I’m trying to find some information regarding the birthplace of my grandfather and his citizenship.
Here is a copy of his birth certificate.
Although the document is in Hungarian I believe he is Austrian by birth, though I would love to know exactly where he was born.
Any insights anyone can provide as to where he was born and the relation to the fall of the empire (i.e. based on his date of birth, what does this mean in terms of his nationality) would be most appreciated indeed.
Danke schön.
I know zero Hungarian, but doesn’t it say that he was born in Sopron, a town which Wikipedia says “is a city in Hungary on the Austrian border, near the Lake Neusiedl/Lake Fertő”?
Thanks Giles!
So I know my mom has mentioned that she believes grandpa was born in Eisenburg.
Here is the pertinent info I pulled out of the Sopron Wikipedia article:
Following the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ethnic Germans inhabited parts of four western Hungarian counties: Pozsony (Pressburg in German; Bratislava in Czech/Slovak),** Vas (Eisenburg), Sopron (Ödenburg) and Moson (Wieselburg). These counties were initially awarded to Austria in the Treaty of Saint Germain (1919). After local unrest, Sopron’s status as part of Hungary (along with that of the surrounding eight villages) was decided by a local plebiscite held on December 14, 1921, with 65% voting for Hungary. Since then Sopron has been called Civitas Fidelissima (“The Most Loyal Town”, Hungarian: A Leghűségesebb Város), and the anniversary of the plebiscite is a city holiday. However, the western parts of Vas, Sopron and Moson counties did join Austria** and today forms the Austrian federal state of Burgenland, while Pressburg/Pozsony was awarded to Czechoslovakia.
Which would mean that my grandfather, born in 1918, was Austrian?
You could perhaps ask the mods to put something on the order of ‘Q to speakers of Hungarian’ in the title.
Not being much conversant with Hungarian but much with forms 
- the birth seems to have been on 6 March 1918 in Sopron (Hungary) - the city was and is immediately at the Hungarian/Austrian border. (The ‘r’ in the handwriting is in the French mode, so you could confuse it with an ‘n’). The certificate itself seems to have been issued later, in 1938 - that the 1938 Hungarian authorities considered themselves competent to issue it would indicate that it was definitely in Hungary.
If he was born in Sopron, then he was born in Hungary at the time, and the town remains in Hungary.
Despite the Dual Monarchy thing, Austria-Hungary were basically two separate bureaucracies united by the Hapsburg monarch in Vienna, which is why the document is in Hungarian. Had he been born a few miles to the west, the document would have been in German.
Some of my ancestors were born in Hungarian land (very near Lake Neusiedl) that became the easternmost province of post-war (I) Austria because most of the people in the area spoke German, even though the area had been part of Hungary for centuries. Sopron was intended to become part of Austria, but the popular vote led it to become part of Hungary.
From what I can understand, it looks like grandpa was born in Sopron, at Szechenyi something-I-can’t-read (because of the black bar). Maybe street or hospital or something. His father was a wholesaler/distributor, but I can’t read the city name where he was from. His mother was from Vienna, Rembrandt Street #29.
So I guess he was technically Hungarian? Which is odd, because he lived much of his life in Vienna and received an Austrian WW2 reparations pension for many years.
missed edit: Szechenyi ter is the main square in Sopron.
The full translation of the “place of birth” column is: “Place of birth if the birth did not occur at the mother’s residence” or something to that effect.
I’m also terrible at reading Eastern European handwriting, but there is something in the far right notes section that says something about Vienna, lower Austria, and Austrians, but I can’t quite make out the handwriting. I’ll see if I can get somebody to look over this.
pulykamell: I’m also terrible at reading Eastern European handwriting, but there is something in the far right notes section that says something about Vienna, lower Austria, and Austrians, but I can’t quite make out the handwriting. I’ll see if I can get somebody to look over this.
wow, nice catch!!! Can’t wait for more info. Thanks!
Now that I know a little bit about my ancestors from Hungary, I wonder what they thought of themselves. I know they spoke German, but they did register themselves as being “Hungarian” in origin in the 1900 census records I’ve seen. I also found an old book online that covered the history of the town in Wisconsin where they settled. In it I found that the group of people that my ancestors immigrated with were apparently collectively known as “Bohemians”…but Bohemia was a whole other part of the old Austrian state. I wonder if that label got attached to them somehow by other folks (perhaps because another cluster of German speaking immigrants actually from Bohemia were already established), because I wouldn’t think they’d give that label to themselves.
andrea_green, pardon me if you already know this, but at the time of your grandfather’s birth (March 1918–I’m trusting others on this) the Austro-Hungarian empire still existed. It was divided into two sub-units, Cisleithania and Hungary. Each subunit had its own government and laws and ran its own domestic affairs, but the Austrian imperial government in Vienna ran military and foreign affairs. The Emperor’s full title was “Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary”.
Each sub-unit was ethnically diverse. The fact that you happened to live in Hungary didn’t necessarily mean that you called yourself Hungarian, or spoke Hungarian. It did mean, however, that you were subject to the Hungarian government and laws (as well as the Imperial government).
You father was born in Hungary. From your description, it sounds as if his family were German speaking, ethnic German-Austrians living in Hungary, who were citizens both of Hungary and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (much like Americans are citizens of both state and nation).
Later in 1918 the Central Powers lost the war, and Austria-Hungary broke up. Austria and Hungary became separate republics, fully independent of each other, and the outlying regions of each were hived off into various other countries.
This could be uncomfortable for people whose ethnicity didn’t match the nation in which they now lived. The peace treaties which ended World War I contained clauses which bound the new states to allow immigration by, and grant citizenship to, their stranded ethnic nationals in other countries. Perhaps your family took advantage of such a provision to relocate to Austria after the war.
The birth certificate is dated 1938, and printed on a form dating from 1937. 1938 was the Year of the Anschluss in Austria. I wonder if the Nazi takeover had anything to do with your grandfather’s need to document the circumstances of his birth.
I too have ancestors from the Austrian Hungarian empire and being born in the Hungarian side doesn’t mean he is Hungarian. Within the Austrian Hungarian Empire there were Polish people, Hungarians, Romanians, Roma, Moldavian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Czechs, Slovaks, Germans and Austrian people. It was a very culturally diverse region and as Freddy the Pig stated, many people where stranded in a region which became another nation.
I have some distant relatives who were born in Sopron and who are ethnically Hungarian. My understanding is that the city was ethnically very mixed between German/Austrians and Hungarians, although Hungarians were the majority. Which is why it’s part of Hungary today.
The name of mom is ethnically Germanic (Stern), and it looks like the father’s name might be, too. But I can’t figure out what it’s supposed to be. It’s David Praiter or something like that? Like I said, I’m terrible at the old school handwriting.
Joseph Protter.
(Well, actually David Protter–I was asking about your great grandfather, but same difference–it was the surname I was having a hard time deciphering.) This is why I hate reading this old handwriting. The “o” in “Protter” looks just like the “a” in “David” that follows. How in the heck am I supposed to figure out one is an “o” and the other an “a.” Am I missing some subtlety? ETA: Actually, now that I look at it, it seems there might be a little tail missing from the “a” in David because of the black-and-white bitmap scan. A grayscale scan may have shown this tail.)
Oddly, I have relatives with the name Stern who are, nevertheless, Hungarians. At least, they speak Hungarian, not German, and they don’t have any relatives who speak anything other than Hungarian.