Kőszeg (Hungary)

www.koszeg.hu

Kőszeg (German: Güns, Prekmurian: Küseg, Slovene: Koseg, Croatian: Kiseg) is a town in Vas county, Hungary. The town is famous for its historical character and the charm of the surrounding Kőszeg-Mountains.

History

The origins of the only free royal town in the historical garrison county of Vas (Eisenburg) go back to the third quarter of the 13th century. It was founded by the Volfer family, a branch of the Héder clan, who had settled in Hungary in 1157 AD. Sometime before 1274 Heinrich II and his son Ivan moved the court of the Köszegi, a breakaway branch of the family, from Güssing to Kőszeg (Güns). For decades, the town was the seat of the dukes of Kőszeg (Güns).
Only in 1327 did Charles Robert of Anjou finally break the power of the Kőszegi family in Western Transdanubia, and a year later in (1328), elevated the town to Royal status. The town boundaries were fixed during the Anjou dynasty (1347–1381). In 1392 the Royal town became a fiefdom, when the Palatinate Nicolas Garai repaid a bond paid to King Sigismund of Luxembourg by the Ellerbach family from Monyorókerék. The Garai era ended in 1441.

Little War in Hungary

In the third wave of the great wars against the Turks in the 16th century, Kőszeg became the major flashpoint of the campaign of 1532. Between the 5 and 30 August, Grand Vizier Ibrahim led 19 major assaults against the town. Under the leadership of the town and fort captain, Miklós Jurisich, a small garrison repelled an Ottoman force numbering some 80,000 men in the Siege of Kőszeg. After the final unsuccessful attack, the Turkish leadership were forced to decamp due to an uprising by the Janissaries. According to tradition, the last contingent of withdrawing troops were meant to have left the city limits around 11 o'clock. As a memorial to this historic heroism, the church clocks in the town have read 11 o'clock since 1777.
After the Turkish wars, in 1695 the garrison and surrounding areas of Kőszeg fell into the hands of the Esterházy dukes, where it remained until 1931. The town lost its strategic importance after the Rákóczi- Liberation Wars of 1703–1711. Along with Szombathely, Kőszeg was the most important fortress for the kuruc military leadership from 1705–1708, to liberate and hold onto the areas west of the Rába.
The free royal town enjoyed the longest period of peace in its history during the 18th Century. For the first time in the history of the town, there was an attempt, in 1712, to replace the population loss in the town by trying to attract colonists and by founding Schwabendorf (Kőszegfalva).
Kőszeg had already lost its leading role in the garrison county of Vas by the mid 19th Century. Only a few workshops survived the production crisis within the guild system during the Hungarian reformation of the early 19th Century. The founding of public companies, societies and the first financial institution in the county were the first signs of civic development in the town. Alongside the by now typical society made up of small businesses and small traders, Kőszeg developed during this time into a town of schools, sanatoria and garrisons.

World War II and the Holocaust

During World War II, the Jews of Kőszeg were among the last to be deported to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. Later that year Nazis established a slave labor camp at Kőszeg where 4,500 Jews died of typhus. With the impending arrival of the Red Army in 1945, the camp was liquidated with the camp's 2,000 surviving enduring a "death march" for several weeks over the Alps to Ebensee.

After Communism

Since 1992 Kőszeg is again living under a normal administrative system and a market economy. The financially feable town is looking at options for renewal through an injection of capital from outside investors and is seeking support from government agencies and the European Union.
Kőszeg has managed to retain its natural charm and the beauty of its architecture. Only the bastion gates have been damaged significantly. The structure of the town remains unaltered.
Today Kőszeg is one of the most attractive towns in Hungary (also called Hungary's Jewel Box) and is a tourist destination. Kőszeg was awarded the Hild Prize (Hungarian architecture prize) in 1978 for preserving its architectural heritage.

Demographics

In 1880 Kőszeg had 7,301 inhabitants with ethnic German majority (in 1495, 1715 and 1784 also had German majority). The German citizens mainly were Lutherans like in Sopron. During Austro-Hungarian times the city's population were magyarized. After the Second World War officially 117 Germans were expelled, but in fact more German-speaking people were deported because the town's population declined from 10,320 (in 1941) to 8,780 (in 1949). During the socialist era the remained Germans assimilated to the Hungarians. In 2001 Kőszeg had 11,844 inhabitants, 95.4% Magyars, 3.2% Germans, 1.6% Croats. The distribution of religions were: 72.2% Roman Catholic, 8.6% Lutheran, 2.5% Calvinist, 1.1% others, 5.5% Atheist, 10.1% no answer, unknown (2001 census).

Sights of interest

• Jurisics Castle and Museum
• The downtown with its medieval atmosphere
• Jesus’ Heart Church
• Pharmacy Museum

In the Kőszeg-Mountains:

• Steierhäuser (Styrian Houses) in the Kőszeg-Mountains
• Írottkő (Geschriebenstein) – highest peak of Transdanubia
• Hétforrás (Siebenbründel) – Seven Springs
• Ó-ház (Old House) – Lookout Tower

International relations
Twin & partner towns

Kőszeg is twinned with

• Vaihingen an der Enz, Germany
• Mödling bei Wien, Austria

Other partner towns:

• Nyitragerencsér, Slovakia
• Senj, Croatia

Kőszeg is member of the Jumelage town-twinning organisation

• Mödling bei Wien, Austria
• Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
• Velletri, Italy
• Zemun, Serbia
• Offenbach am Main, Germany
• Puteaux, France

Partner town (about to join the Jumelage):

• Vsetín, Czech Republic

Kőszeg is also a member of the Douzelage, a town twinning association of 23 towns across the European Union. This active town twinning began in 1991 and there are regular events, such as a produce market from each of the other countries and festivals.

www.koszeg.hu

Kőszeg Town-Twinning Association – Hosting organisation of the meeting
Objectives and Activities

Kőszeg Town Twinning Association was established in 2004 after a two-year-preparatory work. The members – currently 40 people – of the Town-Twinning Association are Kőszeg residents who would like to take an active part in the life of the city, independently from the political parties. One of their aims is to help the cooperation of Kőszeg and its several twin and partner cities. Many of the members are high-school or college students and young employees. All the members are extremely active, we all love and are loyal to their own city, country and culture, but we also agree very much with our EU membership and would also like to convince people about its benefits both in Hungary and abroad.
Our association regularly helps with international events; the members take part in both preparing plans and doing the tiring work. We often organize youth exchanges (Youth in Action); mostly we coordinate them at our city. To exchange experiences we also organized Youth Seminar with participants from 16 countries.
As many members of the association are experienced in carrying out international projects, exchanges, events, we also try to involve more and more people from our city and region in these activities so that our citizens will learn more from other European citizens.

Role in the project

To highlight shortly our role in the project we would just say: “Primus inter pares” i.e. first among the equal ones. This also reflects our idea of a “teacher”: we, as experienced – however very young – European citizens take advantage of our background and teach other organizations intercultural dimension, partnership, each others’ respect so that meanwhile we also learn from others.
This means, as a good “teacher”, we found out what the needs of the “students” – i.e. of less experienced partners – are, initiated and planned the project, found out some methods which, according to our previous successful project outcomes, are appropriate, and provide the infrastructure of the whole “learning process”. Also, we suggested our partners the composition of the groups for a bigger success.
However, during the activities preparing the event – including project planning activities – and during the event itself our association rather coordinated the work than acted as a teacher. During the wide variety of the methods applied we also learnt – as good teachers can also learn from their students. As described later, the different groups were responsible for a given part of the program, and they held then the “presidency” on a rotary base, as the presidency of EU is held by different countries. So we held presidency on the first day afternoon session and third day afternoon session.
Kőszeg Town-Twinning Association (Kőszegi Testvérvárosi Egyesület) is not only according to our opinion, a very successful group of open-minded real European citizens. Most of the members speak at least 2 foreign languages, have spent some time abroad and believe in a multicultural, multilingual community. One of the reasons might be the presence of the German and Croatian minorities living here.
50 % of the key persons of the association are teachers, having been involved in international projects. Since 2004 our association has organized 6 successful youth projects (Youth in Action) with participation of altogether 10 countries. Besides these, we also organized a very fruitful seminar for mixed age groups.
Moreover, our members also help other associations, groups to build up international relationship, and also encourage youngsters’ project participation. We assisted both financially and technically some 100 youngsters to take part in workshops, seminars, youth projects organized abroad. We also have helped our schools to get in touch with other European schools to develop different school projects (Comenius, Leonardo). Also, we play an important role in our town twinning programmes.