forráskiadványok a Békés Megyei Levéltárból 11. Ferenc Szabó, ed. Békéscsaba: Békés Megyei Tanács V. B. Tudományos-Koordinációs Szakbizottsága [Scientific-Coordination Special Committee of the Executive Committee of the Council of Békés County], 1983.

Sabean, David Warren. Property, production, and family in Neckarhausen, 1700–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Szilágyi, Adrienn. “Egy 19. század eleji birtokelidegenítés esete: A Stockhammer család Békés megyei jószágainak kiárusítása” [A case of estate alienation from the early nineteenth century: The sale of the goods and properties of the Stockhammer family of Békés County]. Századok 150, no. 3 (2016): 771–94.

Szilágyi, Adrienn. “Indigenák és helyi társadalom: Békés megye indigena családjai a 19. század első felében” [Naturalized families and the local society: The naturalized families of Békés County in the first half of the nineteenth century]. In Az indigenák [The Naturalized Families], edited by István M. Szijártó, 135–56. Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó. 2017.

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Tamásy, József. “Az 1784–1787. évi első magyarországi népszámlálás család- és háztartásstatisztikai vonatkozásai” [The implications of the first census of Hungary in 1784–1787 for family and household statistics]. Demográfia 6 (1963): 526–38.

Table 1. Number of houses and households in Endrőd (1787–1835)

Source: Erdei, Békés megye, 113; Believers of Endrőd 1835. GySzIPL

Table 3. Household structure according to main household categories, average size of households, Endrőd, 1835

Source: Believers of Endrőd 1835. GySzIPL

A Spatial Analysis of the Socio-economic Structure of Bonyhád Based on the Census of 1869*

Réka Gyimesi and Dániel Kehl
University of Pécs, Faculty of Humanities
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In this study, we examine the social structure of Bonyhád, a multi-ethnical and multi-confessional Transdanubian town in Tolna County. We analyze the individual level data of the census of 1869 and offer a visual rendering of the results on a historical map of the town. The surviving material of this inventory covers the entire population of Bonyhád, providing a detailed picture about 6,036 inhabitants. Records include the names, sex, birth year and place, marital status, occupation and occupational status, literacy, residence, and whether the person in question was present or absent at the time the census was taken. As in Tolna County a cadastral survey was finished in 1866, a contemporary cadastral map is also available. Combined, these sources provide rich information about the spatial structure of the town, because the coordinates are also available using the mapire.eu website, which is overlaid on the OpenStreetMap and the HERE satellite base map. One can use the degrees of longitude and latitude of each household and study the census and the map together in R, a free software environment for statistical computation and graphics.

Bonyhád was the economic center of a small region and had a position of strategic importance in the control of local trade routes. After the end of the period of Ottoman occupation, German settlers arrived and lived alongside the original Hungarian and Serb population. Later, a significant Jewish community settled in the area in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The denominational composition of the population, according to the census of 1869, was 41 percent Roman Catholics, 31 percent Lutherans, 5 percent Calvinist and 23 percent Jewish. The analysis of the census-based information and the visual rendering of the results on the cadastral map explain valuable details about the socio-economic structure of Bonyhád, including the question of segregation, which would be difficult to demonstrate on the basis of qualitative sources, as is typically the case with historical research.

Keywords: socio-economic structure, spatial pattern, R software, segregation, nineteenth c. censuses

Introduction

Bonyhád acquired central functions in the Völgység, which can be described as an agricultural region in Tolna County. The settlement started to develop dynamically in the eighteenth century due to its role as a “geographical gate.” A trade route led through it, and two bridges made it possible for travelers to cross the valley. According to the secondary literature on the local history of the area, this increasingly urbanized town evolved into an industrial-commercial center, which became a market town in 1782 with the right to hold four fairs per year. In the 1850s, Bonyhád turned into the administrative center of the executive unit, called Völgység (which essentially means valley region).1 In the work of Vera Bácskai and Lajos Nagy on the urban structure of Hungary, Bonyhád was introduced as a settlement with local significance. Its fairs were mainly visited by its own inhabitants, as they did not attract people from a larger range.2 This essay also emphasizes the role of local merchants in arranging trade through Tolna County.3

After the Ottoman Era, the town was inhabited by Calvinist Hungarians and Orthodox Serbs, but a few years later, the settlement was considered uninhabited territory. Large-scale German settlement started in the early eighteenth century. It enjoyed the support of the state and the secular and clerical landowners, who sought to repopulate their lands. As a result of this process, Bonyhád evolved into a town with a Roman Catholic German majority.4 While in 1715, records indicate only seven Hungarian and nine Serb families were counted, in 1728 42 Hungarian and 15 German families were paying taxes, and in 1748, these figures had shifted to 11 Hungarian and 29 German families.5 Until the middle of the following century, the number of inhabitants steadily increased. In 1785, there were 2,999 people living in Bonyhád. By 1828, this number had risen to 4,639, and the census in 1850 indicated 6,524 inhabitants and the one in 1857 indicated 6,371.6

The German settlers were not all Roman Catholic. A large number of Lutherans also arrived. German Calvinists from Hessen settled in Bonyhád as they did in other towns in Tolna County, but they mostly assimilated into the Lutheran majority.7 Hungarians were Roman Catholics and Calvinists. In the eighteenth century, the settlement of Jews in the town began, a process which peaked in the 1780s, when there were more than 400 Jewish inhabitants in Bonyhád.8 As a result of the abovementioned denominational mix, five denominations and four churches were found in Bonyhád in the period in question. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, alongside the Roman Catholics, Calvinists and Lutherans were also building churches in the town, and a synagogue was also constructed.9

Sources and Methods

The analysis was based on the individual sheets of census 1869,10 which contain data concerning people living together in the same households. The fact that this source is even extant is exceptional, as the original individual sheets survived only in the case of a few settlements of present-day Hungary.11 Bonyhád offered a good research opportunity given the survival of these sources, and the population was heterogeneous from the religious and socio-economic perspective.

In our analysis, we examined and combined housing statistics and individual level data of inhabitants from the census material and projected the results on the nineteenth-century map of Bonyhád. In the first place, we concentrate on the denominational and occupational distribution of the population and the connection between these two variables. Our aim in this study is empirically to test some of the well-known relations between religious belonging and occupations (for example Jews were mainly occupied as merchants)12 and to compare results of previous studies to the data regarding Bonyhád. While there was no religious pattern or concentration of inhabitants in Sátoraljaújhely13 besides that of the Jewish population, we can assume that the results will be different in the case of a resettled community.14

According to the census, of the altogether 6036 inhabitants of Bonyhád in 1869, 2,961 were males and 3,075 were females, which means a sex ratio of 1,038 females to 1,000 males. The census registered housing statistics on a separate sheet (location, number of rooms and outbuildings, whether the building served as a place to live only or also as a shop, etc.), as it did in the case of domestic animals. On the middle sheet, the name, sex, year and place of birth, religion, marital status, occupation and occupational status, residence, presence or absence, and literacy of the inhabitants were given. Comments involving factors like e.g. illness, military service, place of absence, etc. were written in the last column. In cases of multiple households sharing the same house, a vertical line separated the Wohnparteien.15

The numbering of the houses was continuous in the settlement, so the figures started from one and increased to the number of the last house of the town, independently of the streets. 1306 Wohnparteien lived in Bonyhád in 763 houses, which means 1.7 households per houses. This figure is higher than the average for Pest County (1.3–1.4).16 The average size of households was 4.6 persons, which correspond to the national average at the time.17

In the course of our investigation, we applied five broader categories of occupations18 in order to increase the efficiency of analysis. We employed the method introduced by Péter Őri and Levente Pakot, who created the following socio-professional groups based on HISCLASS:19 (1) Groups of higher status (non-manual), (2) Craftsmen (artisans and merchants), (3) Farmers (landowners), (4) Groups of lower status (unskilled) and (5) Other.20

We do not endeavor or claim to offer any detailed examination of demographic characteristics like marital customs or the number of children in a family without the use of parish registers. We cannot arrive at reliable conclusions concerning demographic phenomena exclusively on the basis of census data, because census data provide detailed information on the population on a particular date. We know how many people lived in the town on December 31, 1869, but we have no information concerning the total number of children who were born in the family or the number of those who left their homes. Likewise, we do not know how many children were born after this day in the same family. The census material makes possible the analysis of the spatial pattern of the distribution of the household-types using Laslett’s categories.21 Laslett’s method introduced categories based on the relationships among the household-members, not the number of the inhabitants, so the uncertainty caused by the lack of all the life events can be solved by drawing on his work. Using the census data, we also can analyze the spatial distribution of the age-groups, but neither the age-distribution nor the Laslett classification showed characteristic spatial arrangement, so we decided to exclude these aspects in what follows.

We also examined household members who were not blood-related to the family, like servants or apprentices, and we compared them to their employers from the perspective of their religion or place of birth. Although there is a column for residence in the census sheet, in our opinion it’s not suitable to distinguish so-called foreigners from the resident population, because this distinction only refers to the period during which these people lived in the same place, not their origin (place of birth). The numbers of these columns confirm our assumption. 87 percent of the population belonged to the resident category according to which division, but only 75 percent had been born in Bonyhád.22

In the second half of the nineteenth century cadastral surveys were carried out in the Crownlands of Hungary, beginning in 1856 in the western part of the country and heading eastward. The survey of Tolna county was completed in the mid-1860s.23 Thus, we have a cadastral map from Bonyhád which is contemporary with the census.24 A historical map includes valuable information about the geographical situation of the town, but on the homepage of Mapire digitalized maps are available with coordinates. The webpage combined the historical maps with OpenStreetMap and Google Maps.25

By analyzing the spatial structure based on census data, we aimed to use free and/or open source software solutions that are also capable of performing transformations of raw data and proper statistical analysis. This approach makes this research much more reproducible and could help researchers conduct similar studies in the future.26 Steps followed in creating the maps are to be found at the end of our study in the annex.

Spatial Distribution

Housing statistics

Data from the census enable us to investigate housing circumstances of the inhabitants of Bonyhád. The differences are best shown by the population density (mean number of residents in a room). This value is 2.64 people/room on average in Bonyhád according to the 1869 census. However, there are differences among the houses in this respect, as shown on figure 1.27

As the map shows, most of the houses had a population density around the mean of 2.64, but there are some houses where more than four inhabitants shared one room. In the southern and southeastern parts of the town, we see buildings with low population densities. These bigger houses were owned by the Perczels and other landowning nobles. According to the map, in several cases, there were parks or large gardens on these properties behind the house. Of the 763 houses of the settlement, only 20 were two-story houses. The largest number of rooms was 23 in one house, but there were 20 households sharing the edifice, so number of rooms alone does not mean that the inhabitants were wealthy. That is why we decided to put the population density on the map, and based on the result, we can conclude that Bonyhád was more an agricultural settlement than urban.

Spatial distribution of denomination

Based on census data, Bonyhád had 2,463 Roman Catholic (40.8 percent), 1,890 Lutheran (31.3 percent), 1,359 Jewish (22.5 percent), 317 Calvinist (5.3 percent), and seven Orthodox (0.1 percent) inhabitants in 1869. In the literature, we find statements about the spatial patterns which agree in part with these figures. One source indicates that Hungarians settled down in the southern part of the town, while Germans chose the northern part.28 Others call the eastern line of houses the “Hungarian Bonyhád,” while the western line of houses was referred to as “German Bonyhád.”29 These two approaches were synthesized by Wilhelm Knabel, according to whom the two landholders of Bonyhád (baron Schilson and Ferenc Kun) split the settlement in 1729. To south and west of the main square, the “German village” developed, with the tavern, butchery, and three mills which belonged to the baron. Ferenc Kun gained the northern and eastern part of the settlement, the so-called “Hungarian village,” with the wine shop and the brewery. The part of the town inhabited primarily by German speakers tended to prefer Roman Catholic settlers, while the Hungarian-speaking community preferred Calvinists. Several Lutherans moved into the Hungarian part of the town from the surrounding settlements.30

This statement is underpinned by the map showing the spatial distribution of denominations. Protestants are found in the northern part of the settlement, and Roman Catholics populated the south. Religion seems to have had a stronger effect on spatial patterns than nationality. Many sources also state that Lutheran and Calvinist settlers did not live in the German village, and both villages had inhabitants belonging to both nationalities.31 The contention that denominational belonging was the most important single factor in determining settlement patterns within the town is also supported by the placement of cemeteries and churches, which reflects the spatial distribution observable on our map. This confirms the sources cited and also shows that the religiously differentiated structure which evolved at the time of resettlement remained stable one century later.

Jews formed their own closed community in the city center between the German and Hungarian villages. Their activities turned Bonyhád into the trading center of the region in this era.32

Spatial distribution of occupation

The census registered the occupation and occupational status of the inhabitants, and on the basis of this, we categorized the inhabitants of the settlement into the abovementioned five groups. These columns are usually left blank in the cases of women and small children, but data were available concerning household heads, older children, and other residents. Thanks to this data, we know the sources of income for 2,155 inhabitants of Bonyhád. Broken down into occupational groups, 99 of these people belonged to a stratum which had a higher status (they performed non-manual labor), 462 were artisans and merchants, 228 were landowners, and 1,302 were members of lower strata (i.e. unskilled laborers). 64 people couldn’t be categorized into the abovementioned classes (e.g. almsmen).

As over half of the inhabitants belonged to the unskilled category, which is in line with the agricultural characteristics of Bonyhád, we decided to create two subcategories. One of them includes unskilled agricultural workers only (e.g. unskilled farm workers, farm servants), while the other consists of unskilled workers who worked together with artisans (e.g. apprentices, journeymen) and other servants and maids.

As can be observed on the map, most of the merchants and artisans lived in the center of the settlement, while the northern and southern parts of the settlement were populated by landowners, especially the Protestant parts. Using our subcategories, we acquire a more detailed picture of the spatial pattern of the unskilled stratum: the distribution of unskilled workers reflects that of the artisans and landowners (agricultural unskilled workers lived outside the center of town, while apprentices and journeymen in the center). The inhabitants who did non-manual labor and therefore belonged to a higher social stratum also tended to live in the middle of the settlement.

The spatial distribution of different occupations is quite different. In some cases, artisans with the same profession lived throughout the settlement (e.g. masons), while most of the merchants were concentrated in the center, as were tailors. Weavers were only found on the periphery. Innkeepers and tavern owners opened shops both in the center and next to commercial routes in the southeastern area.

Occupation and religion

The settlement pattern according to denominational belonging shows similarities to that of occupation shown on the previous maps. We further analyzed this relationship between occupational class and denomination (leaving out Orthodox inhabitants due to their small number, we had information concerning the denominational belonging of 2,150 residents of the town). The resulting cross table shows a significant association between the two variables (p<0.001).

Table 1 shows the distribution of occupational groups within each of the four big denominations. The higher status group comprised 4.5 percent of the total population. This figure is somewhat less among Lutherans and higher in the case of Calvinists and Roman Catholics. The proportion of artisans is clearly highest among inhabitants belonging to the Jewish community (around 40 percent). It is close to 20 percent in the case of Roman Catholics and remains below 15 percent in the case of Protestants. Farmers made up almost 20 percent of the Lutheran and 15 percent of the Calvinist communities, while the ratio is below nine percent for Roman Catholics and under one percent in case of Jewish inhabitants. As we have already seen, the largest group was comprised of unskilled workers. Their proportion of the population remained under 50 percent in the case of Jews, but for people belonging to Christian denominations, it is between 60 and 66 percent. The last (Other) group has a low percentage of unskilled laborers, with minor differences between denominations.

Table 1. Distribution of occupational groups within denominations,
Bonyhád, 1869

Nearly 200 different occupations are mentioned in the census data. Most professions had only a few representatives in the settlement. However, there are quite different occupational patterns in the case of the four denominations. We conducted a correspondence analysis which revealed that the main difference was between members of the Jewish community and people who belonged to the three Christian denominations. Most of the professions were avoided by Jews, while some were dominated by them. In some cases, however, the denominational distribution reflects the proportions of the population. Examples of each case are presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Denominational patterns in selected occupations,
Bonyhád, 1869

The relationship between denominations and occupations in itself is not novel, but the spatial analysis in this case of a resettled eighteenth-century town raises several questions. Sources and the map of the spatial pattern of denominations both underpin that the eighteenth-century separation of religions still strongly affected structure of society in the nineteenth century.

The relationship between Jews living in the settlement center and the concentration of artisans here seems obvious. For a long time, Jews were not allowed to own land.33 It is easy to see why they settled in the dense central parts of the town, where they could be more successful. But is the relationship between Protestants (in this case mainly Lutherans) and the class of farmers also that univocal? One simple explanation might be that the main goal of recruiting German settlers was to find farmers to (re)cultivate abandoned lands. However, sources and contemporary laws show evidence that allowances were given not only for agricultural workers, but also to artisans.34 New settlers arriving to Bonyhád were not only agricultural workers but also artisans. It seems clear that the settlement patterns in the eighteenth century were based on denomination, but the question remains: did this also cause the occupational differences, or did inhabitants adapt to this spatial structure and chose their occupation accordingly? In other words, the direction of the possible causal relationship between denomination and occupation is still unclear and requires further investigation.

Non-relatives – cooperation and separation

According to the census data, the denominations of servants and maids corresponded to the denomination of their employers. We also analyzed the birthplace of this group of non-relatives living together with a family , which was the most mobile stratum of the population of Bonyhád. Regarding the presence/absence columns, 498 people were absent (five people only temporarily), who were listed mainly as children in the households. Their occupations were not given in every case, but otherwise they were servants, maids, apprentices, journeymen, or people serving in the military, which demonstrates the extent of the mobility of these groups.

Table 3 presents the denominational or religious belonging of servants and maids alongside the denominational or religious belonging of their employers.

Table 3. Religion or denomination of servants and their employers, Bonyhád, 1869

Of these 140 servants, 28 were males and 112 were females. Therefore, in all cases the number of females was always higher than the number of males. All of the servants employed by Jewish households were female, including 13 Jewish maids. Jewish servants only served in Jewish households. We can observe a more open pattern among Roman Catholics and Protestants, and not only in the case of servants and maids, but also in the case of the craftsman-apprentice relationship (Table 4). 35

Table 4. Religion of apprentices and their employers, Bonyhád, 1869

On average, Roman Catholic heads of household employed the most servants (77 servants for 44 households) and apprentices (80 apprentices for 42 craftsmen). The most frequent number of servants/apprentices was one, but there were some exceptions.36 In Tables 2 and 3, the number of servants and apprentices who were born in Bonyhád is also presented. In all cases, we can see that the proportion of local born employees is quite low. This suggests that mobility was relatively high among members of this group.37

Summary

Based on the census of 1869, we examined the socio-economic spatial structure of the agricultural settlement of Bonyhád using the cadastral map from the 1860s as a visualization tool. After a short introduction of housing data in general, the study focused on settlement patters according to denomination and occupation. We verified that resettlement still had a strong influence on the denominational structure of the community in the nineteenth century. We demonstrated a statistically significant relationship between religion and occupation. Further analysis was completed about the denomination of non-relatives and households living together. As a result, we offered statistic evidence in support of contentions found in qualitative secondary literature and earlier studies according to which Jewish society in the town was much more closed than the Christian denominations. They only worked in houses belonging to people of their own religion and they lived in a well-separable place in the town center. Spatial patterns were investigated for every profession and some of them were represented on maps. In some cases, a particular occupation seemed to predominate among the community which belonged to a particular denomination, while other occupations seemed to have been less connected to a given religion or denomination. The study also indicated the complexity of the society under study and concluded that resettlement was an important factor which influenced the socio-economic and denominational structure of the town even a century later.

Our results underpin the strong relationship between denomination and occupation and settlement patterns within the town. However, the direction of the causation needs further investigation, as an important question remains unanswered: did the settlement patterns influence occupation, and if so, to what extent, or did settlers find their homes based on their profession.

Annex

Four steps were taken to complete the maps presented later in our paper:

1. based on the historical map, polygons were defined which represent houses, and they were used to connect data concerning inhabitants and their houses to the map;

2. the file containing the historical map was read into R and GPS coordinates were added;

3. polygons were read into R;

4. statistical calculations were made and the final maps were created based on previous results.

The first step was done in Inkscape,38 a free open source vector graphics editor. Inkscape uses the open standard SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), which enables us to create small but scalable graphics. All other steps were performed in R,39 which is a free and open source software environment for statistical computing and graphics.40 The open source status makes it possible for users to contribute their own code to a central repository (CRAN). These contributions are called packages, and the number of packages grows rapidly. There are over 13,000 packages at the moment, and we use some of them for data manipulation and to create maps.

The resolution of the base map is 3080 x 6925 pixels. We read the base map into Inkscape and then used the appropriate tool to draw linear polygons on another layer to represent houses. The so-called Draw Bezier curves and straight lines tool seemed to be the best choice, as it is able to snap nodes to polygons which have already been defined, which means we could easily draw polygons which are perfectly matching and which cover the entire map. One property of all objects in Inkscape is their ID, where we used the house numbers of the census to make it easier to connect polygons to census data later on. Filling the polygons which had already been drawn with a somewhat transparent color makes the manual process even simpler.

Figure 5. Manually creating polygons in Inkscape

As a result, we created a vector graphic map of nineteenth-century Bonyhád which is zoomable, small, and easy to read. There are several format options available to store polygon data. We chose the so-called absolute coordinates (instead of relative coordinates), which are easier to process in R as an XML file. Once we finished drawing all the polygons, we could remove the base map and save the final vector graphic map of the settlement.

In the R environment, there are several plotting packages. We used ggplot241 and its extension for maps called ggmap.42 This latter package is applied to create visual renderings of spatial data on top of static maps from various online sources (Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, Stamen Mapsor CloudMade). The package assumes that one is plotting on a map which comes from the abovementioned online sources. However, we can convert our png file to a ggmap object by adding the bounding box data (lower left und upper right corner GPS coordinates). As a result of several lines of code in R, we now have a high resolution ggmap object which contains a raster and its place in the GPS coordinate system. As this is the basis of all the maps, we saved this into the native R datafile (RDa).

The next step was to read and convert the polygon dataset in R. As already mentioned, the svg file we created in the first step is basically an xml file which contains all polygons in nodes called path. All paths have multiple attributes, but we only need the ones named “d,” which contain the coordinates (in pixels), and the ones named “id,” which contain the house numbers. Reading and converting polygons to the GPS coordinate system enables us to produce different types of maps. On one side, we can draw the polygons with different colors representing various characteristics of the given house (e.g. population density, meaning people/room). On the other side, in several cases we plotted characteristics of the inhabitants of a given house. For instance, we put (equal size) pie charts in the center of the polygon (this approach seemed appropriate as the religion or denominational belonging of the inhabitants of a given building was usually not the same). We drew this type of map using the scatterpie package.43

Archival Sources

Tolna Megyei Levéltár [Tolna County Archives] (TML)

V. 709./c Közigazgatási iratok 1850–1949 [Administrational Documents, 1850–1949]. Bonyhád nagyközség iratai, 1869. évi népesség és háziállatok összeírása [Documents of Bonyhád, Census of 1869 and the Enumeration of Domestic Animals]. 512–513. box

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Őri, Péter. “Kiskunhalas népessége 1869-ben” [Population of Kiskunhalas in 1869]. In Kiskunhalas története 3: Tanulmányok Kiskunhalasról a 19. század közepétől a 20. század közepéig, [History of Kiskunhalas 3: Studies about Kiskunhalas from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century], 269–92. Edited by József, Ö. Kovács and Aurél Szakál. Kiskunhalas, 2005.

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* Supported by the ÚNKP-18-3-IV-PTE-323 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human Capacities.

Figure 1. Population density (people/room), Bonyhád, 1869

Figure 2. Religion of the population, Bonyhád, 1869

Figure 3. Occupation of the population, Bonyhád, 1869

Figure 4. Spatial distribution of certain artisans, Bonyhád, 1869

Figure 6. Main square of Bonyhád on the final vector graphic map

The Notion of Space on Railway Maps of the Habsburg Monarchy / Austria–Hungary

Arlene Peukert
Andrássy Universität Budapest
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In this article, the notion of space on railway maps of the Habsburg Monarchy/Austria-Hungary is analyzed and interpreted. Two railway maps from the 1840s and one network map from the 1860s are examined from the perspectives of their visual language and inherent communication mechanisms. A reciprocal approach to maps is applied. The context in which maps are created (production and consumption) is taken into consideration, as is the context which is created by maps (spaces as cultural products). The desired outcome is a synopsis of the plurality of spaces envisioned in the mid-nineteenth century contrasted with the process of unification of space spurred on by the continuous expansion of railway networks. Topics addressed in this article are the rendering of nature and terrain on maps, the beginning development of a railway corridor into a network of lines, the depiction of networks, the hierarchization of territory in the visual language of maps, and the marking of space as a national territory.

Keywords: railway, maps, cartography, space, network, Habsburg Monarchy, Austria–Hungary

Introduction

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the railway started to transform the landscape and, with it, people’s perceptions of the world around them and the ways in which they moved through it.1 Novel notions of space found themselves translated into railway maps produced by engineers, planers, railway companies, publishing houses of maps, guide books, and atlases.
This paper focuses on three railway maps from the middle of the nineteenth century (1845, 1843, 1869), with the aim to show how the presentation of space in the Habsburg Monarchy/Austria-Hungary differed from map to map in the same railway project and also changed significantly over the course of only two to three decades. I outline factors accounting for these altered perceptions of space and their manifestations on maps.
My intention is to provide a synopsis of the diversity of spaces (physical, perceived, and conceived)2 on mid-century railway maps of Austrian/Austro-Hungarian provenance.

In his 1988 essay “Maps, knowledge, and power,” historian and geographer John Brian Harley (1932–1991) formulates the hypothesis that maps are cultural products which have different layers of meaning.3 Maps are never to be seen only as a presentation of geographical features, but rather must be read as a form of manipulated knowledge.4 Contextualizing maps is, according to Harley, an effective method of making maps speak about the “social worlds of the past.”5 Since at least the Middle Ages, when new structures of governance started to form, maps were used to document and legitimize claims of power in space. Images and symbols on the maps which dealt with historical, political, and mythological episodes underline these claims and are part of the communicative vocabulary of cartography.6 Although maps over time became more accurate due to improving measuring techniques and gained an aura of relative objectivity, they were nevertheless value-laden products of society.7

In order to decode the visual language of maps an interdisciplinary approach is advisable. Following Harley’s methodology, pictorial, textual, and sociological components of railway maps are going to be taken into consideration to reveal communicative patterns and mechanisms of power in maps8 and offer, on the basis of this, insights into the ways in which maps can be interpreted as expression of and tools with which to shape perceptions of space.

Railway maps are a relevant addition to the broad field of research related to the history of railway and railway transport in the Habsburg Monarchy/Austria-Hungary. Although in recent decades, especially since the proclamation of different “turns” in the humanities and social sciences, more attention has been paid to the cultural, social, economic, etc. aspects of the railway, plans and maps of railway lines and the inscribed notions of space continue to constitute a hitherto overlooked topic.9 Consequently, reflecting on historic topics from a spatial perspective can perhaps yield new insights which will prompt further research on railway history.

How the railway Transformed Space and Time – Manifestations of Spatial Perceptions on Railway Maps

Space10 and time are complex phenomena. They constitute the coordinate system of our terrestrial existence in which, knowingly or instinctively, we place every subject, object, and act. Orientation without the context of space and time is impossible.11 Without reference points, we would inevitably be lost, and we would lack any understanding of who we are and where we come from.12 Humanity has continuously endeavored to develop an understanding of time and space and arrive at systems with which to measure them. The invention of calendars and clocks turned time into a cultural product. The superimposed linearity and sequentialness of time, which are also reflected in the ways in which some human languages are composed, make it easy for us to locate events in a chronological order.13 Historical events become narratable: event A happened at a point in time before event B took place. Both events can be marked with a clear beginning and ending and stand in relation to each other.14

Space, however, eludes from our efforts to document and narrate it due to its multidirectional dimensions and the simultaneousness and coexistence of coordinates. Space is not linear.15 In order not to get lost, we apply similar methods to tracing space as we use to structure time. Movements in space are transformed into lines which can then be transferred to a two-dimensional surface: a map. In the form of lines and points on maps, space, which has no beginning and no ending and is consequently hard to narrate, becomes fixed and more controllable.16 Maps, thus, are always a reflection of how people see the environment.

The railway system (and maps thereof) can be understood as manifestation of a new spatial awareness and at the same time as tool(s) which shaped space and produced a new form of cultural space.

Historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues, that with the reduction of travel time, the railway helped shrink space and brought places closer together. At the same time, the increased speed of travel meant that people could reach faraway places in a much shorter time. For travelers, the space between stations lost importance, while beginning and end points of travel became increasingly significant.17

Last but not least, schedules oriented around departure and arrival times made the introduction of a standard time necessary, that by the 1890s replaced local times in Central Europe.

The railway touched and changed many parts of life in the nineteenth century and consequently also replaced an old space-time continuum with a new one.18 By tracing this novel perception of space on railway maps, we can enhance our understanding of the specific view map producers and map users had of a place or territory (mental maps19) and the ways in which this view changed over time. We can learn how authorities, stakeholders, constructors, landowners, and key political players positioned themselves and others in space, how they constructed their identities within a newly emerging understanding of space, and how this understanding of space itself was shaped and controlled.

The Development of the Railway and Railway Maps in the Habsburg Monarchy/Austria–Hungary

The history of the Austrian railway in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is commonly divided according to the phases of ownership and financing of railway projects.20 It should be mentioned however, that a clear timeline of railway periods cannot always be followed, as gaps between the order and final implementation of railway-related laws occurred.

Following a pioneering phase of private funding and planning of the first railway lines between 1824 and 1841, a phase of railway construction under state initiative took place from 1841 to 1854/5821. Having finally grasped the potential of this new means of transportation, the state wanted to bring the railway under its control in order to push the construction of new lines and connections independent of the financial aims of private investors. The expansion of the lines of the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway and the Southern Railway were among the most urgent infrastructural development plans.22 Furthermore, the Milan-Venice railway line (Venedig-Mailänder Bahn) was completed in 1846, and the challenging Semmering railway (Semmering Bahn), as part of the Southern Railway, and the Empress Elisabeth Railway (Kaiserin Elisabeth-Bahn) were built under state control. Financial restrictions put an end to the first state phase in 1854. A new railway law aimed at private investors obliged them to disclose the details of their planned railway projects for the state to check and approve.23 Between 1854/58 and 1873/80 the railway network of the monarchy grew significantly. However, private investors recoiled from financing railway projects that made sense only for the infrastructural development of the monarchy and promised less profit. Lines deemed important by the state, like the Arlberg Railway (Arlbergbahn) or a railway along the Dalmatian coast, could not be realized during that period. The financial crisis of 1873 forced the state to engage more actively in the railway program once more. The construction of the Arlberg tunnel in 1880 marked the beginning of a second phase of railway construction under state control.24 In addition to investing more money in private railway projects, the state also funded the construction of lines of pressing importance. In 1896, the k.k. Railway Ministry in Vienna was founded with the function of monitoring and controlling railway traffic and railway projects in the Austrian lands of the Dual Monarchy. In the last phase of railway politics, the New Alps Railways were built.25 Also, minor connections were created. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918 lead to the breakup of the vast railway network, as huge parts of it were then situated in the neighboring countries, two of which were newly created states.

Numerous diary entries, episodes from fictional literature, drawings, and paintings demonstrate how the novelty of rail travel was perceived in the nineteenth century.26 This new medium not only found novel forms of expression in art and literature, it also demanded improved techniques and approaches in the scientific documentation of railway tracks.

Before people engaged in travel on a grand scale, the military and the state were the primary users of most of the manuscript maps produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These maps were to a large extent kept under strict control and treated as secrets, as in times of conflict and war detailed maps of the territory could provide the enemy with crucial information.27 The development of the street network in the Habsburg Monarchy and the emergence of the stage coach system in the seventeenth century resulted in the production of new road maps and stage coach maps which were made available to the public as well.28 At the beginning of this phase, roads and stage coach connections were often added to topographic maps, for instance from the Austrian land surveys.29 Later, with the rise of rail and steam boat travel, further traffic connections had to be integrated into the maps. In the interest of legibility, thematic travel maps were made in the nineteenth century.30 Slowly but surely, railway maps started to supersede the stage coach maps.31 Due to the growing density of the railway network from the middle of the century onwards, railway maps grew in scale and complexity; detailed traffic and railway atlases were published. Furthermore, thematic travel maps were adapted to the users’ needs.32

The railway line Wiener Neustadt–Ödenburg – A case study on Two Different Perceptions of Space In Early Railway Maps

One of the earliest railways of the monarchy, the line between Ödenburg (Sopron, Šopron) in the Hungarian lands of the empire and Wiener Neustadt was planned and built between 1840 and 1847.33 The plan for this line was a joint venture of the Hungarian aristocrats Pál Esterházy (1786–1866), count István Széchenyi (1791–1860), and the banker Georg Simon von Sina (1783–1856). The Hungarian nobles wanted the railway to come to Hungarian lands. Count Széchenyi greeted the project commissioned by the king Ferdinand I of Austria (1793–1875)34 with great enthusiasm:

With this [project] a bright star rose for the West of Hungary; its growing radiance will illuminate the tracks of its [Hungary’s] future rapid progress. (Ein heller Stern ist damit dem Westen Ungarns aufgegangen, dessen wachsender Strahlenglanz die Bahnen seines zukünftigen raschen Fortschrittes erleuchten wird.)35

In 1845, construction work under the oversight of Mathias Schönerer (1807–1881)36 began. The track between Ödenburg and Wiener Neustadt is 31.9 kilometers long and passes through slightly hilly terrain. Leaving Wiener Neustadt, the train crosses the river Leitha (Lajta) and, thus, the former Austrian-Hungarian border. On its way to Ödenburg, the train passes by the villages Katzelsdorf and Neudorf/Neudörfl (Lajtaszentmiklós/Najderflj). The track then runs alongside the Rosalien Mountains. Several embankments and cuttings were built to cover height differences of the terrain. Before reaching Mattersdorf (since 1924 Mattersburg/Nagymarton/Matrštof), the train has to ascend the steepest part of the track (with an incline of 10.5 percent). The station in Mattersdorf was the largest on the entire line. After crossing another hill, the train passes by the villages Marz (Martz/Márcfalva/Marca), Rohrbach (Fraknónádasd/Orbuh), Loipersdorf (Lépesfalva), Schattendorf (Somfalva/Šundrof), and Agendorf (Ágfalva/Agendrof). The station on the western periphery of Ödenburg was then to constitute the end of the line.37 From the beginning of the planning period, the railway line was laid out to be double-tracked, which shows that planners expected a high volume of traffic for the line, which potentially would be prolonged to the south.38

Two monumental viaducts were built by Schönerer for the track: the Mattersburger Viadukt and the Wiesenviadukt. Both viaducts show architectural features similar to the architecture later employed in the Semmering route. It is likely that ideas for the challenging Semmering project built as part of the Southern Railway between 1848 and 1854 by Carl von Ghega (1802–1860) were put to the test in this less demanding terrain.39 Shortly after the line opened in 1847, traffic volume on the route was high, bringing economic growth to the region of Mattersdorf and Ödenburg for a short time.40

A brief comparison of the two railway maps of the same line from Ödenburg to Wiener Neustadt produced in 1843 and 1845 (Figure 1 and Figure 3) shows that different ways of presenting one and the same railway line can lead to very different visual results. Consequently, the spaces captured and reimagined by the mapmakers and commissioners differ to some extent.
Different reasons might explain the different approaches to the representations chosen for the manuscript maps, with the date of map production, the function of the map, and the prospective audiences being the most obvious. However, we often have little information concerning these kinds of factors, in particular the functions of the maps and the prospective audiences, and thus we can do little more at this point than venture guesses. If we consider the possible visual strategies of which these two maps seem to be the product, we can, however, hazard some hypotheses concerning the aims of the mapmakers.

The Role of Nature In Early Railway Maps

Map number one, entitled Uibersichtskarte der zwischen Oedenburg und Wiener-Neustadt im Jahre 1845 im Bau begriffenen LOCOMOTIV-EISENBAHN (Figure 1), is a manuscript map on paper with relatively large measurements (106 × 85 cm). The terrain is not shown in its entirety and the image does not fill the sheet; rather, the user of the map is given a cut-out of the topographic landscape stretching diagonally between Wiener Neustadt and Ödenburg. Large blank spaces on the map’s edges are used for the heading (top center) and a scale bar (bottom left). Linear measures on the map are indicated in Wiener Klafter (Vienna fathom), 158 mm = 2400 Kl. or 1 : 29,000.41 Further inscriptions are featured either directly on the topographic drawing or next to it. Roads are featured as thin black lines. The border between Austria and Hungary is shown as a thicker, broken line. Still, the border is not over-accentuated or strikingly prominent on this map.42

The projected railway line is colored red, establishing also a visual connection between Ödenburg and Wiener Neustadt. Interestingly, shortly before it reaches Mattersdorf, the track forks, which shows that in 1845 (relatively late in the planning process of the line), another option for the track which had been discussed in 1838 had not been ruled out.43 Crossing the valley near Mattersdorf was a challenging task which Schönerer was only able to solve almost ten years after the first plans were made with better knowledge of railway construction, which he acquired in part during his travels to England and America.44 The two town plans of Ödenburg and Wiener Neustadt are executed in greater detail and colored red as well. This accentuation automatically establishes a visual hierarchy among the villages and towns on the map: Ödenburg and Wiener Neustadt are of greater significance.

The visually most striking feature of the map, however, is the depiction of the terrain. Although declared in the title of the map, the projected railway track is not its sole focus. The topography of the landscape is much more prominent to the eye. This begs the question: why did the mapmaker, whose name was not indicated, chose this mode of presentation? Can we perhaps identify visual traditions to which the mapmaker was harking back which would explain the accentuation of nature and the terrain?

The dense placement of hachures to model the form and height of hills and slopes and the use of primarily dark colors like browns and greens make it hard to read the cartographic symbols and labels and spot the course of the railway line at a single glance. Color patches and hachures form a solid visual entity. The visual dominance of landscape features and landscape rendering indicates that the concept of space inscribed into the map was still routed in an environment dominated by nature. Building traffic infrastructure still meant an adaption to landscape. Although humans remodeled the environment according to their needs, until the nineteenth century, hills, mountains, and rivers still presented barriers that could only be overcome only with difficulty and effort. The course of a street or the position of a dwelling, harbor, or bridge were strongly geo-determined.45 It is thus comprehensible that topographic features seem to be disproportionally presented in especially early railway maps: the supremacy of nature and the achievement of partly overcoming natural barriers (for instance by building viaducts46) are inscribed into the visual language of the map: the railway starts to subdue nature. Moreover, for constructors and financers, the exact course of the line, possible obstacles on the way, the position of stations and the feasibility of a project (which depended on these factors) were of central importance. Maps for this user group had to be detailed and precise.

The visual language of the map from 1845 is from many perspectives in line with stylistic traditions of eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century topographic cartography. Extensive field measurements were being taken with increasing frequency and regularity in Western and Central Europe in the eighteenth century, as absolute rulers sought to document their entire sovereign space. These were the first attempts to measure every detail of the environment scientifically, resulting in accurate maps of the terrain. The first official field measurements of the Austrian crownlands were taken during the reign of Maria Theresia (1717–1780) by the military (Josephinian Land Survey/Josephinische Landesaufnahme/Erste Landaufnahme, 1764–1786).47 Between 1764 and 1786, more than 3,500 maps were drawn. A second Austrian land survey was conducted in the first half of the nineteenth century (Franziszeische Landesaufnahme, 1806–1869). Topographic maps produced during both land surveys show stylistic characteristics similar to the stylistic characteristics of the railway map from 1845. From the perspectives of image section, choice of colors, script, cartographic symbols, depiction of terrain, use of hachures, depiction of infrastructure, framing of the cartographic content, etc., especially maps from the second Austrian land survey show striking similarities to railway map.

As pointed out by Krenn, particularly during an early stage of the railway age, railway lines were additionally drawn into older topographic maps.48 Is the railway map from 1845 thus actually an updated version of an older topographic map from the region between Ödenburg and Wiener Neustadt? Without an in-depth analysis of topographic maps from the two land surveys, this assumption cannot be proven or ruled out.

New topographic maps of the area around Wiener Neustadt were made in 1820.49 For the Hungarian land, however, the latest maps were only from around 1782–1785.50 The area behind the Austrian-Hungarian border was not officially mapped again until 1856 (e.g. Pöttsching (Pecsenyéd/Pečva), Pöttelsdorf (Petőfalva), Mattersdorf, Sopron, Agendorf).51 The different dates of origin of the survey maps suggest that the mapmaker of the railway map from 1845, rather than adding information to an older map, used different topographic maps from the area to draw the railway map Uibersichtskarte der zwischen Oedenburg und Wiener-Neustadt im Jahre 1845 im Bau begriffenen LOCOMOTIV-EISENBAHN.

Because no information about the cartographer of the map, its customer, or place of presentation or publication is given on the map sheet, we can only speculate about the purpose of the map. Furthermore, we do not know whether copies of the manuscript map were made. A higher number of publicly available copies would also imply a larger circle of potential map users. Given the year in which the map was produced (in 1845, the railway line was still under construction), the prominent heading, and the way in which the railway connection is presented as a red line cutting across the hilly and challenging landscape, it is imaginable that the map addressed potential buyers of stocks for the railway line rather than travelers. In April 1845, during the general assembly in Ödenburg, it became obvious that the railway project would be much more expensive than estimated. Instead of 1.5 million Gulden, construction of the railway line would cost more than 2 million Gulden. The two monumental viaducts, changes in the track, and a restaurant near the station in Ödenburg led to an increase in costs. New stocks had to be sold in order to cover the expenses and advance construction work.

Space as a corridor: The narrow view of mapmakers concerning
the railway line from Ödenburg to Wiener Neustadt

A phenomenon present especially in early railway maps is a corridor-like view of the mapmakers concerning the railway lines and the landscapes along the track. The geo-determinacy of infrastructure apparent from the visual language of map one is also reflected in the mapmaker’s relatively narrow view of the terrain. Apart from the projected railway line, other factors relevant for the construction of the track are mapped, such as the terrain, nearby settlements, and infrastructure. As noticeable from map one, a favorable course of the route through uneven, hilly landscape required to some extent an adaption of the track to the terrain, resulting in a situation in which the railway line is more or less enclosed by natural barriers (hills, slopes, rivers, streams, etc.). One gets the impression of a natural corridor. The terrain outside the sphere of influence of the railway line is irrelevant to the project and user groups of the map, and consequently, this area is not featured (blank spaces on map).

In addition to creating a depiction of nature and natural barriers as a corridor, the engineers’ and mapmakers’ view of space also resulted in a narrow corridor perspective that ultimately was translated onto the map. The design of the railway track, the beginning and end points, and stops on the way compose the corridor. Especially in the first decade of steam-powered rail traffic, when a network of rails had not yet been established and connections existed primarily between cities or other points of economic interest, it was not yet seen as necessary to document other long-distance traffic connections. From the point where a railway line stopped or ended, travel was continued using means which had been in use before the age of the railway: by stage coach or on foot.

On the railway map from 1845 as well as on the map from 1843, roads are shown, but they mostly lead to nowhere. Still, we find indications of direction (e.g. Weg nach Froschdorf, Figure 1).

The railway map from 1843, Situations Plan der Neu anzulegenden Eisenbahn, von Oedenburg bis Wiener Neustadt (Figure 3), pushes the notion of space as corridor even further.

Figure 3. Situations Plan der Neu anzulegenden Eisenbahn, von Oedenburg bis Wiener Neustadt, (General site plan for the future railway from Oedenburg to Wiener Neustadt), Mihály Vágner, (222 × 48,5 cm), hand drawn, colored, on paper, 1843. Accessed on October 7, 2018.
https://maps.hungaricana.hu/en/MOLTerkeptar/7688/view/?bbox=-1170%2C-8926%2C27792%2C2862

Map three shows another, not realized trace design in which the railway track was planned to go through the villages Pöttelsdorf, Draßburg (Darufalva/Rasporak), and Baumgarten (Sopronkertes/Pajngrt). The mapmaker was Mihály Vágner from Ödenburg. The map is relatively large in size (222 × 48,5 cm), has an elongated format,52 and is hand-drawn on paper. The elongated manuscript map focuses almost exclusively on the planned railway line, and the surrounding area is left out. From the perspective of style, the map resembles traditional road plans and maps for waterways.

In comparison to the map from 1845, surroundings are rendered more schematic. Landscape characteristics are presented in a plain, nearly geometrical form, as was typical for cadastral maps and site plans of that time. The environment along the track is given little importance. Forests, fields, and streams are cut off at the edge of the corridor. The planned railway line is superimposed onto the existing network of villages and roads, establishing a linear connection between both cities and, thus, a new hierarchy within the region. Within the spatial corridor of the future railway line, the distance between the cities Ödenburg and Wiener Neustadt shrinks significantly. The space to the left and the right the track is considered irrelevant to the new form of travel. Or to use Schivelbusch’s phrasing, the space untouched by the railway gets eliminated.53

Another interesting component of the map from 1843 is that the area behind the Austro-Hungarian border (around Wiener Neustadt) is almost left blank. It is possible that Vágner, who was a Hungarian engineer, official of Sopron County, and land surveyor, had no detailed cadastral information about the Austrian land and that part of the railway line at hand. Also, in 1843, there were still two railway companies responsible for the construction of the line, which is why Vágner might have produced this manuscript map especially for the Hungarian planning team of the Ödenburg-Wiener Neustadt company. A signature on the map sheet with the note “Copirt” indicates that the map is a copy of the original Vágner Situations Plan. The map thus might have been copied several times and spread among a wider group of users. We do not yet know by whom (e.g. constructors, investors, the public) and to what purpose copies of the Vágner railway plan were used.

From corridor to network – The growing importance of traffic junctions on railway maps

Although, as discussed above, the Situations Plan from 1843 does not provide information about the landscape on the Austrian side of the planned railway line, the future traffic junction in Wiener Neustadt (marked as Stationsplatz) is already indicated on the map.54 Here, the line from Gloggnitz to Vienna was going to cross, forming a traffic connection between the Austrian and the Hungarian lands. Though frequent travel by train was not yet very common in the 1840s because a network of lines had not yet been established,55 both maps nonetheless seem to presage the importance of traffic junctions for movement and communication in the Habsburg Monarchy. Although in 1843 the line between Ödenburg and Wiener Neustadt had not yet been built and the southbound railway line was only completed between Vienna Südbahnhof and Gloggnitz, Vágner and/or the potential initiator of the map deemed this traffic junction and the growing network of lines significant for the region.

For the next roughly eighty to one hundred years to follow, until the emergence of automobiles and air traffic, railway lines and train stations remained the most powerful hubs and channels along which people, goods, ideas, images, innovation, and ideologies traveled. They hastened the pace of industrialization, migration, and urbanization, as well as the exploitation of nature.

The railway map published in 1869 by Lehmann & Wentzel in Vienna entitled Neueste Eisenbahnkarte der ÖSTERREICHISCH-UNGARISCHEN MONARCHIE: mit Berücksichtigung der Montan und Industrie Bahnen (Figure 4) shows many characteristics with which the modern-day user of traffic maps is accustomed: a stereographic projection of the area’s surface, a network indicating actual geographic position and schematized layout, station names arranged above one another for better legibility, and a color code for the single branches to simplify orientation. The user finds a coordinate system and a legend listing railway lines and associated color codes. Lines planned or under construction are marked with different graphic signatures (e.g. two thin black lines for a planned track and an alternating pattern of black and white stripes for a railway line under construction). Over the course of twenty to thirty years, a map language for railway lines used in travel developed in Europe and the Habsburg Monarchy/Austria-Hungary which in many ways is still valid today. Given the need to document the growing network and most of all to facilitate travel, the map language focuses on overview and orientation.

The title of the map, displayed in a rectangular cartouche, denotes the fast rate with which the railway network grew at the time. The user holds in his/her hands the newest railway map (die Neueste Eisenbahnkarte) which shows that map production tried to keep pace with the expansion of the network. In the second half of the century, updated maps had to be published frequently; also, the demand for maps was high. Network maps were among the most common in the second half of the century.56 Between 1857 and 1866 the railway network of the monarchy grew at a yearly rate of 327.5 kilometers. As of 1867, that rate rose to 1,352 kilometers of new railway tracks per year.57 Isolated corridors evolved into far-reaching networks with travel connections to many parts of the Dual Monarchy and beyond. The network stretches from the Austrian-German border in the northwest to the Adriatic coast in the south, from Innsbruck in the west to Karlsburg (Alba Iulia/Gyulafehérvár) in Transylvania. Particularly in the northwest, Austrian railway lines connect with the German network, making travel and trade truly international.

As a single glance at the map reveals, Vienna is in the center of the railway network. A majority of the lines built by the middle of the century radiate from the capital Vienna towards national traffic junctions, the most important of them being Pest/Buda, Brünn (Brno), and Prague. From here, the network further expands to regional traffic junctions. In the Austrian part of the empire, the railway network is much denser than in the eastern lands of the monarchy. Many of the lines towards Galicia and Transylvania were still under construction at the end of the 1860s, resulting in cities like Lemberg (Lwiw/Lwów), Czernowitz (Csernyivci, Czerniowce, Cernăuţi), Kronstadt (Braşov/Brassó), and Hermannstadt (Sibiu/Nagyszeben/Hermestatt) being at the far-flung periphery of the monarchy’s network and thus difficult to reach.

The map language, cartographic symbols, and layout and arrangement of content on the map sheet direct the user’s gaze and influence the way the map is read. The center-periphery dichotomy, for example, automatically results in a hierarchy in the virtual space created by the map, which also translates back into perceptions of the physical space. When they see a given site in a central position, map users consciously or unconsciously associate it with power and control.58 All the other points on the map are of subordinate importance compared to the center, in this case, Vienna. Spatial distance is one factor in the establishment or maintenance of a hierarchy. The duration, frequency, and possibility of travel to a place are others. Mapmakers inevitably create hierarchies in space in the sense that the map language always implies a syntactic ordering of its elements. The reader of a map cannot avoid comparing the sites designated on the map and constructing hierarchical relationship among them.

In contrast to the map from 1845, the display of terrain and landscape features is of minor significance on the network map from 1869. On map four, landscape characteristics were reduced to mere markers for orientation. Lakes, rivers, and coastlines help the user of the map get a rough sense of location. Compared to the visual language of the railway map from 1845, where the terrain was very prominent to the eye, there is nothing overwhelming anymore in nature or natural barriers on the 1869 map. The reasons for this are, on the one hand, the changed purpose and thus user group of network maps and, on the other, the modified significance of nature for the railway. The most important reason, however, was simply the growth in rail travel. In the era of industrialization and growing railways, more than ever before, men remodeled nature according to their needs. Tunnels, viaducts, bridges, and embankments are evidence of men’s desire to tame nature and foster mobility. If feasible, a railway track no longer adapts to the terrain. Rather, it cuts through nature in a straight, linear path. Seen from the window of a train, nature and natural barriers lose parts of their daunting quality. While nature is still of importance for engineers, constructors, and investors in railway lines, for passengers, as can be seen in the network map from 1869, the environment becomes a sign on a sheet of paper, helpful if one wants an overview.

In the same sense, as the significance of natural barriers fade, the importance of the display of the country’s frontier rises. Apart from the railway lines, the border is the only feature on the map rendered in color (light red), and this draws the attention of the map user to it. Furthermore, the width of the border is remarkable. In comparison to the border of Austria-Hungary, the inner frontiers are barely visibly, presented as fine, dotted lines which can easily be overlooked among the railway lines and rivers. The idea of space and territory envisioned by the commissioner and/or mapmaker is one of unification and openness. The map talks about one space: one space of traffic, even one space of language and nationality, communicated by the exclusive use of German. Not only are the title and the legend of the map in German (only), names of cities, towns, and lands are also given only in German (assuming they had German names). This gesture erases or denies differences in language and ethnicity, making space seem more national. The multi-ethnic nature of the Dual Monarchy is overlooked (or denied) on the map. The network of railway lines is what binds the space together.

Conclusion

One objective of this paper was to show, on the basis of three railway maps of Austrian /Austro-Hungarian provenience, how the railway shaped space and produced new forms of (cultural) space and how these forms of altered spatial awareness found expression in maps. Taking the methodological approach of Harley into consideration, I analyzed two railway maps of the same railway project, the line from Wiener Neustadt to Ödenburg, from the perspective of the presentation of certain visual components. I showed that the dominance of presentations of nature in early railway cartography was related to a stronger geo-determinacy of early railway lines. Nature was still seen and also depicted in maps as a barrier which confined travel and was only overcome progressively by the middle of the century. In addition, the purpose and user groups of early railway maps could account for the strong accentuation of the terrain and nature in maps. In particular, investors wanted to be informed about the exact course of the line, the terrain, stations and stops along the track, etc. Natural barriers and the (comparatively narrow) range of use of early maps resulted in a corridor perspective concerning the railway lines. Once a railway line was finished, route maps were also used by travelers. Findings drawn from the 1843 map align with the general notion that the railway helped shrink space and even make space disappear.59 As fast train connections between important cities and villages were established, the space between stations lost its relevance for travelers, merchants, etc. It started to disappear from maps and, consequently, also from people’s mental maps. The railway also accelerated the hierarchization of space, which gains increasingly importance with the network maps appearing in the second half of the nineteenth century. Network maps were aimed at a broader public wishing to travel through the monarchy. Nature in these maps has lost its restricting character and became, as shown in the map of 1869, a marker for orientation. At the same time, while space was being hierarchized (e.g. a hierarchy of centers versus peripheries), it was also bound together and unified by the network of railway lines, which went parallel with the political aspirations of the time in the Dual Monarchy. The visual language of the network map from 1869 also suggests the nationalization of space. The perspective chosen on the land, the use of German, the emphasis on governmental centers (and thus power), and the stressing of the outer border of the Dual Monarchy are indications of a progressing nationalization and delimitation of space towards neighboring countries. Further research on the notion of space in railway maps will help provide answers to some of the questions raised in this essay.

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Regional Differences in Development and Quality of Life in Hungary During the First Third of the Twentieth Century*

Zsolt Szilágyi
University of Debrecen
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In this essay, I look for answers to the following three questions: to what extent did the borders of Hungary after the 1920 Treaty of Trianon overlap with borders of structural development in 1910 and in 1930; what does the term “development” mean when we are talking about the Carpathian Basin; and how did geographical differences in standards of living change in the territories under discussion over the course of these two decades. To some extent, the new political borders which were drawn in 1920 in the Carpathian Basin overlapped with the borders which reflected the different levels and patterns of development in the region. This is a consideration which has been given little attention in the secondary literature in Hungary. The developmental structure of the Carpathian Basin in 1910 can be mapped using the GISta Hungarorum Database. One discerns in this structure a major line of development. Within this line, one finds an area in which the level of development was higher than average and, in some places, considerably higher than average. Another distinctive feature of this area was that is had several centers, and this fact was of particular importance from the perspective of the Treaty of Trianon and its alleged consequences. In recent years, groundbreaking research on economic history has persuasively shown that Hungary managed to recover economically relatively quickly after 1920. Numerous factors played a role in this recovery. One of the more decisive, I argue in this study, was the geographical developmental structure of Trianon Hungary, which had several centers. Although the territory of Trianon Hungary was considerably more developed than other areas of the Carpathian Basin, it is quite clear that the economic fault lines which existed after Trianon had in fact existed before Trianon too, and the internal peripheral areas had already formed (and remained essentially unchanged throughout the interwar period). Thus, the Treaty of Trianon did not play any role in the emergence of formation of these areas. The treaty may well have had grave consequences for the country and region, but the developmental geographical structure of Hungary in the interwar period, which ultimately exerted a shaping influence on development in Hungary for the rest of the twentieth century, was not a result of Trianon.

Keywords: HDI change, regional differences in development, Interwar Hungary

Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks

During the last roughly three decades of the twentieth century, both in the fields of geography and history, research focusing on structural analyses was gradually pushed into the background as new analytical perspectives and frameworks gained ground and agent experience became a priority. Thus, quantitative sources and methods which rely on quantitative sources seemed to lose a lot of their significance by the turn of the century. A series of novel postmodern approaches gained ground. This prompted some scholars to raise scientific concerns. For instance, Geoffrey Crossick, professor at the University of London, highlighted that overemphasis on cultura l questions leads to the striking neglect of structural issues and a drop in the number of empirical studies. 1

Crossick was one of the first scholars to encourage the renewal of empirical studies, which was appreciably furthered by the digital revolution, which accelerated dramatically at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Due to the widespread use of personal computers, the sophisticated table management and data management programs, and the increasing use of the geospatial systems in the science of history, a new era of empirical studies dawned. The new quantitative historical studies were inspired in part by a need for a “new materialism” that came in the wake of postmodern history recordings and also by the overwhelmingly popular2 spatial turn.3

The pioneering 2006 study by Róbert Győri entitled “Bécs kapujában” (“At the Gates of Vienna”),4 which was published in the Hungarian periodical Korall, has played a crucial part in scholarship and research in Hungary. The study is an extended chapter from Győri’s doctoral dissertation, in which he lays a new historical geographic bases for measuring differences in the rates of local regional development.5 As far as the selection of variables was concerned, Győri chose indicators of literacy, economics, and infrastructure.6 He used the following six indicators (Table 1–2).

Table 1
Indicators of regional developmental studies conducted by Győri

Table 2
CDI calculation method for component indicators