Danube Swabians in
Syrmien, Croatia, Slavonia & Bosnia
The
Removal of the German Language from Government and School
After 1860, the
language issue in
Croatia was taken up with great
vehemence and as a result German disappeared as the language
of the Courts.
By action of the
Sabor on October 5, 1861 all government authorities and
officials had to be able to speak either Croatian or
Serbian. All representatives elected to the Sabor also had
to speak one of the languages. On October 13, 1861 the
language of instruction in the schools was to be
Serbo-Croatian, and German could no longer be taught as a
subject in the high schools. But Emperor Francis Joseph
vetoed the new regulations. The Croatians found other ways
to impose their decree, beginning in the cities. But in
most of the German towns and cities, the Germans were able
to maintain the use of their language and elect mayors,
parliamentary representatives who were German speaking.
In 1868 the
Compromise between
Hungary and
Croatia and Slavonia was signed that granted some autonomy on domestic
and religious affairs.
It is interesting
that in their negotiations with the Hungarians they used
Kossuth their fiercest enemy as their model. Kossuth had
said that the evolving middle class in the towns would be
the bearer of the national movement and the ultimate enemy
would be the Germans. “Our future depends on a middle
class. The nobles are easy to incorporate, but they are
few, the source must be the citizens of the free cities.
But they must become Hungarans. Our cities to a great
extent are German, which means that commerce and industry is
in German hands. It is our nationality that is threatened
by them. They are the enemy. Kossuth’s words met a
responsive chord among the Croatians.
But Srem was a
different story. No middle class evolved among the early
agricultural settlers. They brought their clergy and
teachers with them. After 1848 a few farmers sent their
sons to study for the priesthood or teaching. Their
education was either in Croatian or Hungarian and did not
prepare them to function as the intelligentsia of their
peasant farmer society. In the 1880’s and after the
distance between the urban Germans and the farmers in the
isolated areas led to them growing farther and farther apart
in other ways as well. The end of both groups appeared to
be just ahead. Neither group was of any significant
political importance.
The Germans in
Srem found themselves caught between the Serbs and the
Croatians who each sought hegemony over the other. Since
the Serbs were the majority, the Croatians hoped to catch up
by assimilating all of the Germans into their language
group. They were quite successful in western Srem, but not
in the eastern part.
What happened was
a resurgence of a “German conscousness” among the German
population. During the last decade of the 19th
century a “German middle class” emerged in Ruma (with a
population of 8,000 of whom 7,000 were Germans) as a result
of some leading personalities who had attended German high
schools outside of Srem, Slavonia and
Croatia, especially in
Graz and Vienna in Austria. This had a tremendous
affect on the deepening of a German consciousness on the
part of all of the scattered German populations. The first
attempt at a German organization and a newspaper began in
Ruma, November 2, 1903. The first members were from Ruma, India, Putinci, Beschka and Neu
Slankaman. There were none from western Srem or Slavonia because information did not flow freely into
those areas. The first edition of “Deutsche Volksblatt fur
Syrmien” (German People’s Paper fur Srem) was a weekly, with
a circulation of 2,000 copies. Soon other newspapers
appeared in other areas. This led to local libraries,
agitation for German speaking priests and teachers,
assemblies and the like. The government legislated against
them, but the Germans had “friends at court” and moved
ahead.
The Croatian press
and public reaction against the German activism was to go on
the attack everywhere. Serbs and Croatians in Srem began to
organize against the German threat. After 1904, Ruma
elected a German mayor and the majority of the Town Council
were Germans, India elected to Germans of its
twelve Town Council members, in Putinci it was eleven out of
twelve and the Germans won a majority in Sotting in 1907.
The Croatian Nationalist parties all had apoplexy.
Did this now mean
that a German candidate could win election to the Sabor?
(Parliament).
There were two
categories of voters: twenty-four years of age, male,
citizen, and a taxpayer. And the following could vote
simply on the basis of their profession: clergy, teachers,
physicians, notaries, all university faculty members,
druggists, engineers and professors. There were 88 seats in
the Sabor for a period of five years.
In 1907 the Social
Democrats pointed out that out of 2,500,000 men only 45,000
could vote. The electoral district of Ruma, which
included: Ruma, India, Putinci, Kraljevci, Petrovci
and Klein Rdinci had only an electorate of 1,108. This was
one of the largest of the electoral districts. There were
six electoral districts with less than 100 voters. This
left the door open to buy votes. The Germans joined all
those calling for universal suffrage just introduced in Austria in 1908. But the government
hedged, afraid that the German and Hungarian minority, which
represented ten per cent of the population, would elect
their own representatives and therefore influence the nation
in some way.
In 1910 an
election reform law was passed against universal suffrage
but expanding the electorate to 200,000 persons. As a
result in Ruma, the Germans were the majority of the
electors at 53.25%, while in Semlin they represented
36.26%. Of the 190,043 votes, 8,388 were Germans, which was
4.4%. No one was happy with the reform.
In 1917 the number
of seats was increased to 122 and all of the electoral
districts were made the same size in terms of the number of
voters on the basis of the Croatian and Serbian populations,
to make sure the minorities did not have the population to
elect one of their own. There was no electoral district
with a German majority. The closest were Essegg-Upper Town 34.7%, Semlin 38.3%, Essegg-Lower Town 37.3% and Dobrinci 31.0%.
