Felsőszölnök Summary
Felsőszölnök
Summary
Summary
Felsőszölnök – the Westernmost settlement in Hungary – is a village on the border between the countries and cultures of Hungary-Slovenia-Austria, situated fourteen kilometres from Szentgotthárd, in Vas county. The “triple stone” decorated with the coats-of-arms of the three countries is standing at the meeting point of the Hungarian-Austrian-Slovenian borders, at a height of 384 metres, four kilometres from the centre of the village.
Ninety percent of the population is of Slovenian origin. They have preserved their traditional Slovenian culture and archaic Slovenian dialect up till today. This is the first time ever that the history of the village has been processed with a monographic focus. Before 1989, it had not been possible to carry out any archaeological research in the settlement closed off by the “iron curtain”, and no historic research had been done either. We tried to compose its consistent history on the basis of the mosaics of original archived documents and a small number of publications.
The features of the ground, and the vegetation witness about the high mountain character of the area. The surroundings of Felsőszölnök are protected as part of the Őrség Nature Protection Area, and the Őrség-Raab-Goričko Natural Park extending across the borders of the three countries. Among many unique characteristics, a plant called Teucrium scorodnia has its only habitat in Felsőszölnök within the whole of Hungary. The most characteristic forms of the traditional usage of land – ridged land cultivation, cattle breeding based on hayfields, and the small-peasant selection system of forestry – are still living elements of farming in Felsőszölnök.
The village, situated in a hilly landscape, has two central parts, which points to the fact that two villages merged. The village mentioned as Ivánfalva in written sources (1387) might have been on the top of János-hill. The centre of today’s settlement is situated in a valley next to the main road, and the houses built on hills are clustered to form small groups. The people, many of whom have identical surnames, address and differentiate each other by the names of houses, and house groups.
The Slovenian archaeological research in the vicinity came across the traces of a settlement from the copper age lying close to Felsőszölnök. According to some historical sources, the predecessors of the Slovenians living in Vas county today, settled together with the Avars, in the mid-Rába-Dráva area, in the second half of the VI century. They belonged to the principality of Pribina and Kocel in Lower-Pannonia.
Most of the Slavic people living in Lower-Pannonia merged with the Hungarians by the end of the Arpadian era.
A minor part of them were pushed out to the area of the Western frontier defence lane (the strip of land beyond the march-land). They have been living together with the Hungarians continuously since more than a thousand years. The Slovenians in Vas county today are the descendants of these Slavs of Pannonia.
Felsőszölnök belonged to the domain in Dobra (today Neuhaus, Austria), and its first landlord was the Cistercian abbot of Szentgotthárd (1183–1391), and later the Széchy landowner family (1391–1528). In 1642, the estate was given to Ádám Batthyány. The domain in Dobra and together with it, Felsőszölnök remained in the hands of the Batthyány family until the abolition of serfdom.
Felsőszölnök was first mentioned together with Alsószölnök as one settlement in a charter from 1378: its name was Zelnuk inferior et superior, but in 1387, it was already mentioned separately as Zelnuk superior. The Hungarian Szölnök is equivalent with the German Zemming and the Slovenian Senik. It means “hayfield, hayloft, heyshed”.
At Christmas 1640, a Turkish troop from Kanizsa broke into the village, and thus, it was the first of the settlements of the domain of Dobra to surrender. In the XVI–XVII centuries, even the landlords of the Slovenians living between the Rába and the Mura had to get acquainted with, and accept the doctrines of the Reformation, and also had to convert their serfs to the new religion – first Calvinist and then Evangelical on the basis of the “Cuius regio, eius religio – Who owns the land, holds the religion” principle. The new religion also gave the possibility to the Slovenian serfs to learn reading and writing in their own mother tounge.
Due to the over-population of the barren land, the industrial development of the area, and the customary rights of inheritance, the people living in Felsőszölnök were compelled to work seasonally far away from their place of living, and to emigrate. First, they went to harvest and reap to Zala and Somogy counties, and at the end of the XIX century – with the spread of the sugar-beet – they mostly worked as “sugar-beet workers” in Fejér, Baranya, Győr-Sopron and Pest counties. In the first half of the XX century, they mainly commuted to the domain of Vas county, and to some construction work in Austria. Between 1936 and 1938 it became possible to work in Germany as guest-labourers.
After the second World War, Felsőszölnök could not organise a co-operative, and they only managed to work at the plants in Szentgotthárd in larger numbers after the beginning of the sixties. Therefore, seasonal work continued to be an important source of income. They reaped in the summer, and helped in harvesting maize and sugar-beet in the autumn.
After the first World War, state power changed six times between the Rába and the Mura in the duration of ten months. After the frontiers were finally drawn in 1922, the triple stone was placed at the point where the three frontiers met.
The “iron curtain” period lasted from the second half of the forties until the end of the eighties. Initially, the “iron curtain” was made of barbed-wire, mine-field, trackline, and control zones established in the internal territories of the country. In 1956, the mines and barbed-wire were cleaned away along the Hungarian-Yugoslavian border. The “iron curtain” softened by the beginning of the seventies, it was replaced by a low voltage wire fence. And it was finally pulled down by August 1., 1898.
The demolition of the “iron curtain” during the change of the political system, and the border crossing point of Felsőszölnök-Martinje opened in 1992 put an end to the seclusion of Felsőszölnök. The Association of Slovenians Living in Hungary, the first autonomous cultural organisation of the Slovenians was formed here in 1990, and this is the seat of the National Slovenian Self-Government since 1994. In 1994, the local self-government was transformed into a minority government, so since 1998, an autonomous Slovenian minority government has been operating along the municipality.
The protected landscape, the high mountain air, the internationally qualified border crossing point, the unique triple stone, and the hospitable population of the village have opened the perspective of tourism to earn a living for Felsőszölnök and its people.
