TOPOĽČIANSKE PIVO

Alright.  Here's the story.  Near Hrad Topol'cianske was a pivovar, a brewery.  They made beer there. They sang about it.  This is the song they sang.  They closed the pivovar.  There is now no more beer from Topol'čianski.

So that's the end of the story.  No!!! Not even close to the end of the story.  To get to the end of the story, we have to find the front of the story.   "Don't you mean that you have to find the beginning of the story?  What's the matter for you?  Don't you even speak English?"   Alright.  Have it your way.  You find the beginning.  I'm going to the front.  You can come with me or not.  Your choice it is.

To find the front, we must first learn something about the Vezérlő Fejedelem.  After all, if you want to go  to the front of the line, you must first find who is first in line.  He is called the Fejedelem, the Prince.  As you know of course, the word "Prince" means simply "the First."  As it turns out, the Fejedelem in our story is the son of Rákóczi Ferenc and Jelena Zrinska.  Jelena Zrinksa was the daughter of Petar Zrinski with whose neck the empire had had some interest.  Jelena Zrinska was a neice of the Nikola Zrinski whose poetry placed the exploits of his ancestor Nikola Šubić Zrinski at Szigetvár against Suleiman the Magnificent into the hearts of every Croat in the all the world for all time.  "U boj! u boj!  ... Za dom! Spremne!" 

The family lived at this time near Mukacheve around which the borders of the Ukrajna have been drawn since the Second World War - you know- there in Mala Polska.  Look at the map, you can find it.  During the battle of Trenčín, whose environs are visible from the ramparts of the  Topol'čianski  Rákóczi Ferenc's horse stumbled and he was knocked unconscious.  His soldiers presumed his death and fled the field, ending the "Kurac" rebellion.  As a result, the Hussites in Czech and Slovakia were at a fatal military disadvantage as were  the Lutherans in Hungary  and in Croatia, all of whom had supported the notion that the purpose of the state was to protect the people rather than the people to serve the state. 

Oh, did I mention in here anywhere that all this began with the emperor suspending the constitution of the empire? Oh. Perhaps I should have. 

Had Rákóczi's horse not stumbled, the chances are that Central Europe might have been mostly  Protestant thereafter.   One of the Croats who rode rode with Rákóczi from the Topol'čianski that day was my ancestor.  Was he one of those who fled in panic?  I would like to think not, but I don't know.
 

My ancestors on my father's side began arriving in America shortly after all this, during the period when the Hapsburg government was interested in the necks of almost every member of the family.  Oh.

Topol'čianski Hrad was one of the strong points held by Rákóczi.  It lays astride an ancient roadway leading from Krakova in the north to Bjelovar and on south to Tirana.  It was the roadway by which many Bijelohrvati  moved south over a period of time into that which is modern Croatia.  It was the roadway by which merchandise, ideas, and the news traveled for many centuries.  Those ancient travelers left their mark.  Their path can be easily traced with the help of Google maps.  At Bjelovar the road intersects with the ancient highway to Osijek, Novosad, and points east all the way to China.  This was the ancient "Silk Road" which European  mariners spent so much effort to replace with a more secure water highway with which the Ottoman's and others could not interfere.

There's more to the story.  Important but little known history whispers through the breezes on the battlements of hrad Topol'čianski. If I have to, I will tell some of that history later.  Freddy, you know who you are Freddy. I am going to give you a days to respond before I go public with what I dug up in the castle courtyard.  I would much rather you told the story, but if I have to I will.  You do not wish me to do that. 

Just a few miles  north of Hrad Topol'čianski is the pass where the Germans massed just prior to their invasion of Poland.  Auschwitz lays just a few miles further, just off the old road to Krakova.

So why is an old Croat featuring a song called TOPOĽČIANSKE PIVO?  Topolčianski is in Slovakia isn't it? Yup.  It sure is.  Hrad Topol'cianski was our castle.  It was one of my family's castles.  It was a Croatian Castle on a highway connecting Croatians in the north with Croatians in the south.  The once mighty stari hrad is now a crumbling oddity.  The once major highway across Europe is not even passable by automobile all the way up to the castle.  The castle is crumbling.  The Croats are gone as are others, all long gone, and now, so is the beer.  Placem.

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac
 24 veljača  2012

There was a time ...

Back in December 1995, in "Croatia Today," someone from the Croatian Embassy to the United States wrote "There was a time, not so long ago, when expressing the desire that Croatia be free, or identifying one-self as Croatian, could be dangerous, not only in Yugoslavia, but even in the United States."  Politicians and diplomats are sometimes so good with understatements. 

At the time I was born, no one much knew where the Croatian lands were.  But Croatians knew. Croatians all over the world in the diaspora knew.  We always have known.  The frustrating mystery to us was why no one else seemed to know.  We were invisible a lot of the time in those days.   I was not born in the Croatian lands.  I was born in the lands of the Este Mvskokvlke.

At the time I was born there, no one much knew where was the Este Mvskokvlke. Most people still do not know.  The Mvskoke knew.  Mvskoke everywhere knew.  The frustrating mystery to them was why no one else seemed to know.  They were invisible a lot of the time in those days.  The Mvskoke were not invisible to my father.  He was a professor in the only college designed to serve their people and he was a missionary to them as well.  Do you know what sofki is?  Or osofki?  I do. 

 Father learned their language.  Father spoke and preached and taught and sang with Mvskoke people on Mvskoke jezik.  While he encouraged the people to learn also english, he encouraged them to never abandon their heritage. Father was outraged when the Amerikanski sent agents to teach Ashiwi dances to Mvskoke people. It seemed to him that the Amerikanski government not only wanted the Mvskoke to be invisible but they perhaps wanted them to disappear altogether.  If you wonder why that today many of the Muskogee "stomp dance" songs sound awfully much like "ganga," well now you know. 

In the 1990's, after about a thousand years of foreign domination, our beloved Croatia began the journey back to freedom and democracy.  At the same time the Amerikanski stood out of the way after almost one hundred years and the Mvskoke began the same journey toward the rights and responsibilities of a sovereign nation. Beware invisible people.

Dr Wolff said I had polio.  He said I had to be in the hospital but I was going to die anyway in about six months.  My parents had lost one child to cholera and another to a miscarriage.  An assassin's bullet between the eyes of still another child made it's point. If I was going to die anyway they would pack me in ice to control the fever and just go daleko daleko and that's what they did.  I think some persons might have been disappointed but I lived.

Father told a story about how some lady the family knew went on and on about how it was that I walked funny.  Tata said that I walked before most kids learn to walk and so, if I walked funny, what of it?    A lot of kids who had polio in those years simply died, but I could walk.  Maybe I still walk funny and sometimes a bit slow, but I can walk and might even dance a little should the right partner wish.

By the second grade most of the other boys called me "jebeni Hrvat" and ran off to play on the far side of the playground during recess.  I knew that I was Hrvat, but at that age I had no idea what jebeni meant except that they probably didn't mean anything nice.  The teacher sat on her throne under the great spreading pecan tree with the girls at her feet where they lined up rocks to make the "walls" for the "house."  There they played with their baby dolls, and they needed a "daddy."  Most days they drafted me to be the daddy and I had to take care of the babies when they "went shopping."  Later on in life I would remember the training they gave me with a certain measure of gratitude.

One day the other boys came to kick the "house" down. We poured ashes from the burn pile on them and chased them away.  One of them, a boy with a false eye, challenged me to a duel about all that.  We would throw rocks at eat other until one of us surrendered.  If I won, all the guys would leave us alone.  If they won, they got to keep bothering all of us and they could keep calling me "jebeni Hrvat" whatever "jebeni" means.  He took his eye out ceremoniously and put it in his pocket.  We paced off twenty paces. The guys stood on the left side and cheered for him.  The girls stood on the right side and cheered for me.  I had no real idea about boys and girls at that age except that boys wore blue jeans girls wore dresses and smelled nicer, but if you think I didn't just love the fact that girls were cheering for me, think again.  With the girls beside me I was going to win this. 

The boys counted to three and we unleashed our first rocks.  Mine connected.  My rock hit him square in the eye where he had no eye.  He went down.  The teacher came running.  The mystery is - where was she while we were setting all this up?  I know that I was punished severely for my part in this.  I was not allowed to go to the far side of the play ground any more.   I was sentenced to stay close to her and play with the little girls for the rest of the year.  I know it was punishment from the tone of her voice as she announced this in front of all the children.  Hehe.  Some other time we will talk about my dear teacher and her husband who taught me about the printing press.

The next year we moved to another town.  I heard mother and dad talking about this move before we moved.  Tata wanted to be closer to other people who spoke.  He wanted me to hear our language from other people.  So there I was in the third grade at the Elementary School in the building that still stands across the Boling Highway from the Junior College.  You know, over there where the railroad track to New Gulf used to be.  It didn't take me long to be playing hopscotch with the girls.  I was tall enough to hold one end of the jump rope too so they kind of liked having me around.  It wasn't long before some fellow was calling me "jebeni Hrvat" and trying to hurt me.  I still didn't not know what means "jebeni." I ran.  I ran the best I could.  He caught me.  He knocked me down.  He pinned my leg and twisted.  I spent the rest of the third grade with that leg in a cast and using crutches to get around.  Mrs Zeidman usually gave me a ride over to the highschool where Tata taught chemistry and the sciences.  I shall always remember her with deep fondness and we may hear more about her later.  After I came off the crutches I walked over to the high school. 

One day, as I was crossing the tennis court, I heard those dreaded words again.  "Jebeni Hrvat!"  A kid came riding right up to my face on his bicycle.  He had a bow in his hand.  He strung and arrow on to the bow.  He said "ви сте мртви (you are dead)"  I didn't want to be dead so I picked his bike up by the front wheel, dumped him off on the ground, kicked him in such a place as he did not wish to fight more and proceeded to use my adrenalin to bend, maim, and otherwise destroy his bike.  Mrs Redding was the Superintendent of School's secretary.  Her sister saw the whole thing.  She called the police.  I never saw that boy again.  I heard later he went to reform school.  "Jebeni Hrvat" indeed!  It was a long time after that before anyone called me "jebeni Hrvat". 

I had around 60 years when I had some difficulty again.  There were some complications in my work place and there were some folk looking for whatever they could find to get rid of me.  The Rev Richard R  Goodwill was called in to mediate the matter.  Among his recommendations was that I go through "intensive evaluation" - code words for three days "psychiatric examination."  On the morning of the second day the Reverend Richard R Goodwill and the Rev. Dr. John Hirsch accused me of being a Bosnian terrorist.  The psychiatrist had a problem.  He was making money from Hirsch's employer from what the courts have since fairly routinely determined to be an abusive employment practice.  He suggested that a "counselor" back in my hometown take a look at me.  The next fellow wrote a letter to the effect that the only people who needed psychiatric help were the people who sent me to him. 

Bosnian Terrorist.  When I hear those words - I hear "Bosanski Ustaša."  First of all, a Bosnian is just another Croat who happens to be Muslim.  I am not Muslim.  I am a Christian.  I am a Lutheran Christian.  To say that a Lutheran church worker is Muslim is slander of the most ridiculous sort.  In a perfect world these two men would have already apologized.  It surely would have been nice.

The Ustaša part of what they said is pretty wild too.  I might think of some radical Bosnian as a Jihadist of some sort, but as Ustaša?  Unlikely.  Ustaša means "up-riser" and really isn't a bad word except that it has deep roots into the so called "Ustaša" or Nazi movement during World War II.  Again, serious slander I suppose, and just another way to call me a "jebeni Hrvat."

Yes, "There was a time, not so long ago, when ... identifying one-self as Croatian, could be dangerous."  Mr Ambassador, I finally learned what "jebeni Hrvat" means on english and if that's what I am, then that's what I am.  And I can still walk too.

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac

12 Rujan 2011

Avenge, O Lord

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones;
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all th' Italian fields where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
                                          A hundredfold, who having learnt thy way
                                         Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

                             John Milton - On the Late Massacre in Piedmont 1655

Chiesa Evangelica Valdese di Abbazia in Croazia (Evangelical Waldensian Church of Opatija in Croatia) Interesting name.  In Croatia today Evangelical would seem to indicate a Lutheran Church.  In former times in Teksas and in the United States it would have also indicated that which is today called "Lutheran."   The Valdensians however are not exactly Lutheran. 

The foundation stone of the Church of Christ was made in 1903 in the presence of the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, the architect Karl Seidl. Financed by important personalities including the Kaiser Franz Josef I who gave 5000 crowns at the time.  On April 23, 1904 in the presence of various noble  - King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway and his wife Sophia of  Nassau - the Kaiser, and other important church figures of the period took part the inauguration.

According to Davor Zic 1 September 2011, this old historic building may be sold.  On the 9th  of June  this year the Konzervatorski odjel u Rijeci apparently siezed the property because the care giver had made unauthorized  repairs to the property.  We have such laws in Brownsville  as well - historic buildings must be maintained according to the standards of a "commission," or not maintained at all.

"Ostali smo bez riječi i ne možemo vjerovati što se događa," We were speechless and can not believe what was happening, Zic quotes Giovanni Genere, the Valdensian pastor from Torino. Croatian law requires that Chruch property be managed by Croatians so the Valdensians created the Evangelička crkva Valdese Opatija which sounds Lutheran to a Croatian ear, but isn't.


So, as it stands, through someone's mismanagement, an old  Lutheran Church building may pass into the hands of some Russians who want to turn the property into a residential area.   I don't know what to think about this.  Neither the Russians nor the Valdensians are Croatian or Lutheran.  It is too bad there are not some Croatian Evangelicals who could treasure and use the facilities.   It would break Elizabeth of Rumania's heart to see this happening.  It breaks mine. 

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac

Evangelicals in the Valley

In my last post "Santa Ana"  there was mention of a man who arrived in the middle of the aftermath of the wars in central Europe and the persecutions of protestants in that time.  As it turns out, his family became crucial to the development of the Lutheran church in the Rio Grande Valley area. 

As far as I can find, there was no public Luthean worship in the Rio Grande Valley before the early part of the twentieth century.  That does however not mean there was no Lutheran worship in the area.  In fact, I know now that there was Lutheran worship in private homes in this place.  There are worship materials to indicate this is the case.  That's not so unusual for Lutherans because there has been such a history of suppression of Lutherans in eastern Europe, first by the Hapsburgs and then by the  communists.  When the destination for Lutherans leaving Hapsburg  Europe is Hapsburg America, its not so surprising that they would continue the habits learned in Europe. 

A few years ago there was a letter from the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod encouraging the churches to celebrate the first one hundred years of Lutherans in Texas. Mmm hmmm. The letter outlined how the German settlers brought Lutheranism to Texas. Mmmm hmmm.  Ok.  But seeing as how the first Germans here were Roman Catholic I saw a little problem with that proposition.  Seems the first Lutherans in Texas were Joe's family who  did not speak on German.  Some German Lutherans began arriving in the 1830s.  The Wends from Lusatia  began arriving in 1854 and were

soon joined by Wends from from modern Slovenia.

Some Hrvat Evangelicals were already here.  My family was in on that.  King of Spain had granted one of my family the rights that went along with maintaining the trail between Walnut Springs (downtown Seguin) and Sedalia up by the Missouri River.  He also gave them the Trinity River and some land over by where the Spindletop oil field came in.   Those might be parts of other stories for other days.  The point is,  the German migration which brough Lutherans to Texas was certainly welcome to settle here, and they certainly played an important role, but they were not the first Evangelicals here and the letter just was not correct.

 In the 1930's Joe's grandfather appealed to a Spanish speaking missionary from Cuba to come to the Rio Grande Valley.  He began a public movement  by speaking in public venues.  In the 1940s the Lutheran Hour speakers came to help. Joe's father was instrumental in establishing two of the Lutheran churches in Brownsville and Joe is an Elder of the Lower Rio Grande Valley Lutheran Fellowship today.

No offense to Germans is meant here.  Hey, some of my best friends are Germans.  Even my Grandmother's people hopped over here from Germany.   And its true that perhaps between 1860 and 1910 the German Lutherans took center stage in the movement in Texas.   In the 1890s there was the realization that the only language German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and other folk had in common was english and worship services began to be conducted on english.  To accomplish that the church fathers swiped and "Lutheranized" portions of the Anglican Book of Common prayer.  So now, should we have celebrated Cranmer's role in the Lutheran Church in Texas?   I didn't think so.  The letter from the church officials went into the round file.  Poof!

What does this have to do with music?   Chad Bird (right German sounding name, yes?) from the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Commission on Worship was once asked if you needed to adopt German culture and sing German music in church to be a good Lutheran. He answered in the affirmative.  How do you think that fell on this old Slav's ears?   Hmmmpf!!!  Down here we are going to use the music we like.  Got it?  Hej Chad,  I so old you can't touch me now - pfffffffffffffft on you bro!!!

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac