Mártély Summary
Mártély
Summary
Summary
The area lying in the direct vicinity of river Tisza with its rich flora andfau- na, its arable land and pastures already attracted Neolithic man. Its surroundings were permanently inhabited during the migration of people.
After the Hungarian settlement king St Stephen donated the villagesalong the Tisza, together with its lands and fishing waters, to the Benedictine abbey in Zalavár. The settlement dates from the Arpads era andits church was named after the martyr Saint Adrian. It recovered from the Mongol invasion, survived the devastation of the Turks, but became an uninhabited puszta during the wars to expel the Turks.
This was the situation in which in the year 1723, Count Sándor Károlyi acquired Mártély, which was the first of the seventeen pusztas in Vásárhely. His son planted tobacco plantations directly on the bank of the Tisza. Farmers from Vásárhely had their animals grazing on the fields of the earlier village and later, on the basis of an official document stipulating their commitments, they built dwellings which later became the farms, on their land. The tobacco growers were active for more than one hundred years on the bank of the Tisza. Their activity came to an end with the Tobacco monopoly, but in Mártély, there was also another reason for the discontinuation of their activities. With the construction of the dam on the Tisza (1862), the village was now situated within the dikes. Due to the increased water level, the inhabitants were forced to build new houses along the Vásárhely-Mindszenti road.
This resulted in problems in subsistence and forced the inhabitants of the village to change their lifestyle. Some of them turned to the already established practice of fishing, others entered into the service of the smallholders in Vásárhely as servants and agricultural labourers. The closed community stayed on in the village itself.
A great change was brought about in the life of the village by Hódmezővásárhely, municipal borough annexing Mártély as well, together with Gorzsa puszta. Since that time it became an integral part of the Vásárhely neighbourhood, not even a farm centre was created in the settlement. Its houses were assigned individual numbers like houses belonging to a farming world. None of the four streets were given a name. The village received another shock in 1892, when the 86th. canal was finished, which turned the Tisza in Mártély into a backwater. Mártély was no longer part of the navigation route. Special flora and fauna came into existence on the mortlake.
The settlement began to slowly develop again after the Szentes railway line was constructed. They built their own church. There was a bustling cultural life at schools and in reading circles. Some enthusiastic teachers organised Tisza festivities. They also became more involved in agriculture, and no longer worked only as serfs or labourers, but land lease became wide spread among them, especially in a form of métayage where half of the resulting produce was given to the landowner from these small scale detached farms. Religious separation also began to disappear due to the school integration and mixed marriages. The First World War and the subsequent Romanian invasion (battle at Mártély) took a lot of victims both in terms of human life and financial hardship. After the war, in the misery afflicting rural areas, they started to look for a different route. In 1921, tourism was expected to improve their subsistence levels. A lido was opened and the Tisza festivity was revived. Painters had already created the reputation of a beautiful landscape. Guests were invited from the capital and catering was organised for them. But a real boom would have required the development of the infrastructure as well. Vásárhely, however, was not very enthusiastic about the implementation of such grand plans because it was afraid to be “detached”.
Mártély did not have any independence, any autonomous leaders, or intellectuals of its own. These were the first objectives in the struggle for independence from the town of Hódmezővásárhely. They asked for a doctor, a graveyard, cattle ownership papers and a Market. Their requests were slowly fulfilled, step-by-step. Regional public administration, for instance, was only established in 1946. And still, in the first three year plan, the interest of the village was visibly disregarded. The Law only provided the village with an autonomous status on the 1st January 1950. This was the time when the earlier Mártély neighbourhood was attached to the village. The economic life of the village was still marked by the fact that 98 percent of its population was engaged in agriculture. The distortions of the planned economy made the life of the population bitter, and compulsory delivery to the state effected even fishermen.
This was however the period when the foundation for progress was laid. A new village hall was built, true, quite a way away from the earlier village. Later on, the new houses of the village were built around it. The area was populated with a real momentum after 1960, although the development of lido life was started early in the 1950s. The resort facilities of companies and private individuals mushroomed in the backwater area, basically in the place of the earlier horticultural village of Mártély, within the protective dams of the Tisza. Painters were especially attracted after 1957 by the summer camp established here to give opportunity for creation and exhibition.
Interest has risen in the heritage of the village. You can now trace the shaping identity of the inhabitants of Mártély. A fish has been put in its new coat of arms, referring to sports fishing, and a water lily is there to symbolise natural resources. The village became a resort community in 1964.
