Nagyharsány Summary
Nagyharsány
Summary
Summary
The settlement of Nagyharsány was formed at the foot of Szársomlyó, the 442 metre high elevation of the Siklós–Villány mountain. Its neighbourhood was inhabited as early as in prehistoric times. After the Roman conquest, the migrating peoples also settled in the region. There can also be found dim traces of the Hungarian settlers. There are some specific data from the X century that serve as evidence for the settlement. The history of property ownership has been recorded in charters since the XIII century. It was a royal estate, and its castle was built in the fear that the Mongolian attack may be repeated. Several settlements were attached to it. A castle domain was formed in Harsány. Its history was fraught with constant fights between the lords of the domain, and the big landowners during the XII–XV centuries. It belonged to the domain of Draskovich, a governor of Croatia at the very beginning of the XVI century. It obtained the rank of a borough in 1505, at the peak of its development. During the Turkish rule, the village was a nahije centre. It was a significant settlement in the region with one hundred and thirty tax-paying families. It was a purely Hungarian village. It was basically devastated during the fifteen-year war, and it was plundered by the Turks and the Haiduks from Szigetvár. It was an uninhabited village in 1681. During the military campaign against the Turks, a decisive battle, which led to the liberation of Hungary from the Turkish rule was waged here, next to the Harsány-hill in 1687.
Its temporary development could be seen during the management by the chamber between 1688–1698. That was the time when it again got into the hands of a private landowner. The village was donated to Count Caprara. Its life was being settled when domestic warfare came, known as the “Serbian havoc” during the Kuruts wars, when the Serbian troops devastated the whole of the settlement. Its people were killed, and the village was burnt. In the XVIII century, it was acquired by the Batthyány family by inheritance and purchase, and through their targeted management, it became the most important village of the Siklós domain.
Its landowner was Kázmér Batthyány, a progressive thinker in the Reform Age. The serfs took an active part in the freedom fight.
During the first free elections, the village took a decisive role in electing Mihály Táncsics. Its mainly Calvinist and Hungarian priests built up a significant resistance during the absolutism. In 1864, middle-class ownership became firm in the course of a general distribution.
There were significant infrastructure developments in the settlement between 1867 and 1914. This brought the settlement the rank of a large village in 1905.
The war and the occupation by the Serbs between 1914 and 1918 seriously cast its development back. During the period of the two world wars, significant development could be seen again, the basis of which came from agricultural production, quarrying, and later between 1936 and 1944, the tax on bauxite exploitation. The settlement obtained a national, and even a European fame with its outstanding grape and wine production.
The village had purely Hungarian population from the age of Árpád until the XX century. Reformation played an important role in its religious development. It had a reformed population from the middle of the XVI century until the seventies of the XIX century. It was one of the Calvinist centres of Baranya county. The religious polemics that took place here in the XVI century had a special significance in the history of the Hungarian reformation. The Catholic inhabitants arrived in the settlement with industrial developments, and they already outnumbered the Calvinists between the two wars.
Its cultural and educational conditions were determined by the fact that Nagyharsány was one of the Calvinist centres of the region. We know that it had developed schools since the XVI century, and the highly educated priests of the local parish played an important role in public education until the end of the Second World War. Most of them studied at European universities.
The community of the village that strongly preserved their folk traditions, started to erode, with its traditions changing, due to the industrial development, and the “socialist transformation” of agriculture after the Second World War.
