Fehér György szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1992-1994 (Budapest, 1994)
11. Nemzetközi Gazdaságtörténeti Kongresszus, 1994., Milánó (llth International Economic History Congress) - FÜLÖP ÉVA MÁRIA: German peasants settled in a feudal estates in Transdanubia (Hungary) in the middle of the 18th century. A case-study of Tata - Gesztes domain
inly German tenants in the domain for sheep-farming and for the new dairy-farming (they called it „svájceráj"). As for the method of cultivation it is true that German serfs usually divided the plough-lands into 3 parts: but in the villages peopled by the state it was prescribed for them and the landowners — among them József Esterházy, too — gave them territories similarly divided. As it is widely known there were lots of craftsmen (first of all toolmakers) among the Germans. Dealing with wood-carving was really important considering the Vértes and Gerecse mountains. We must refer to the works of Imre Wcllmann dealing with the question of agricultural production of German serfs. He says that the stereotype ideas of industrious, hardworking, well-off German serfs respectively their villages generally take their origin from these serfs' better position (free years, required three-course rotation) and not only from their „fully developed methods taking along with them". József Esterházy — as the state and the other landowners — trusted the ,,Catholic, dutiful" German serfs. From some villages he resettled the Protestant, Hungarian peasants and gave the lands to the new settler (e. g. in Szomód /county Komárom/). It was the same case Imre Wellmann quoted: „... emotis, qui saper c detreciebant rcctius, Hclvctiac confessianis subdiiis, devoti ecclesiae romano-catholicac cultures Mossonio cumprimis collecti ex agro substituuntur". But the first reason for these cases was always the Catholic faith and not economic matters. There is a field within the agriculture that has always needed special knowledge: vini- and viticulture. It is indisputable that German peasants brought along some new types (c. g. Riesling of Rhine) and new techniques (e. g. regular fertility). There are two data of great importance for the economic development not only of Tata-Gesztes domain in question but of the whole country preserved in the written material of this domain. These are the first mentioning of potato cultivation in our country and a very carls trial for coal-mining. (Both of them took place in 1745.) There were no trustworthy data available so far regarding potato cultivation in Hungary before 1760s. As it is well-known in the spread of the potato cultivation great significance was attributed to slate campaigns and the initiative role of the manorial estates, but the presumed role of the German peasants settled in Hungary in the 18th century has not been proved. We could verifying the latter hypothesis. One of the villages of this domain called Kozma was settled (it was the second trial for it as we have already written about) with German peasants coming from various regions (mainly from Bavaria and Saxony as the register of births shows). While the village was inhabited, its land was used by the neighbouring villages. After the settlement there were frontier incidents, during which it is described, that the inhabitants of the adjacent village demolished the potato in the Kozma Germans' gardens. (The gardens were surveyed in one block not far from the village similarly to the cabbage-gardens.) In the count's head manager's (regens, praefoetus) letter the word „grundbeer" stood for this word „potato". The first names of this plant (c. g. in written form in a state order in
