Balassa M. Iván szerk.: A Vajdaság népi építészete (Szentendre: Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 1992)

Vernacular Architekture in Vojvodina

Vernacular Architecture in Vojvodina Vojvodina (Voivodeship, i.e. Vajdaság in Hungarian) is a new geographical word. This name was given to the southern part of the Great Hungarian Plain after 1921, when this territory was annexed from Hungary to Jugoslavia Earlier three geographical and administrative areas had been differentiated here, the Banat, Bachka and Syrmia. This region was liberated from under the Turkish rule only at the very end of the 17th century and at the beginning of the 18th century and the once rich landscape was transformed into a totally devastated and uninhabited country by the Turkish dominion and the wars of liberation. As a result of a planned or spontaneous repeopling ethnically the most varied population of the Carpathian basin had settled here. Besides the Hungarians the new population consisted of Southern Slavs, numerous Germans, Rumanians, Ruthenians, Bulgarians, etc. having different religions and languages. The vernacular architecture of the Hungarians living here has been unknown and unresearched for a long time. Owing to some enthusiastic people several studies and articles have been published recently on the subject. Unfortunately these publications came to light in newspapers or periodicals hardly available in Hungary, thus they remained unknown. This book tries to retrieve this shortage providing a collection of this work. Under the summarizing title „The architecture of the villages" Antal PÉNOVÁTZ provides us with an overall picture of the „Hungárián peasant house in the Voivodeship". Imre HARKAI gives us an introduction of the houses of a village which also stands for the rest of the villages. (The Topolya outlines of a house in Bachka). Valéria BESZÉDES shows us a village inhabited mainly by the Sokacs (Sokac is the name of a Slavonic ethnic group) preserving their archaic way of architecture until today. Her work is titled „An archaic village along the Danube". „The characteristic^ features of the architecture in the Vajdaság" (Voivodeship) are summarized by Béla DURÁNCI. Antun RUDINSKI tries to typologize the dwelling houses of the region from the point of view of the Serbian house typology (The Northern-Bachka versions of the Pannon house). Two studies deal with the ornamentations of the gables of the dwelling houses. Valéria BESZÉDES summarizes and typologizes (Houses with gables having sunbeam decoration in the Vajdaság (Voivodeship), and Károly JUNG speaks about the ornaments connected to the folk belief (About the gables with sunbeam ornaments). The chapter is closed by the study titled „The characteristics of the grain stores in the Vajdaság" written by Valéria BESZÉDES.