Burgenland településeinek nemzetiségi (anyanyelvi) adatai 1880–1991 (2000)

ELŐSZÓ

PREFACE This volume follows those published by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office with the time series of nationality data of the disconnected former Hungarian territories: Transylvania, Upper Northern Hungary, Subcarpathia and the historical Southern Hungary. Unlike these, the specificity of Burgenland is the fact that Hungarian authorities carried out here a population census in 1920, but no census was held in 1941. Another novelty of the present volume is that it has not been restricted to the mother tongue data of the most numerous nationalities but, in conformity with the original manual processing tables, it also contains data of all nationalities. This has been allowed by the extent of the volume, on the one hand, and has been a must owing to the heterogeneous ethnic composition of that area, on the other hand. Besides the population of German, Hungarian and Croatian mother tongue, there were in Burgenland other nationalities, too, on which the former publications presented limited data only, though their share in several localities was relatively high. This is the case of Slovenes, Gypsies and, to a smaller extent, of Czechs and Slovaks. The most important, so-called "home" languages (Hungarian, German, Croat, Serb, Slovene, Slovak, Gypsy) have been entered into the tables, while the others have been put in footnotes. Thus, several information contained in the original processing tables and difficult to reach for the larger public, have now also become available. The concept of language used in Austrian censuses is different from the Hungarian "mother tongue " concept: In 1923 their questionnaire asked about the language of thinking, in 1934 that of social communications, while since 1951 the language spoken in the family. Hopefully these conceptual departures have no major impact on the comparability of the data; yet they are to be taken into account. The extent of the volume makes it possible to present a full time series based on the data of all the 12 censuses carried out in this area between 1880 and 1991. Those of the period 1880-1920 have been completed by the relevant data of the 1923, 1934, 1951, 1961, 1971, 1981 and 1991 Austrian censuses; these contain the published language data by localities and a summarised compilation on the 1923-1971 period, sent by the Austrian Population Census Department on our request. At the same time a publication made in Burgenland has allowed to present the 1981 data according to the state of affairs before the unification of localities. In order to have territorially comparable data, it was necessary to establish the unification, creation and renaming of localities. There were a lot of unifications

: as against 327 towns and communes in 1910-1920, their number was only 153 in 1991. Fortunately, all changes followed the cessation of former unifications, so the data of the time series correspond to the same territory. Thus, the tables by localities are presented according to two territorial breakdowns. First, following the other similar publications, the data of the 327 localities refer to the administrative division as of 1910, with all the languages if possible; secondly, according to 9