History

Újhartyán Town
History

Újhartyán (New Hartian) is one of the oldest settlements in Pest County. Judging from the medieval Harquian, Harkyan form of its name, Hark, the settlement may have been the clan territory of the Horkas (tribal judge) of the princely tribe after the Hungarian Conquest.

By the 13th century, this winter habitation of the Horka had developed into a small noble village, a so-called curial village, and flourished until the Hungarian–Ottoman Wars. The name of the village was first recorded in the bull of Pope Ince V, dated 20 May 1276, as "Villa Harquian".

The noble family name "Hartian" (Hartyáni) - initially in the form "de Harkian", later "Hartian" - appears frequently in records from the 15th century onwards, as the respected, szolgabíráí (Judges of nobles) and jurors of Pest County. In fact, in 1597, János Hartyáni became deputy county of Pest County. That was the highest public authority in the county because the chief count of Pest was the king by the laws of the era. The medieval village of Hartyán (Hartian) survived the first half century of the Ottoman Hungary (Turkish subjugation).

Its destruction - together with 33 other villages in Pest County - was caused by the "Long War", which began in 1593 and lasted for 15 years. The destruction was total. Not a single inhabitant of Hartian survived. From then on, for 167 years, Hartian was a deserted wasteland, appearing here and there in various sources as "Pusztahartyán" (Hartian Wasteland). In the first half of the 1700s, Count Antal Grassalkovich (Confidant and one of the administrators of Maria Theresa) acquire Hartian Wasteland and its surroundings, opening the modern history of Hartian.

In 1764, he cleared many of its land from Hartian Wasteland domain and made it suitable for cotters and settled Hungarian, German and Slovak serfs.

The first attempt of deliberate settling turned out to be successful, and after ten years the new settlement had 260 permanent residents. In 1772, the village was founded under the name "Új-hartyán" (New Hartian), with jurisdiction over Hernád and Vatyapusta. In 1776, Prince Antal Grassalkovich (the son of the count) had a fine Baroque church built. The first parish priest immediately took care of the education of the youth, the first school was built in 1781, and a feldsher was hired to take care of the health of the village. So, 15-17 years after the settlement, Újhartyán (New Hartian) was already a viable, solid settlement, perhaps even ahead of its time.

New and recent history of Újhartyán

This is the only village of Grassalkovich estate in our region where the repopulation of the village (1764), which was destroyed around 1600, is attributed to Count Antal I. According to the first and currently only local history monograph of Újhartyán (Imre Kökényesi, 1980), the first Swabian settlers came from Bavaria.

However, more recent studies (Péter Scheiling's research) suggest that the Germans who settled in the village did not come directly from Germany, but from the surrounding villages (Dunaharaszti, Taksony, Soroksár, Sári, etc.), so Újhartyán is - to use the term of the literature - was a secondary settlement.

The village, which initially had a German, Slovak and Hungarian ethnic composition, was transformed into a pro-catholic village with a German majority as an effect of a massive immigration. The agricultural, sales and trading methods brought from the German territory were used.

After the Compromise of 1867, many large families multiplied their wealth. This wealthy, closed, ethnically and religiously homogeneous population suffered its first serious setbacks in the mid-20th century. As in the more embourgeoisement villages, many (14 people) were victims of the Holocaust.

The predominantly German nationality population had to face the threat of deportation. They were able to prevent this, but not the deportation of more than three hundred citizens of Újhartyán to Soviet Ukraine to do forced labor work.

Then came the shock of the 1950s when Hungary was a communist country, which left this traditional agricultural village financially depleted. The collectivization could not be avoided here either, but the trade union, which allowed backyard vegetable gardens to operate, gave people relative freedom and the opportunity to produce goods. It has enabled the living conditions of the population to develop in a much more even and balanced way than in other municipalities.

This changed from time to time - from classic peasant houses to more modern ones, with attics and two-story houses was reflected in the village landscape as well as in the educational level of the residents.

By now, communism is over. Today Újhartyán's willingness to innovate, based on its history and recent processes, is as much a characteristic of Újhartyán as the renaissance of religious and ethnic traditions that have shaped the life of this unique and highly developed society, even before the political climate was not ideal for it.