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On the Frontier Between Eastern and Western Yiddish: Sources from Burgenland

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On the Frontier Between Eastern and Western Yiddish: Sources from Burgenland European Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (2017) 130–147 brill.com/ejjs On the Frontier between Eastern and Western Yiddish: Sources from Burgenland Lea Schäfer* Abstract Burgenland, the smallest state of current Austria, located on the border with Hungary, once had seven vibrant Jewish communities under the protection of the Hungarian Eszterházy family. There is next to nothing known about the Yiddish variety spoken in these communities. This article brings together every single piece of evidence of this language to get an impression of its structure. This article shows that Yiddish from Burgenland can be integrated into the continuum between Eastern and Western Yiddish and is part of a gradual transition zone between these two main varieties. Keywords Yiddish dialectology and phonology – Jews in Austria and Hungary – Eastern and Western Yiddish transition zone Burgenland, the smallest state of Austria today, located on the border with Hungary, once had seven vibrant Jewish communities that stood under the protection of the Hungarian Eszterházy family. There is next to nothing known about the Yiddish variety spoken in these communities. Its geographical posi- tion, however, makes Burgenland interesting for Yiddish dialectology. As Dovid Katz has postulated, it is on the southern end of a transition zone between Eastern and Western Yiddish.1 This article will show that Yiddish * I would like to thank Jeffrey Pheiff, Oliver Schallert and Ricarda Scherschel for checking my English. I also want to thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments. 1 Dovid Katz, “Zur Dialektologie des Jiddischen,” in Dialektologie: Ein Handbuch zur deutschen und allgemeinen Dialektforschung 1.2., eds. Werner Besch et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1983), 1018–1041. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.��63/�87�47�X-�����Downloaded090 from Brill.com09/30/2021 01:30:16AM via free access On the Frontier between Eastern and Western Yiddish 131 from Burgenland can be integrated into the continuum between Eastern and Western Yiddish and is part of a gradual transition zone between these two main varieties. The Yiddish of Burgenland is no longer spoken. For this reason, we have to bring together every single piece of evidence of this language to get an impres- sion of its structure. The sources are often not very suitable for proper gram- matical analyses. But compared to the existing materials of other (Western) Yiddish dialects, the available data from Burgenland look quite promising. Beside a summary of known Yiddish sources from Burgenland, a translitera- tion of a new and neat source is given in the appendix. Using all available sources, this article presents some idiosyncratic struc- tures of Burgenland Yiddish in comparison with data from other Yiddish dia- lects. Due to our incomplete knowledge on Yiddish dialectal variation and the still small dataset of Burgenland Yiddish, this article discusses in the main pho- nological features. 1 Remnants of the Western Yiddish Vernacular There are hardly any sources left from the spoken varieties of Western Yiddish. This is due to the Yiddish writing systems. Until the 18th century, Yiddish (Western Yiddish as well as Eastern Yiddish) had only been written down in a supra-regional variety known as shraybshprakh alef, “written language A.”2 As far as discovered, sources of this shraybshprakh alef indicate only a few reflexes of Yiddish vernacular. New writing systems came up in the mid-18th century in the Eastern Yiddish area. This change may have occurred because of the growing distance between the spoken and the written language and the divergent development between Eastern and Western Yiddish. In the Western Yiddish territory the old shraybshprakh a was still used in addition to German in the Hebrew alphabet known as Jüdisch-deutsch.3 Both writing systems can- not render the spoken varieties of Western Yiddish in a sufficient way. There are only a few remaining sources left written in Latin letters or jüdisch-deutsch that show reflexes of the spoken language from the 19th century. Those texts are, for example, six Maskilic plays, such as Aaron Halle-Wolfssohn “Leichtsinn und Frömmelei” (1795/96) and Isaac Euchel “Reb Henoch oder was thut me 2 Dov-Ber Kerler, The Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 21. 3 Steven Lowenstein, “The Yiddish Written Word in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” LBI Year Book 24 (1979): 179–192. European Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (2017) 130–147Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 01:30:16AM via free access 132 Schäfer dermit” (ca. 1793),4 from the early 19th century or an autobiography of a Berlin merchant.5 Linked to the difficulties of finding textualisations, Western Yiddish vernac- ular is the language’s vital core. The social state of Western Yiddish provokes the gradual language death of this variety. Along with the assimilation of the Jews in German-speaking countries in the 19th century, Western Yiddish was rejected. But the language death of Western Yiddish took more than a cen- tury to take effect. In some places, Western Yiddish stayed alive much longer. Interestingly, by the beginning of the 20th century we find such localities in which Western Yiddish vernacular was still spoken at the edges of the language area: East Frisia,6 Alsace,7 Switzerland and southern Baden8 and—as will be seen—the Burgenland. 2 The “Siebengemeinden” Burgenland is the youngest and smallest province of Austria. Before 1921 it belonged to the kingdom of Hungary. It borders on Slovenia in the south, in the west on the Austrian provinces Styria (Steiermark) and Lower Austria (Niederösterreich), in the north it is contiguous to Slovakia. Its eastern fron- tier borders on Hungary. In keeping with its geographical position, Burgenland provides an example of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a multinational state. 4 Marion Aptroot and Roland Gruschka (eds.), Isaak Euchel, Reb Henoch, oder: Woß tut me damit. Eine jüdische Komödie der Aufklärungszeit (Hamburg: Buske, 2004). 5 Cf. Lea Schäfer, “Jiddische Varietäten im Berlin des 19. Jahrhunderts: Analyse der ‘Lebenserinnerungen’ Aron Hirsch Heymanns,” Aschkenas 21 (2013): 155–177. 6 Cf. Gertrud Reershemius, Die Sprache der Auricher Juden: Zur Rekonstruktion westjid- discher Sprachreste in Ostfriesland (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007); Gertrud Reershemius, “Language as the Main Protagonist? East Frisian Yiddish in the writing of Isaac Herzberg,” LBI Year Book 59 (2014): 123–140. 7 Cf. Richard Zuckermann, “Alsace: An Outpost of Western Yiddish,” in The Field of Yiddish: Studies in Language, Folklore and Literature, ed. Uriel Weinreich (The Hague: Mouton,1969), vol. 3, 36–57. 8 Cf. Florence Guggenheim-Grünberg, Surbtaler Jiddisch: Endingen und Lengau. Anhang: Joddosche Sprachproben aus Elsaß und Baden, Schweizer Dialekte in Text und Ton, 1: Deutsche Schweiz 4 (Frauenfeld: Sauerländer, 1966); Florence Guggenheim-Grünberg, Jiddisch auf ale- mannischem Sprachgebie: 56 Karten zur Sprach- und Sachgeographie (Zurich: Juris Druck & Verlag, 1973); Jürg Fleischer, Surbtaler und Hegauer Jiddisch: Tonaufnahmen und Texte zum Westjiddischen in der Schweiz und Südwestdeutschland (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2005). European Journal of JewishDownloaded Studies from 11 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 130–147 01:30:16AM via free access On the Frontier between Eastern and Western Yiddish 133 Apart from South-Central Bavarian German dialects,9 (Burgenland)-Croatian, Hungarian, Romani and Yiddish were spoken. The discontinuous Jewish history of Burgenland begins in the first century AD with the settlement of Jews in the ancient Roman province of Pannonia. Indications of a larger number of Jewish settlers in the cities of Eisenstadt and Sopron (German Ödenburg) are found from the eleventh cen- tury onward.10 But the increase in Jewish communities in Burgenland started after 1496 when Emperor Maximilian I. banished all Jews from the Austrian provinces Styria and Carinthia (Kärnten) and the town Wiener Neustadt.11 They found refuge in western Hungarian cities like Sopron. Yet in 1526 they were expelled from there too. Many of them settled in Forchtenstein in the north and middle of the current territory of Burgenland, which was pledged to the Hungarian Esterházy family in 1622. On 25 July 1670, Emperor Leopold I expelled approximately 3,000 Jews from the Vienna ghetto Leopoldstadt. The majority found refuge in Burgenland. Under the watch of the Esterházys, the situation of the Jews was relatively safe and they could settle in the eight townships of Eisenstadt, Mattersdorf (today Mattersburg), Kobersdorf, Lackenbach, Frauenkirchen, Kittsee, Deutschkreutz tselem) and Neufeld (cf. Fig. 1). In 1739, the Jewish community צלם .yid) of Neufeld was disbanded. The remaining seven Jewish communities are known as the “Siebengemeinden” (Seven Communities). Up until 1848 the Jews in Burgenland stood as ‘Schutzjuden’ under the special protection of the Esterházys. In Austria, such exceptional living conditions for Jews are known only for the Jewish Community in Hohenems (Vorarlberg) in the western bor- der of Austria.12 Figure 1 above shows the position of the Siebengemeinden in the Austrian state of Burgenland. 9 The German dialects of the Burgenland are themselves located in a transition zone between Central and Southern Bavarian (cf. Peter Wiesinger, “Die Einteilung der deutschen Dialekte,” in Dialektologie: Ein Handbuch zur deutschen und allgemeinen Dialektforschung 1.2 [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1983], 807–900). 10 Gertraud Tometich, Als im Burgenland noch das Schofarhorn ertönte: Die Geschichte der jüdischen Gemeinde von Mattersburg und Umgebung (Mattersburg: Edition Marlit, 2013), 9. 11 This is coincidentally the same year King Manuel I expelled all Jews from Portugal. 12 Tometich, Als im Burgenland noch das Schofarhorn ertönte, 12. European Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (2017) 130–147Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 01:30:16AM via free access 134 Schäfer Figure 1 The Siebengemeinden 3 Previous Research and Materials Most of the Jews living in the Siebengemeinden came from Vienna and Wiener Neustadt and spoke a variety of Western Yiddish. Unfortunately, barely any sources of Yiddish from the South and Central Bavarian regions have survived.
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