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Translation of Das Kolonisationswerk Josefs II in Galizien - Darstellung und Namenlisten by Ludwig Schneider Translation © copyright 2001-2003 by GGD Background and Index of this Galician History book Translation ofDas Kolonisationswerk Josefs II in Galizien by Ludwig Schneider as found in LDS Family History Library microfilm 1256477 (translated by Leona Rosenmeier). Copyrighted and published in Galizien German Descendants publication, an organization dedicated to family history research of the German descendants from the Austrian province of Galicia. Contact: 2035 Dorsch Road, Walnut Creek, California 94598-1126 (925-944-9875). E-mail: wraybet@pacbell.net Chapter I - Introduction (published in the January 1998 GGD #13 publication) This work will show, from official sources, the ongoing settling of Galicia with German farmers, craftsmen, and merchants by Emperor Joseph II, until the death of the Emperor in the middle of the 19th century. It will methodically, from the archives, publish for the first time the names of the farmers and rural craftsmen and of the commercial German setlers in the cities. Likewise the process of colonization is obtained from the files. The material for this work has been taken from the following sources: 1. The land-improvement books of the colonizing time that are presently in the Lemberg (Lvov) archives (earlier the Bernh ardiner archive--Bernhardiner refers to the monastic order of St. Bernard. The archive has two separate sections: the former Galician land archive (files of the city and rural courts) in the Bernhardiner cloister and the former governors' archive. The short history of the Bernhardiner archive follows: After the occupation of Galicia, the first governor, Baron von Pergen, a llowed the Polish city and rural courts to continue temporarily. His successor, the Early of Brigido, however, put an end to them with the directives of 30 May and 31 October 1783 and went further with that of 1 January 1784, the aristocratic courts of the Polish nobles. On 4 March 1780 the basic charter for Galicia was put in. Then with the directive of 27 December 1783 all acts of the city and rural courts for the whole province went to Lemberg and were kept in the library of the Bernhardiner order, which was seized at that time. After the introduction of the basic charter, the government proceeded to survey the land of Galicia. This work took place in association with the institution of settlements. These acts were also collected in the archives. In 1787 on petition of the no ble class 150 scribes were employed classifying the acts of the government. The continuous assimilation and classification were ready in 1800 and an index was also produced. In 1877 the autonomous Galician Land Committee took the archive into its administration. In the restored Polish nation it became the National Archives. The Archive "Podwale 13" is preserved in the old Polish arsenal dating from the time of Wladyslaw IV. Here the acts of the former governments and of the Austrian governorship are collected. The Austrian government had to undertake the surveying of the land because Polish times lacked a complete survey; what was available was constituted from a feudal historic point and the condition of the Polish nobility and was full of gaps throughout. The land survey was needed as basis for the agrarian reform and social change set in motion by Joseph II. As a practical aim th ey had in mind the new tax regulations. For our research the following acts were considered: a) The "Fassionsacten". A so-called under-commission of representatives of all surveyed village complexes and adjoining neighborhoods, and representatives of the concerned district offices and of the local public administration offices delivered a "pacing off" of the borders and of each meadow of the complexes. Surveyors firmly set the extent, and drew the borders of each piece of ground. The commission set the usage (arable land, meadow, pasture, waste places and clearance places, forest continuance) and the fertility of the soil and its profitability. Lastly came comparison of its previously shown profitability to that of similar places in the area. For arable fields, 4, sometimes 6, classes were distinguished: yi elds of 6, 5-4, 4-3, 3-fold profit. For meadows the classification was by hundredweights of hay and second crop yield, in wooded areas by the yearly taking of timber. In this way the commission gained knowledge of the profitability of the land calculated as 1600 sq. klafters per "Jochen" (1 klafter = 6 ft., 1 sq. klafter = 36 sq. ft.), and gave the tax expectations of "fassion" basis from which to estimate the land tax. b) The Land Appraisal Book. (Land Register). It includes the condition of each individual farmer, village craftsman, the chu rch and school community the manorial inn, the district-held pasturage (common lands), the magisterial, stallion, and bull areas; and specifically includes the following information: name of the place, field names, topographical number of the named property, house number of the occupant, first and last name of the occupant, size in sq. klafters, size in Jochen, cultivation type, estimated harvest yield per koretz and garnetz (old unit of measurement) for meadows by hundredweight, money-worth of the yield, calculation of the land tax after the firmly set "Fassions" principles. c) The Overall Summary: It comprised the collected alphabetical list of the village inhabitants, the sizes of the properties of each individual owner, the sum of these properties in Jochen and the number of the properties, the approximate profit, and the land tax. d) List of house-rent tax rate. The Bernhardiner archive includes such land registers from two ti me periods: one comes from the years 1784 until 1789, a second pre sents land surveys and land tax surveys from the years 1819 / 1820. They show the necessity of undertaking a new survey and regulation after the passage of 3 decades of earlier reclamation or also inversely through early disuse or because of floods, quicksand, or other circumstances; also changes in the personal circumstances of the owner and the worth of the land itself. Not all of the original settlements are listed in the Be rnhardiner archive. The land book omits many settlements from 1784 and after, omits others from 1819 / 1820, and other settlements exist in neither book, so that of the 194 original colonies set down in Galicia, the land books cover only 125 settlements altogether. The land books are in German or Polish. In many written in German, it is obvious that the writer had incomplete or faulty mastery of the German language because the scribe badly mutilated the names of the colonists, or the writer had an illegible handwriting, so many of the names are indecipherable. In the colony charts we have put a question mark behind such names. We have provided above the table on the left the Archive Signatur (label, catalog number) and on the right the public settlement, the political district (Kreis) and the governmental domain (abbreviation "Saale"); for the private settlements, the Kreis and the corresponding tax office at that time. II. The second source from which we derived the material in this work is the National Archives in Lemberg "ul. Podwale 13", the for mer government archive. It preserves under the key words "Publica et Politica" and "Normalia" the official documents of the former Galician government of the Austrian land administration, especially as related to the colonization. Here are found the "Fassionen". To supplement the many gaps in the Bernhardiner archive, we have utilized for the description of the technical transactions of the settlements the countless lists of the economic administration about the arriving and already settled immigrants. III. The ancestral places of the colonists also seemed important to us. In the documents of the Bernhardiner archive the ancestral places are not named. Instead they mostly give the "Consignation" of the former government archives. For the rest we used the work Quellen zur deutschen Siedlungsgeschichte in Sudosteuropa (Sources of the German Settlement History in Southeast Europe) by Dr. Franz Wilhelm and Wilhelm Kallbrunner, published in Munich by Reinhardt, which was very useful. (This work is also found on LDS FHL Library microfilm #1256477). The pictures of Konigsau and Brigidau are taken from Bredetzky's book Historischestatisticher Beitrag (historical Statistical Contribution). The settlement plan of Kornelowka was eagerly put into my possession by Mr. Bill Teacher. The remaining plans and designs of buildings we were allowed to use by the management of the Staatsarchiv. The photographs of all plans were prepared at the Polish National Institute Ossolineum at Lemberg. For the introductory depiction of the technical processes of the settlement work, I used as a short review on the political, social, and economic situation until the Austrian takeover, the work of Polish historians Bobrzynski and Kutrzebe and some German writings of the colonization's time and the following decades which treat of the situation immediately before Austrian occupation of review further developments. To that belong: Samuel Bredetzky, Historischestatistische Beitrag zum deutschen Kolonialwesen in Europa, including a short description of the German settlements in Galicia, in alphabetical order with two plans and a map, Brunn, by Joseph George Trassler, 1812. Harquet, Trips through the Carpathians I-II (Katter, anonymous). Magna Charta of Galicia or investigation of the Galician nobles of the Polish nation with the Austrian government, Jassy 1780. The statistical data were taken from Dr. A. J. Brawer's writing. Galicia, How it came to Austria, Leipzig-Wien (Vienna) Freytag and Tesky 1910. The Pillerschen Edicta et Mandata (edicts and mandates) of 1772 supplied the text of the Josephinium Charter - Book 525, Volume 1, held in the Ossolineum has a record of the trip of Joseph II in the year 1783 and the Pergen letters. In conclusion, I wish to thank heartily the management of the state archives and the Ossolineum for the extraordinary willingness of both institutes to allow access to the sources. For many valuable indications of facts I owe many thanks to University Professors Hans Koch and Walter Kuhn, Beslau; finally, I owe Mr. Viktor Kader thanks for acceptance and printing in the series "East German Researches." Lemberg in the summer of 1938. Dr. Ludwig Schneider |