BUKOVINA
Bukovina: From 1775 to 1918, the easternmost crown
land of the Austrian Empire; now divided between Romania and Ukraine. As
a multi-ethnic province, its name has several spellings: Bukowina
or Buchenland in German, Bukowina in Polish, Bucovina
in Romanian, and Bukovyna in Ukrainian, all of which mean Land
of Beech Trees.
A Short History of Bukovina
Immigration to Bukovina
Emigration from Bukovina
My Bukovina connections
A Short History of Bukovina
Bukovina, on the eastern slopes of the Carpathian mountains, was once the heart of the Romanian Principality of Moldavia, with the city of Suceava being made its capital in 1388. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Painted Monasteries of Arbora, Dragomirna, Humor, Moldovita, Putna, Sucevita, and Voronet were constructed under the patronage of Stefan the Great and his son Petru Rares. With their famous exterior frescoes, these monasteries remain some of the greatest cultural treasures of Romania, today.
Along with the rest of Romania, Bukovina fell under the control of the
Ottoman Turks. It remained in Turkish control until it was occupied by
the Russians, in 1769, then by the Austrians,in 1774. With the Treaty of
Constantinople in 1775, control of Bukovina was given to the Austrian Empire.
Administered as a district of the province of Galicia between 1786-1849,
Bukovina was granted the status of an separate crown land and duchy in
1849. When the Austrian Empire was reorganized into the Dual Monarchy of
Austria-Hungary, in the Compromise of 1867, Bukovina, like Galicia, remained
under Austrian administration, while the neighboring province of Transylvania
was placed under Hungarian rule.
During World War I, Bukovina became a battlefield between Austrian and
Russian troops. Although the Russians were finally driven out in 1917,
Austria would lose Bukovina with the war, ceding the province to Romania
in the Treaty of St. Germain.
On June 28, 1940, northern Bukovina was occupied by troops from the
Soviet Union. It would change hands again during the course of World War
II, but this half of Bukovina ended back in Soviet hands, and is today
the Chernivetska oblast of Ukraine. Southern Bukovina in now part of Suceava
county, Romania.
Immigration to Bukovina
Bukovina covers an area of 10,422 square kilometers. In the 1775 census
of this province, its population was only about 60,000. To encourage the
development of this sparsely-settled land, the Austrian emperors subsidized
the immigration of colonists to Bukovina. After end of these official immigration
programs, colonists would continue to arrive at their own expense. As a
result, by the census of 1910, the population of Bukovina had risen to
over 800,000.
People of many different ethnic groups took part in this immigration,
including Armenians, Hungarians, Jews, Poles, Romanians and Ukrainians
(at this time, generally referred to as Ruthenians). German
colonists came from three distinct areas: Swabians and Palatines, from
what is now Baden-Württemberg and Rheinland-Pfalz, in southwest Germany;
German Bohemians, from the Bohemian Forest (Böhmerwald), now
in the Czech Republic; and Zipsers, from the Zips mountains, now Spis county,
Slovakia.
Emigration from Bukovina
As the population of Bukovina expanded, so did the pressures for emigration.
Farmers with large families could no longer divide their homesteads among
their children, and industry in Bukovina had never grown to the extent
in had elsewhere in the Austrian Empire, or in the New World.
The first wave of Bukovina German emigration began in the 1880's. Most
of these emigrants would settle in communities among their Landsleute.
These destinations included Ellis, Kansas; Yuma County, Colorado; Lewis
County, Washington; Saskatchewan, Canada; and Rio Negro, Brazil. A second
wave of emigration to the Americas took place in the years preceding and
following World War I. While some joined those who preceded them in the
above mentioned locations, others would find industrial employment in New
York City.
World War II would provide the major impetus for the Bukovina Germans
to leave their homeland. After the Soviet Union annexed northern Bukovina
in 1940 -- while the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was still in effect -- an
agreement between the Soviet Union and Germany, and a similar agreement
between Romania and Germany, allowed the ethnic Germans of Bukovina to
voluntarily leave for Germany (this agreement obviously did not include
the German-speaking Jews of Bukovina, who -- like Jews all across Europe
-- would become victims of the Holocaust during the course of the war).
Nearly all the Catholic and Lutheran Bukovina Germans, some 95,000 people,
accepted the terms of this resettlement (Umsiedlung) to the Reich.
In 1945, many of these, who were sent to German-occupied land in Poland
or Czechoslovakia, would find themselves refugees again, fleeing from the
advancing Red Army.
The fate of these Bukovina Germans was determined by their location
at the end of the war. Many would settle in West Germany and Austria (with
some emigrating to the United States, Canada, and elsewhere), others in
East Germany. Some were forced to return to Romania, from where they were
finally granted permission to emigrate again to Germany over the following
decades. Only a very small minority of Bukovina Germans remain in Romania
or Ukraine, today.