HENRY A. FISCHER
Numerous histories and studies of the Great Swabian Migration of the 18th century have been written and published, and the tragic fate of many of their descendants in our own time has also been chronicled. Most of these are available in languages other than English. Much of that research forms the backdrop of “Children of the Danube,” which is the author’s attempt at telling the stories behind the history. Personal stories that weave the tapestry of the lives of his extended family with those of the other families and individuals who joined them after venturing down the majestic, sometimes turbulent, Danube River, taking them on a quest that is common to all people: the search for the Promised Land.
That is what they sought in the devastated Kingdom of Hungary, recently liberated after an oppressive one hundred and fifty year occupation by the Turks. Leaving the Danube River behind them, they would be confronted by a wilderness, disease-ridden swamps, dense forests, isolation, primitive living conditions, marauders and brigands. They would find themselves at the mercy of greedy landowners and rapacious nobles, and would have to endure the final onslaught of the Counter Reformation in their pursuit of religious freedom. This is what awaited them, in responding to the invitation of the Hapsburg Emperor Charles VI. It was hardly what the handbills circulating throughout south western Germany had promised.
How they would respond, who they would become as a result of it, and what sustained and formed them into the “Children of the Danube,” as a distinctive and unique people among the Danube Swabians will unfold, in the telling of their tragic and yet heroic story.
Henry Fischer was born in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, the son of Swabian immigrants from Hungary. His parents’ lives, and those of their families from across the generations, are part of the heroic and tragic history of their people that became the inspiration and impetus for writing “Children of the Danube.”
He is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and Waterloo Lutheran Seminary. Currently he resides in Oshawa, Ontario with his wife Jean. They have two sons, Stephen (married to Sonya) and David (married to Krista) and share in the lives, hopes and dreams of their grandchildren: Julianna, John, Evan and Luke, who too are children of the Danube.
Just south of the shores of Lake Balaton, and its blue placid waters, the verdant green rolling hills of northern Somogy embrace a village, deep in one of the valleys, watered by a fast flowing brook and some tributary creeks. The soil is rich and red, and row upon row of vineyards snake their way across the hills rising up to meet the next incline and plunge back down to the valley floor where the village lies nestled around a church. At the crest of another hill the baroque tower of a different church stands as a sentinel over the valley. The outline of a chalice is cleverly designed into the upper portion of its doorframe. It is the sign of its identity, and the identity of the people who came to this valley and founded the village of Kötcse.
Kötcse is the cradle of the German settlement of Somogy County, in south western Hungary, part of an area often known as Swabian Turkey. This is where four families will meet, whose stories will weave a tapestry of a common heritage shared by all of those who joined them on the trek down the Danube River in the early 18th century into a far off land known as Hungary: the Fischers, the Frischkorns, the Bitzs and the Tefners. Each family, in its own way, is related to the life, history and faith of this obscure, out-of-the-way village and its people. Yet, although Kötcse lies only some thirty miles north of where the major Swabian settlements would later thrive, it was all but forgotten in their memories, recollections and oral history. This is where we took root, grew, eventually flourished and spread. This was the place of our infancy in Hungary: our cradle in the land we had hoped could become a home for us.
The story of the founding of Kötcse is of course, part of a much larger epic in the annals of the tumultuous history of south eastern Europe. It is but a brief chapter in the Schwabenzug... the Great Swabian Migration of the 18th century.
Following the defeat of the rampaging Turkish hordes laying siege to Vienna in 1683, the Imperial Austrian Army hurled them back throughout south eastern Europe. The liberation of Hungary after 150 years of rule by the Turks, exposed the ultimate results of their occupation: devastation, depopulation, wasteland, swamp and wilderness. The Hapsburg Emperor Charles VI sent out the call for colonists to reclaim the wilderness, and to develop economic life and a new society, in this extension of his domains that now enveloped the Danube basin. The call was extended and heard throughout what was then the Holy Roman Empire, which included vast areas of what is present-day south western Germany. Small principalities, fiefdoms, Episcopal sees, provinces and districts related to the Empire were invaded by “public relations” officials who told the land-hungry, peace-starved, over-taxed peasants bound to feudal masters, of a new life, and new hope, and new opportunities in Hungary. Wherever, that was. They could buy land of their own. They would not have to pay taxes for a given period of time. There was less annual free labour owed to their landlords. And there was so much more. All of the handouts told the same story, “Go east young man!” And the way to go was down the Danube River. That is how we became the Danube Swabians: The Children of the Danube.
