cattle and pigs and sheep, and they say of themselves that out of one
Franzfeld man you can make a couple of Jews and there will still
remain a Franzfeld man. They tell how once or twice a Hungarian Jew
has opened a shop in the village, selling his goods very cheaply for
two or three months, at a lower price, in fact, than he paid for them,
and then putting up the prices; but as soon as he does that he is
boycotted. The aliens who have settled in Franzfeld--Hungarians,
Slovaks and Roumanians--have come as servants, have married Franzfeld
girls and are looked upon as Germans. The same German dialect is
spoken as in Würtemberg; troops from that country marched through
Franzfeld during the War. But Serbian, the villagers told me, is the
international language of at any rate western Banat, in spite of the
Magyars who, as in other parts, made for the last few years of their
domination extreme efforts on behalf of their unlovely language. They
supplied Franzfeld with schoolmasters and mistresses who could speak
no German and no Serbian, so that it was very difficult for both
sides. And the authorities told the pastor that the chief truths of
religion, they considered, should be taught in Hungarian. But the
pastor did not agree with them and they let the matter drop. Franzfeld
has seen wild days, particularly in 1848, and her one monument records
a calamity of two of her sons who vanished down a well which they were
sinking. Of itself the land is not very fertile, but the people have
been so successful that they have founded a colony, Franzjosephsfeld,
in Bosnia--they multiplied too greatly for their own soil to support
them. They speak, many of them, five languages, and they will not be
the least worthy of Yugoslav subjects. [Their interests are much more
agricultural than political.] With regard to their multiplication, by
the way, it is related in this centenary book, among much curious
information, that when another Franzfelder comes into the world it is
usual to present certain largesse to the midwife, namely, one gulden
(this was written in Austrian times), a loaf of bread, a little jar of
lard and a few kilograms of white flour. In the old military period
this personage was also, like the doctor and the schoolmaster, "on the
strength." The last of those who bore the rank of Company-Midwife was
Gertrude Metz; she was pensioned after thirty-eight years, and
continued for a few years in private practice.
THE SOUTHERN SLAV COLONISTS AND THEIR RELIGION
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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