{"id":2492,"date":"2014-09-14T07:00:24","date_gmt":"2014-09-14T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2492"},"modified":"2014-09-12T09:34:05","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T13:34:05","slug":"coming-to-amerika","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2492","title":{"rendered":"Coming to Amerika"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a historical irony, both of my paternal grandparents listed their country of origin as Hungary when they immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s and continued to do so in census records up through 1940, yet both their towns of origin were lost to Hungary after World War I. The treaty of Trianon punished Hungary for siding with Germany in that war, and gave vast areas of its territory (see map) to surrounding countries. Hungary once comprised all the pink areas, but today is just the red-outlined middle portion of the map that includes Budapest.<\/p>\n

\"Dissolution<\/a>

Dissolution of Austria-Hungary (source: en.wikipedia.org)<\/p><\/div>\n

The town I believe with some confidence was the original home of my grandmother\u2014Maria Krausz\u2014is now part of Slovakia. What on the map is labeled \u201cCzechoslovakia\u201d was split in 1993 into the prosperous Czech Republic and the proud but impecunious Slovakia (on the map, the pink part of \u201cCzechoslovakia\u201d). Similarly, the small town in Transylvania that I believe my grandfather\u2014Ferencz Hegyi\u2014emigrated from is now part of Romania. This remarkable territorial loss helps explain the running street battles between the Hungarian and Romanian boys in the Dearborn, Michigan, immigrant neighborhood where my father and his brothers and sisters grew up in the 1920s.<\/p>\n

The history of middle Europe is long and complex and generally unknown to Americans, unless they\u2019ve made a special study of it. I learned a tiny portion when we took our 2013 Danube cruise from Budapest to Bucharest, as I did some pre-cruise reading. I hadn\u2019t known, remembered, or thought about the many years in which that part of the world was under Ottoman rule. Centuries before that, the Roman empire had a significant presence there (some remnants of which are still visible). That influence explains why the Romanian language is more similar to Italian than to the Slavic languages (at least in appearance; the pronunciation is different), and the fact that the Hungarian Parliament conducted its business in Latin until the mid-1800s, so I was told.<\/p>\n

One tantalizing possibility is that the Mongolian hordes that repeatedly crossed middle Europe from the East, doing what invading hordes do\u2014raping and pillaging\u2014left a legacy for my family, too. Estimates are that one in every 200 males on earth is related to Genghis Khan. In part that\u2019s because Khan\u2019s forces killed off most of the men where they rampaged, which meant his own genetic heritage had less competition from the existing population. Khan, his son, and his grandsons had dozens of legitimate\u2014and who knows how many illegitimate\u2014sons who spread his genetic code far and wide.<\/p>\n

In 1241, Mongol forces conquered medieval Hungary at the Battle of Mohi. An idea regarding how this distant episode might relate to our family\u2014if it does\u2014was unexpectedly sparked by an experience I had in the dentist\u2019s chair. The endodontist required a large number of visits to finish my root canal (don\u2019t ask), and finally said, \u201cNo wonder it\u2019s taking so long! You have an extra root on this tooth. I hardly ever see that, except among my Chinese patients.\u201d Thanks, Great Khan.<\/p>\n

\"Gizella,<\/a>

(photo: author)<\/p><\/div>\n

History also explains the tantalizing bit of information from aunts Gizella and Clara that their mother was actually German, which was always a little confusing. It turns out that the immigration of German-speaking peoples into Hungary was widespread and began in approximately 1000, when German knights came into the country in the company of Giselle of Bavaria (Gizella in Hungarian), the German-born Queen of Hungary\u2019s first king, Stephen I. (Boldog Gizella, in the stained glass panel means \u201cBlessed Giselle\u201d). Hungary by the 1800s had numerous German settlements, which is how Maria could be both Hungarian and<\/em> German.<\/p>\n

According to the manifest of the ship Amerika, <\/em>which by a process of elimination I believe included my grandmother among its passengers, Maria traveled to the United States from Dob\u0161in\u00e1 (German: Dobschau) Hungary (photo below). Dob\u0161in\u00e1 is located in the Carpathian Mountains, \u201cto the south of the beautiful Straten\u00e1 valley,\u201d near the Hnilec (Slana) River, and enclosed on all sides by mountains.The historic postcard below is of a hotel built near the town’s famous Ice Cave.<\/p>\n

In the town\u2019s heyday, local tilt hammers produced high-quality steel, and so it was no accident that during the anti-Habsburg uprisings of the 18th century, it was Dob\u0161in\u00e1 that supplied swords, cannonballs, and rifle barrels to the rebel armies of Ferenc R\u00e1k\u00f3czi II. When peace was established between the Habsburgs and the rebels, army workshops in the town had to be torn down. With the lengthy history of steel-making in her home town, Mary\u2019s ultimate residence in the shadow of the Ford Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan, and the patina of fine steel grit on every surface must have felt very familiar.<\/p>\n

\"Dobsina<\/a>

(source: wikimedia.org)<\/p><\/div>\n

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