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Summary

 

Inhabited since the reign of the Árpád dynasty, a community in Zala county, Söjtör lies at the edge of Northern Göcsej Hills whilst in the valley of Válicka in the area of the Eastern Zala Hills. A varied relief as well as grateful soil and water conditions characterise this fairly forest-clad land. Long stretches of meadows on the sole, and hillsides excellent for vine-growing that produced wine as early as in the Middle Ages provide people with suitable circumstances to settle down. Also typical of this area is a significant quantity of annual precipitation as well as relatively well-balanced climatic conditions without extremities.

Archaeological researches prove that people inhabited the area in the Copper Age. A major digging, whose findings were published in the 70' , also reveal that, having conquered the country a century before, the Hungarians pushed the south-western borderline tens of kilometres south and westward, and set up a ‘watch-village' near what the southern part of the village is today, around 1060. A fairly large number of castle-serfs with their families populated the watch-village from then on, and served as soldiers at the nearby Zalavár that belonged to the fortified defence line. The respectably populous village witnessed an increase in its population to 300 people in the 12th century when the serfs arriving with the first land-owner settled down near the roughly 150 people of Söjtör who were, over time, raised to noble rank for their former military services.

The name Söjtör appeared for the first time in a charter in 1214 but we can dare to assume, even without any evidence to support it, that the first watch-community wore the same name. The etymology of the name associates it with the word sajtár meaning a dish that also served as a unit of measure in the Ancient Times( and the name itself might refer to the place of the settlement, i.e. a basin of ‘sajtár' shape.

The village's first church, modelled on Zalavár, is supposed to have been built in the late 11th century in honour of Saint Adrian on what is called the hill of the Upper cemetery now. It was two generations later that the village saw the first landowner arrive in the neighbourhood. He was a Thuringian knight from the German Hoholt family, and the forefather of the Hahót-Buzád family whom Hungarian king László III. endowed with significant pieces of land in this region (His family name has survived in the name of Hahót, a settlement next to Söjtör) and elsewhere. For a deed of endowment dated from the 14th century regards the servants of the castle as extinct (a nobleman's estates could be inherited on male line only), it must be assumed that only a minority of the lands around the village remained in the former border-guard soldiers' hands. This enabled significant lands to be granted again, which would actually occur mainly in the 14th to 18th centuries when, in addition to the members and descendants of the Hahót family, other excellent, occasionally aristocratic families such as the Széchy's, Hásságyi's and Horváth's were also endowed with lands around Söjtör. The order of the families' ownership over the land around Söjtör became final for the 18th century (land-owners belonging to four or five families held typical medium-sized domains with so many serfs and serfs' lots as were proportionate to the size of their lands. Even the charters of serfs' tenure from the 1500 years confirm that the serfs of Söjtör held relatively large-size pieces of land, were not obliged to provide exaggerated socage, and could, through the practically free use of forests, satisfy their own needs (houses, buildings, harrow facilities, etc) at a level appropriate in that age, i.e they had a consolidated position. Making use of the favourable environment, they held a significant livestock which, along with the land-owners' practice of bringing new settlers to assarted lands within the forests, caused another significant increase in the population, although it never stopped increasing as the censuses showed Söjtör as the most densely inhabited settlement in the region.

The village did not become uninhabited during the one and half centuries of the Turkish occupation (from 1550's to 1600's), either, even though a serious trough in the number of residents could be witnessed at the end of the 17th century. For the 18th century, however, Söjtör was able to recover, the first national census in Hungary (1784 to 1787) registered 225 houses and about 1,500 people living in them (certainly including noblemen as well. The statistics of those years kept records of 25 families with special legal status). It is also the 18th century that brought along the change that, in its consequences, earned a nation-wide reputation and honour to Söjtör. As the heir of the Hásságyi's, the first member of the Deák family appeared in the area in the 1760's to take over the more than 570 hectares of landed property. His grandson, Ferenc Deák was born in the village in October 1803. Ferenc Deák whom the Hungarian historical memory calls the Sage of the Country for his unforgettable merits in the political compromise between the Habsburg Austria and the Hungarian nation in 1867.

Deák took over his Söjtör estates from his ancestors at a time when the political changes were maturing in Hungary as well as at Söjtör. Following the settlement of feudal tenure and the liberation of serfs, Söjtör became a peasant village of small and medium holders, managing itself self-reliantly as the largest settlement in Göcsej that, considering the preliminaries, could even be considered as a well-off community. In ethnographical terms this is a definitely separate area that its special dialect, mentality and customs distinguish from any other region or ethnic group in Hungary. Since its establishment, the village has always been Catholic Hungarian and a typically Göcsej settlement (the family names also support it), its oldest families had been living here for five or seven centuries, and all their traditions and the community's culture are based on these preliminaries. It was flourishing in the 1920s and 30s, its communities had by then built up their infrastructure, Söjtör's individual and collective economic performances reached the level that further fortified its power of retention, more than 2,500 people dwelt in the village in the 1940s, the second most highly populated Settlement in Göcsej had more than 30 percent fewer residents than Söjtör.

After 1945 – and 1948 – the village shared the fate of any other village in Hungary. Its micro-communities as well as the frameworks of hard-working peasant farming were disbanded by the political regime. The first co-operative was established and would soon go bankrupt, and although the second co-operative succeeded in achieving certain results and local initiations went as far as beginning the re-organisation of the communities, the identity of Söjtör was becoming weaker while in other respects (in particular its institutional and supply infrastructure) the settlement continued to develop. As compared to 1960, however, the village lost almost 1,000 people for the 90s. Sacrificed for the long-awaited improvement of social mobility, Söjtör, considering the requirements of time, was unable to keep a population of more than 1,700 (a statistical figure from the national census held in 1990). The political changes, hall-marked with the year 1990, that do not yet yield a restructuring of the village's inner world, at least a partial rehabilitation of its communities, or the ‘reparation' and systemisation of its economy, have disarranged even the remains of Söjtör's chances by now.

The village of Ferenc Deák, of the Sage of the Country is looking for a path to follow. It is doing so in the hope that what they find will be the same path that they have been following for nearly a thousand years. With its talent it will be able to offer and demonstrate a liveable life. Its history whose fractions this monograph has for the first time attempted to put together can provide test-proven basis to live such a life.

 

   
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