The Fate of Western Hungary
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The Fate of Western Hungary 1918-1921 By József Botlik CORVINUS PUBLISHERS BUFFALO – HAMILTON 1 Translated and edited by Peter J. Csermely Art: MÁRTA BUDA MARC KELLER ISBN: 1-882785-24-X Library of Congress No:2012947894 Printed in the United States of America 2 CONTENTS Foreword …………………………………………………………………..4 Chapter 1: From allied country to territory claiming neighbor Austria and Western Hungary (Westungarn) in 1918–1919………6 Chapter 2: The annexing of the western parts of Moson, Sopron and Vas counties to Austria Saint-Germain-en-Laye, October, 1918 – September 10, 1919 ….28 Chapter 3: The occupation of the Vend region of Vas County by Serbs – the Mura Republic December 1918 – August 1919……………………………..……62 Chapter 4: From the Treaty of Saint-Germain to the Peace Decree of Trianon September 10, 1919 – June 4, 1920………………………………72 Chapter 5: Austrian efforts and the failure of territorial transfer June 1920 – August 1921…………………………………… …90 Chapter 6: The Western Hungary insurrection August 28 – October 4, 1921 ……………………………………117 Chapter 7: The State of Lajta-Banat October 4 – November 4, 1921…………………………………..160 Chapter 8: From the Venice Protocol to the Sopron plebiscite October 11 – December 14-16, 1921……………………....…….182 Conclusion……………………………………………………….………..200 Bibliography………………………………………………………………205 Endnotes…………………………………………………………………..218 3 Foreword The writer of these few introductory lines was born Egyházasrádóc in the county of Vas, immediately in the vicinity of the Hungarian-Austrian Trianon defined border. He attended his four years of elementary school in a one room schoolhouse. (Then I became a student of the Reformed Middle School of Csurgo in 1941.) These biographical details were not put here for diversion, or reasons of boasting. Rather, because Jozsef Botlik’s harrowing book, based on a mass of bona fide fact-supported sources, reminded me – more accurately, ‘provoked’ them out of me. The first memory invoked by the reading of the manuscript was of the Reformed (and every other) elementary school classroom, where I learned writing and much else, and the administrative map of Vas County hanging on the wall. Beginning in Grade 3, not a day would go by without our teacher calling somebody out to the map and ask: “Describe and point out what our county lost with the terrible Trianon peace” (and what we must, as a matter of course, regain). We said and pointed: Austria took the Fels őő r [now Oberwart] and Németújvár [Güssing] districts, Yugoslavia, the Muraszombat [Murska Sobota] district. Our mutilated county thus had seven, not ten, districts. Also, our faces burned for two reasons: the fluster of answering and the humiliation that befell us. However, as I was reading the manuscript, the still smoldering indignity was joined by a shocking thought. What would have happened, the thought struck me as a nightmare, if all the goals of the territory hungry Austrian leadership were met in their entirety, as was the case with our other neighbors, the Czechs, Romanians and Serbs. After all, the strongly left leaning politicians of the newly formed Austrian Republic wanted to commandeer all of Western Hungary: Pozsony [Bratislava], all of Moson, Sopron and Vas counties, and the northwestern part of Zala County to the railway line of Celldömölk – Türje – Zalaegerszeg – Lenti – Alsólendva – Csáktornya. Already in early November of 1918, writes the author, they created in Vienna the Westungarische Kanzlei [Western Hungary Bureau], under whose auspices and direction, prepare, by armed force if necessary, the annexation of 16,000 km 2 of territory. What made it most repulsive was the immoral Austrian mindset. After all, Austria wanted to take purely Magyar populated areas from an associated country, the other half of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, with whom our soldiers shed their blood for four years obeying our common emperor-king. Is there anything more repulsive in the world than to rob someone together with whom we suffered and fell? What seemingly froze a man such as me: My God, what would have happened to me if such vulgar appetite came to pass? If my village, and the entire county, was given to Austria? Would I have even been born? And if yes, what would have happened to me, become of me? An Austrian citizen? A frustrated, neurotic member of a minority, forced to forget his origins, bury his ancestors; a sort-of assimilated Austrian-German? Too terrible to even 4 contemplate – no matter how the craze of internationalism-globalism propaganda rages today. The author’s book, of course, does not address the fate of individuals (like me) but collectively ours, the Magyars. Of that part of the country, which, through more than three years of serious problems and ordeals, József Botlik documents for us in a precise and factual manner, the Hungarian successes. In the end, the Austrian demands were largely warded off between November 1918 and December 1921, thanks entirely to our efforts. The sole minor success in the appalling mutilation of a country was won here as a sign of the nation’s will of the day. It was all thanks to the diplomatic moves following the collapse of Communism in Hungary; perhaps even more to the voluntary resistance, military and civil. Among them, finally, was the compelling of the plebiscite, the demand and resistance of the individual villages that fell into the border zone. Not in last place, the stand taken by the Hungarian armed volunteers (including in the Lajta-Banat) and the strength of the Western Hungarian insurrection, which could successfully effect a change – after the signing of the peace treaty! – from the astounding claim of 16,000 km 2 to a more modest 5,000 km 2? The book, and its theme, exemplifies: No matter how much of a defeated situation a community finds itself, if it does not give up, if it does not give in, no matter how great its opponents, there always was, or could have, an incentive for resistance, for defiance. What’s more, the effort may even bring concrete results. But only if we make, are able to make, the necessary sacrifice, as then in Western Hungary, the greatest one: the brave sacrifice of life. It is thus, even if this heroic example failed to make much of a change in the outcome of the terms of the dictated Trianon treaty or among the Austrians who lost with us. In the newly annexed Burgenland province of Austria, 24,500 people claimed themselves as Hungarians (1910 census and 64,000 spoke Hungarian, too). In our day, the number of indigenous Magyars is around 4,000. By proportion, this represents the greatest assimilation of a Magyar minority, plummeting to 16% of its former number. Not to the great glory of Austrian democracy and minority policies. The name of the historian-author is known today among a wider public, not just among those in the business. His earlier books and studies deal with another, also annexed, region: Sub-Carpathia. They have found favor for a very good reason. It is predictable that this book will also find favorable reception. It is my belief that this book should not be recommended to the attention of readers, rather, due to its subject, reasoning and good style should become mandatory reading – primarily for our countrymen living in the West of Trans- Danubia. And not just them but it would add to all of us with a hazy grasp of history, to our collective Magyar national consciousness. Lajos Für 5 Chapter 1: From allied country to territory claiming neighbor Austria and Western Hungary ( Westungarn ) in 1918–1919 On the eve of the ‘AsterRevolution,’ so called after its emblem [worn by demonstrating supporters-ed .], on the night of October 23-24, 1918, Mihály Károlyi (1879-1955) set up the Hungarian National Council, with himself as president, and unilaterally announcing themselves as the opposition government. On October 31, 1918, Count Mihály Károlyi, the Red count, and his circle forced the takeover of political power in the country. On the same day, the western counties of Hungary – Moson, Sopron and Vas – also formed local Hungarian National Councils, which quickly made decisions to set up similar councils in the towns and villages. In the following days, national councils were formed, even in German speaking settlements, which set as their main tasks: the organization of the feeding of the population and the maintenance of public safety. In Sopron, for example, it was formed on October 31, as a 15-member council, made up of radical, democratic and socialist elements, which officially took power over the city the next day. 1 At this time, the distribution of food for the population was much worse on the Austrian side than on the Hungarian. Following the military collapse of the AustroüHungarian Monarchy, 2 the delegation of the Upper House of the Hungarian National Assembly, led by Baron Gyula Wlassics (1852-1937), president of the Upper House, and members: prince Miklós Esterházy (1869-1920), counts Emil Széchenyi and Emil Dessewffy (1873-1935) – left on November 12, at the request of prime minister Károlyi for a hunting lodge in Eckartsau, on the bank of the Danube between Vienna and Hainburg. Their mission there was to brief Charles Habsburg IV, King of Hungary (1916-1918), of the revolutionary situation in Hungary, as well as consult with the monarch about a “temporary retreat 1 Környei, Attila: Az osztályharc néhány kérdése Sopron megyében a polgári demokratikus forradalom id őszakában (1918. november – 1919. március) [Several questions of the class warfare in Sopron County during the period of the civic democratic revolution (November 1918 – March 1919)]. In: Soproni Szemle , 1969. Issue 1, p. 5. 2 Irinyi, Jen ő: Az osztrák–magyar hadsereg összeomlása. (A volt főparancsnokság okmányai alapján) [The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian army.