Die Besiedlung von Bori, Professor Alfred Klug (1935) -The Settlement of Bori

(trans. and ed. by Dr. Sophie A. Welisch (Czernowitz: Verlag "Deutsche Tagespost," 1935).

Die Besiedelung von Bori, written by Professor Alfred Klug to commemorate the centennial of the founding of Bori, traces the history and development of this German-Bohemian settlement in southern Bukovina. Attended by over three thousand people from far and near, this celebration, observed with festivities, speeches by church and state dignitaries as well as musical and theatrical performances, ran from July 13 - 14, 1935. Little could the villagers suspect that within five years they would be swept up in the maelstrom of World War II, causing them en masse to abandon their homeland.

When in 1774 Austrian troops occupied Bukovina, a territory somewhat larger than today's province, the area was rather sparsely populated as compared with other Austrian crown lands. It contained about six people per square kilometer. No small wonder, therefore, that Bukovina's first military governor, General von Splény, in his well-known memorandum of December 10, 1774, urged the colonization of the territory. He wanted, above all, good craftsmen; in order to encourage their immigration they were to enjoy certain tax benefits. The entire province was freed from the obligation of supplying troops for the army until 1830. Although his successor, General Karl von Enzenberg, soon thereafter opposed colonization, settlers of various nationalities migrated to the newly-acquired province during the next fifty years. After the first burst of enthusiasm which the administration had manifested toward colonization, it became skeptical through bitter experiences and critical, though not entirely opposed, to the influx of immigrants. The Imperial War Council (Hofkriegsrat) took a strong stand (February 25, 1786) against the settlement of fathers of families who were prepared to live only in thatched huts and then move on at any time. It noted:

Therefore, only such people are to be accepted about whom one can ascertain beforehand that they will remain and devote themselves to agriculture and livestock raising. In the future the determining factor will not be masses but rather the suitability of settlers in order to provide the district with good and ambitious inhabitants.

State-sponsored colonization in the eighteenth century, in part unsuccessful, was followed at the early nineteenth century by private colonization initiated by entrepreneurs in the mining industry. In the absence of a qualified labor force, they recruited German laborers and miners for the work. That is how the first German-Bohemian glass production colonies arose. But even here colonization did not proceed as well as had been anticipated mainly because of the difficult political circumstances under which Austria found itself at that time (Napoleon!).

In 1826 the Galician provincial administration, which until 1849 had jurisdiction over Bukovina, petitioned the Court Chancery (Hofkanzlei) to settle the empty districts of Stanislau, Kolomea and Czernowitz with a hard-working, industrious population as a secure bulwark against bandits. In Bukovina it was specifically in the thickly forested district of Kimpolung in which these freebooters exercised their "freedom." Bandit chieftain Ivan Dari was known far and wide. On the basis of this report the Public Property Administration (Staatsgüterdirektion) received a request to find room for the requisite settlements as well as to determine the conditions under which colonization was to take place.

In Bukovina only the district of Solka came under consideration. Here the "gigantic forests" covering the terrain contained "depopulated areas of no use to their owners but offered secure hiding places for bandits." The Department of Economic Affairs (Wirtschaftsbezirk) in Solka worked out a plan with specific details and dispatched it on September 29, 1829. It proposed the establishment of three settlements, specifically in: (1) the Solonetz Valley south of Solka; (2) the Warwata between Pertisti and Illischestie; and, (3) the Pojana Pond. An factual report detailed all essential matters regarding conditions and accessibility, nature of the land, availability of water, etc. But despite this report three years passed without any action. In the spring of 1832 the Department of Economic Affairs in Solka repeated its requests to the Inspectorate of Estates (Gefälle-Inspektorat) in Czernowitz. Reasons for settlement included: "The security and clearing of the empty and uncultivated region, the raising of the agricultural yield, and the alleviation of the rugged and moist region through agriculture." Each settler "should be required to have at least two oxen and two cows and as much capital as necessary to construct a house according to the [prevailing] standard and thereafter also a barn of wood supplied free of charge by the Administration." Each settler was to receive "twenty yokes of land which he could pass on to his heirs, a six-year reprieve from provincial and local taxes, and, as owner of the property, exemption from military service." A total of eighty-two families were to be settled.

But circumstances took a different turn. Slovaks were settled in the Solonetz Valley as well as in Plesa. Nonetheless, other possibilities for colonization arose, specifically on the right side of the densely forested mountainous slope about three kilometers from where the Humora Stream flows into the Moldova River, in the wilderness of Pojana Mikuli on the same stream twenty kilometers north of its estuary, and in the region of the source of the Negrileasa Stream. Likewise covered with dense forests, this land lay about six kilometers southeast of the Romanian village of Negrileasa, called Vadul Negrilesei. Because of its gloominess, the Germans called it Schwarztal (Black Valley).

Felix Dahn, the great legal historian and poet, was one of the first to identify the scarcity of arable land as a cause of the migration of peoples. And this circumstance, rather than the usual desire for adventure, also motivated several families in Bohemia to leave their homeland and seek a livelihood in a foreign province. A total of seventy-three families departed for Bukovina. The journey was not easy. They first had to have a pass. In the German Calendar for 1935 I published one such pass greatly reduced in size. It was the travel pass of Josef Günthner from Seewiesen in the Prachin District of Bohemia, dated April 6, 1835, allowing its owner, with his wife, Katharina, née Wiesenbauer, and three children (the youngest only five years old) to migrate to Bukovina. The reverse side clearly indicates the route: Budweis, Iglau, Brünn, Olmütz, Teschen, Wadowitz, Bochnia, Tarnow, Przemysl, Sambor, Kolomea, Czernowitz. He had to report at each of the above-named towns. In the published facsimile the names of these localities can still be discerned. As did Günthner, other German-Bohemians, joined by a few Czechs, also undertook the journey.

From Czernowitz they traveled to Radautz where they sent delegates from among their ranks to Solka in order to negotiate with the Department of Economic Affairs. They arrived there on June 16. Raimund Friedrich Kaindl, Professor of History at the University of Czernowitz and later at the University of Graz, to whom we are indebted for a great many works dealing with our homeland and who has earned everlasting tribute for the history of Bukovina, notes in his comprehensive study, Das Ansiedlungswesen in der Bukowina (The Settlement of Bukovina), Innsbruck, 1902, p. 440, that nineteen, then fifty-four German-Bohemian families registered at the Solka Department of Economic Affairs.

I have recently come into possession of a document which further clarifies this account. A rather yellowed paper of five half-filled pages contains the eleven points of the contract which the applicants for settlement had to sign and which are listed below without abridgment. Obviously this is a copy or a rough draft of a contract presented to the settlers. Nonetheless, on a sixth page filling an entire side, we find the following. I wish to note that here as well as in subsequent places I am using the old script in the legal terminology of the original document:

The duly sworn in petitioners for settlement noted below, from the Prachin District of the Kingdom of Bohemia, hereby empower our compatriots, (name, name, and name) to be our deputies in negotiating with the Religious Foundation's administration in the District of Illischestie, Bukovina, regarding the cession of the forested community of Bori and Warwata for the purposes of clearing and settling it with hereditary rights, for taking over said forested lands, for carrying out the designated obligations regarding property indebtedness stated in our declaration and for arranging all related conditions with the above-named administration in our name.

We declare and unanimously obligate ourselves diligently to uphold that which the above-named deputies will agree to and will abide by it one for all and all for one.

From this we can conclude the following: the petitioners for settlement sent three representatives to Solka, i.e., to Illischestie, who discussed the particular points of the contract with the officials. They signed a contract and a copy, presumably the one I have in hand, plus the draft for a power of attorney, which was given to them. With this document they traveled to Radautz, let the others collectively sign the power of attorney, and then returned to Solka.

The land offered to the thirty (or twenty-eight?) applicant families was without doubt no paradise; perhaps hunters would have found it a sheer delight to have come upon such a region. Large dense beech forests with a few fir trees, which had never seen an ax or been thinned, covered the area. For purposes of livelihood the inhabitants of Bori had no possibility even of supplying wood to populated areas, since other communities, e.g., Illischestie, were more centrally located. Gurahumora was a village yet to be designated with marketplace status. Most of its inhabitants cut their own wood from the forest. Nonetheless, as a means of livelihood the colonists would be able to sell some wood for incineration for the potash hut in Frassin, a good hour's distance away. Since there were many craftsmen among the settlers, the possibility also existed that they would find employment in neighboring Gurahumora. It was anticipated that police protection and access to the legal system would be available through Gurahumora, where the villagers of Bori would also attend church and school.

As already noted, thirty heads of households were to be settled of whom each was to receive thirty yokes of land. The requisite 900 yokes were to be acquired as follows: twenty-eight yokes from the pasture land of the community of Klosterhumora, which in turn was offered a considerably larger pasture area, ninety-three yokes of woodland which the community had been leasing and for which it was offered land of similar size next to the pasture, and the rest from the surrounding forest.

The German-Bohemians agreed to everything and signed the contract, the eleven points of which read as follows:

1. Thirty families will be settled on the wooded land of Warwata and Bori near the community of Klosterhumora, each of whom shall receive thirty-six (the second digit is illegible and estimated by the author) yokes, house, garden, fields, meadowland and forest for permanent and hereditary usage.

2. Each of the settled families is completely to clear its forested land in the next six years, to make it arable, to construct the necessary living quarters and farm buildings according to a plan designated by the Administration in a place determined by it in the next 'free' years at their own expense, to acquire essential livestock of at least two draft oxen, and two cows, and to secure their livelihood.

3. Every settled family must pay the Administration an annual property tax of ten guldens in cash, or at the request of same, cut in the Humora preserve twenty piles of wood into logs the equivalent of five Lower Austrian cords (Klafter). [At that time the gulden was the customary coin of the realm. It equalled only sixty kreutzer. Decades later, after its equivalent value had risen to 100 kreutzers, ten kreutzers were called "a sixth" (ein Sechserl). A Viennese or a Lower Austrian cord = 189.65 cm.]

4. After the Administration shall have paid the taxes due on the property designated for colonization, and in order that the colonists not be obliged to pay the property tax to the public treasury, they will be maintained for as long as the taxes for which the community is assessed have not been used by the Administration for the benefit of the community during which time every family receiving property will pay only three kreutzers per yoke plus one gulden forty-eight kreutzers to the public treasury with their property taxes.

In the event that in the future these taxable properties owned by the Administration shall be turned over to the community, taxation thereof by the public treasury will cease.

Every colonist shall pay equally with all other subjects of the realm all other customary taxes, contributions due the territorial administration, and community taxes according to the national constitution.

5. For the initial construction of the various homes and farm buildings, garden and garden enclosures, every settler will receive gratis the essential raw masonry materials and wood. However, for all future new construction and repairs, he will buy same from the Administration and for the customary price.

For heating purposes each settler will receive weekly in the winter months two, but in the summer months weekly one load of felled timber or dead wood once for all time from the Administration's forests, for which every family will work six days singly or perform corvée labor felling trees, or at its request produce instead six Lower Austrian cords of firewood.

6. In order that the founding of the colony be facilitated and conditions made easier for the settlers, the Administration will waive from the day of occupancy through a full six years the designated property tax noted in Article 3 as well as the tax noted in Article 4. All other official contributions and taxes as well as the stipulated work for the use of wood shall be discharged without fail from the day on which they occupy their new dwellings.

7. In that the settlers shall receive individual ownership of forested lands for hereditary use, they shall also have the right to transfer same to another, but only in their entirety and including the dwelling and farm buildings belonging thereto, with all conditions contained in the present contract and with the consent of the Administration, wherein which every exercise of the right of domicile, of mortgaging, leasing or even dividing the settler's property is forbidden, under loss of same.

8. Inheritance shall be to the eldest son, and lacking same, to the eldest daughter. With the extinction of a family, i.e., if there is no descendant in the male line, the entire hereditary property shall revert to the Administration, which alone shall have the right further to dispose of it.

9. Every settler shall receive from the Administration justice through the courts and legal protection free of charge and, along with every other subject, is accordingly duty-bound to be respectful and obedient. But in the event that someone commits a serious offense and is therefore sentenced to a long prison term, the Administration reserves the right to confiscate his farmstead without compensation and to put in his place another more responsible proprietor.

10. Should one or another of the settlers do not precisely fulfill the conditions of the present contract in part or in its entirety, fall in arrears for over one year in the payment of rents or taxes, succumb to alcoholism, and neglect his farmstead, or be charged as an instigator or disturber of the peace, the Administration will be entitled without notice to confiscate his property without compensation and to confer it to another.

11. All settlers must solemnly renounce for all time any tax exemptions to which they may previously have had a claim.

There is a point which needs clarification. We learned earlier that every applicant for settlement had been approved for thirty yokes of land. How could I then substitute thirty-six for the illegible number in Article 1 of the document? I did so based on Article 4, where it states that the settlers had to pay one gulden and forty-eight kreutzers (equivalent to one hundredth of a florin). At a tax rate of three kreutzers per yoke, it appears that it was originally intended that the colonists receive thirty-six yokes; however, by the time the contract was definitively drawn up, this total had been reduced by one-sixth.

But I must also explain another issue. Raimund Friedrich Kaindl reports that at that time it cost twelve kreutzers to produce one Lower Austrian cord of firewood and that the settlers were accordingly obligated to fell sixty cords of wood in lieu of paying ten florins in property taxes if the administration were able to find a buyer for it. Here Kaindl has erred, for according to the above calculations, the felling of fifty cords cost only ten florins. Based on the document before me, one must conclude that payment for felling one cord was twenty-four kreutzers.

In that a formal contract with the settlers could not be signed, since this could proceed only through Imperial consent, the previously-discussed protocol was transacted. At the urging of the German-Bohemians the attorney Uhlig in Gurahumora received instructions from his superiors temporarily to accommodate the settlers destined for Bori in earthen huts (September 21, 1835) and to subsidize them from community funds, because of the great misery of these poor people, who had been en route since May. Initially 122 yokes were allotted to them for the construction of make-shift huts and for planting crops. In the meantime the villagers of Illischestie came to their assistance and brought them food. The winter of 1835-36 was difficult and severe for the settlers in every regard. And only such frugal and hard-working people as the German-Bohemians of that era could have survived.

But the settlers of Bori were not to enjoy a peaceful development that soon. The Finance Office (Gefällenverwaltung) promulgated new regulations concerning colonization and negotiations were reopened. Driven by necessity, the settlers agreed to all changes (March 4, 1836). With the edict of April 5, 1836, they received temporary approval for the establishment of a colony.

Who were the first settlers? Kaindl states that according to a notation by Franz Adolf Wickenhauser, the Nestor of Bukovina historiography, the following twenty-eight applicants for settlement were destined for Bori: Josef Binder, Georg Brandl, Josef Brandl, Jakob Gerhardt, Josef Günthner, Johann Haas, Sebastian Hartinger, Georg Hellinger, Wenzel Hilgarth, Josef Hoffmann, Johann Joachimsthaler, Josef Klostermann, Johann Lang, Christof Maidl, Josef Pilsner, Christof Reichhardt, Franz Rippel, Josef Schaffhauser, Anton Schätz, Johann Schätz, Josef Schätz, Veit Seidl, Johann Stauber, Anton Tischler, Sebastian Wellisch, and Lorenz Zoglauer. Two others joined later: Michael Kisslinger and Jakob Koller.

During the summer of 1836 the colonists built small homes on the twenty-eight yokes of meadowland which had been allotted them. Not until October of that year did the forester Niederthal get approval to allot to them the ninety-three yokes of woodland which up to that point had been leased by the community of Klosterhumora. They then began the work of clearing the forest and labored energetically throughout the entire winter. Yet they could not sustain themselves without the help of the Germans in the neighboring villages. All totalled, each family only owned four yokes of land. Their appeals for the entire allotment spelled out in their contract were denied. Only in 1841 were they granted two additional yokes. It would take another two decades before the Bori colonists obtained most of the land for which they had originally contracted.

How tragic was the lot of the inhabitants of Bori! With what difficulties they wrestled is revealed in a petition, the original of which lies before me. It is addressed to an archduke. In that he is called "second sovereign" (zweiter Landesvater), I assume it was intended for Archduke Francis Charles von Habsburg. It reads as follows:

The deeply afflicted undersigned encompassing the most humble thirty settlers beg on bended knee for mercy and assistance through the mighty splendor of your Imperial and Royal Majesty.

Since 1836 we, the deeply afflicted, have been settled here where we own small houses but no gardens and are not allowed to have for cultivation a tract of forest requiring intensive clearing.

At first, six tax-free years were generously accorded us, but before we could obtain any benefit from the land, we had to work for four years to clear this vast virgin forest; hence, the six tax-free years are too little time in which to recover. We have already on three occasions signed a contract with the Solka Cameral Administration [Solker Cameral Verwaltung], each time a different one, and still we wait in vain with our prolific starving families, whom we can support with difficulty only as day-wage laborers, since we have already exhausted our meager resources.

May it please your Imperial and Royal Highness as our second sovereign to hear with benevolent consent our petition which we make on bended knee and to favor us poor languishing settlers with your most gracious help in order that at last through your Imperial and Royal Majesty's most effective authorization an improvement in our living conditions can come about, for which we, so deeply oppressed, again implore your Imperial and Royal Highness and beg for mercy, in order that we, the afflicted and not knowing where else to turn, can at last become useful tax-paying citizens.

        Joseph Schaffhauser, local magistrate
       Wenzel Hilgarth
       Peter Hoffmann
       Anton Schaffhauser (?)

But the Austrian administrative apparatus worked slowly. Not until March 26, 1841 did the petitioners receive the following reply:

To the community of Bori concerning a response to the enclosed petition:
the deliberations about a formal settlement of the aforementioned have been presented to the highest authorities with no response; it is expected that at best the decision can be expected that in the end the six tax-exempt years will begin from the very day of the allotment of various parcels to the settlers; there can therefore be no thought of an extension of the tax-exempt years.

How difficult it was for the colonists of Bori and how hard they had to struggle for a livelihood can be seen from the declaration which they submitted in 1841. They could no longer remain on their property but had to migrate to flat land in order to earn a living. As soon as they had saved a certain sum of money, they wished to return home. Did the Administration finally see the frightful earnestness of their situation? It approved the establishment of a potash hut in the Warwata, i.e., in a valley facing Bori (1842). Now the work of clearing the forests began with renewed zeal and finally, starting in 1843, the colonists were in a position to support themselves, albeit modestly, i.e., they were no longer dependent upon the largess of others.

In Bori I was shown a rather fine house with three windows facing the street and told that this was built in the style of the oldest colonial homes. Far from true! The settlers could build such houses only after they had reached a certain level of prosperity through their own efforts and incredible frugality. How the first houses or farmsteads were constructed we learn from a bill of sale which the colonist, Josef Binder, who had been allotted plot number 17, negotiated with Johann Lang in 1840. I published the entire document in the German Calendar (1935) and note here only that which relates to this matter. According to this agreement the house and farmstead consisted of "one building of logs on a stone foundation with living quarters in rural style, consisting of one room and an antechamber, all under one roof, a stable to accommodate two head of cattle, and a small shed in the courtyard."

That is more than modest. It follows from the above that the entire family lived and slept in one room and presumably also did their cooking there, although in the summer they could also cook on the stove in the antechamber.

We may ask further: what was the assessed value of such a colonial farmstead? The above-mentioned document also yields this information. Johann Lang had to pay thirty florins for the construction of the dwelling plus the farm buildings; fifteen florins for the clearing of the garden plot and the parcel allotted him in back of the settlement; twenty florins for clearing of the forested portion, temporarily allotted as field properties in the Rippa Rosch and Dialu Woronetz marches; and fifteen florins for the work done to date on road and bridge construction as well as assistance with repairs. Total: eighty florins in coin of the realm.

We can easily calculate the value which eighty florins represented at that time when we consider that a worker earned five kreutzers per day. The property of Josef Binder, therefore, had a value of 960 workdays.

Although, as noted above, beginning in 1843 the inhabitants of Bori could sustain themselves from their property, that is not to say that henceforth they did not often have to face difficult times. In 1847 they were ordered, as were the inhabitants of Pojana Mikuli and Plesa, "to construct, and in the future to maintain and assist the officials (Struzen [Diener])" of Military Border Station 46 (called Czadarque). The construction materials were to be supplied by the Administration, but the villagers had "to provide various materials and similarly to erect the buildings gratis and take care of any future repairs." They also had to contribute the straw for the mattresses.

This edict, transmitted by an official named Uhlig on March 19, 1847 concluded with the words: "The management of the new construction, as well as future regulation of affairs relating to the maintenance of the Czadarque as well as the assistance to the Struzen and so forth are officially vested in perpetuity in the presiding village judge of the community of Bori."

As if the maintenance of this military border patrol in and of itself did not already represent a heavy drain on the meager resources of the colonists, they now faced famine which, considering the lack of facilities to transport foodstuffs from other regions, proved catastrophic and even worse than in the year 1866. The lamentations of the poor oppressed colonists were pitiful. I have published two petitions to the throne in the German Calendar and have subsequently found a third which advanced the same arguments as the earlier ones. Moreover, famine came with a terrifying companion: cholera. Troops passing through Gurahumora had constructed a hospital barrack in that village. From there the epidemic had undoubtedly spread to the civilian population. And in Bori it also claimed many victims. The greatest loss was sustained in the home of the colonist Christof Reichhardt. On September 1, 1848 he himself died in his sixtieth year; he was followed on September 2 by his seven-year-old daughter Theresia, two days later by his wife Magdalena (née Kohlruss) only thirty-eight years old, and then within several hours by their five-year-old son, Peter. What disastrous dates!

But 1848 also brought some positive happenings; the Revolution freed the peasants [from the last vestiges of feudalism]. However, the inhabitants of Bori interpreted this to mean they would no longer have to render services to the Administration, including the six days of corvée labor described in Article 5 of their contract, but would still be able to take wood from the public forests. At this point the Administration of Solka energetically intervened and demanded that all obligations be discharged or else the Gurahumora District Office would bring legal measures to bear.

Only after 1848 could one speak of a steady and continuous improvement of conditions in Bori. The colonists now built good, spacious houses; increased the number of their livestock; and bought better land beyond Gurahumora near Paltinossa. Their ambition was proverbial. At harvest time, so it was said, they slept only so long as their trousers, which they had hung on a pole next to the oven, had stopped swaying; then they again got up--to work. The women labored alongside the men in the fields, prepared the unbelievably simple meals, and took care of all that related to dairy products. That which could be spared was taken to the marketplace in neighboring Gurahumora to be sold. People liked to buy milk, cheese, butter and cream ("Schmetten") from the women of Bori because they knew they offered quality products. Just as a man's word in matters of work was considered sacred, the critical housewife in town would never have thought to question the quality of the produce that came from Bori.

The colonists were imbued with a deep religiosity. Almost everyone constructed a small chapel next to his house; even if it did not take up more space than a square meter, it was for him the symbol of his faith, which he embellished with porcelain figures representing the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus or St. Johann von Nepomuk (in memory of the patron saint of their Bohemian homeland). Several times a year, on feast days, the table was decorated with flowers and candles were burned. They passed no church, no chapel, no crucifix without making the sign of the cross. Everyone, who on Sundays and holidays could find time to get away from his farm, would put on his good coat and walk to church. Many went barefooted as far as the first stone, which was the boundary of Gurahumora; there they put on their shoes which they had carried with them and continued to the church. On the return trip they again took off their shoes at the same place in order to save their footwear.

And one further feature characterized this generation: their respect for knowledge. In contrast to the Slovak immigrants, they were almost all able to read and write and also wanted their children to be literate. Presumably a private teacher named Jakob Steckbauer immigrated with them, since we already find him employed at his profession during the first years of Bori's founding. In February 1844 he got engaged to Rosina Joachimsthaler, daughter of the colonist. Repeatedly the colonists petitioned for property on which to construct a school building. Finally six yokes were approved for this purpose. A teacher named Ignatz Fritz then moved to Bori, who, among other things, taught the colonists how to cultivate tobacco. When on June 1, 1862 he married Josefa Katharina Eberle, the priest felt compelled to enter in the church records: invigitator herbae nicotinae (the one who introduced the tobacco plant).

At this point we wish to know the names of the men and women who founded Bori. The earlier references of the historian Franz Adolf Wickenhauser are not entirely accurate. We must now ascertain the identity of the thirty settlers who actually put down roots and played a role in the development of the colony. Here I rely on a registry I received from an old colonist (Mathias Lang), which for the most part I could verify through detailed perusal of all church records generously made available to me by the Reverend Sigismund Mück. In most cases I could also determine the wife with her maiden name. Colonists such as Josef Weber (from Rothsaifen, Bohemia) with his wife Eva Turner, and Josef Binder, who lived in Bori only a short time and then moved to Pojana Mikuli, are not included in the following list. The house number precedes the name of the colonist who settled in Bori in 1835.

25. Wenzel Pilsner with Margaretha Rab; after her death with Theresia Brandl

These are the men and women who under the two local magistrates, Josef Schaffhauser and later Wenzel Hilgarth, guided the village to prosperity. And if in these days their descendants wish festively to celebrate the centennial of its founding, it is only natural that they introduce the festivities by reflecting on those men and women who through their religiosity and respect for knowledge, through determined ambition and unusual frugality, laid the foundations for the prosperity of later generations.

It is in respectful remembrance of those pioneers and their German efficiency that I dedicate this essay.

For further reading on Bori and its inhabitants see Maria L. Becker, Larry R. Jensen and Sophie A. Welisch, The Bori Story: Genealogies of the German-Bohemian Families who in 1835 founded Bori in Bukovina (Now in Romania) with History of the Village and Its People (Congers, NY: published by the authors, 1996), 391 pp.

Die Besiedelung von Bori

by Professor Alfred Klug

(The Settlement of Bori)