Hauerland


Hauerland is the German name for a region presently located in central Slovakia once inhabited by Carpathian Germans. Arisen from medieval Ostsiedlung population movements, it belonged to three German language islands within a greater Slovakian-speaking area. The other two were situated in Bratislava and the Spiš region.

Geography

The area laid within the forested Western Carpathians mountain range around the towns of Kremnitz Kremnica in the south and Nitrianske Pravno in the north. The term Hauerland was coined by German folklorists in the 1930s referring to several German placenames in the region bearing the suffix -hau. Most Hauerland villages are laid out as Waldhufendorf in areas of forest clearing with the farms arranged in a series along a road or stream.

History

In the Middle Ages, the Kremnica Mountains were an important gold mining area within Upper Hungary and directly subordinate to the Hungarian monarch. Numerous villages, mostly spread out in the mountainous and hilly areas, were agricultural and developed a special kind of German subculture.
In 1328 King Charles I granted Kremnica town privileges, followed by the foundation of Kunešov in 1342, Sklené in 1360, Kremnické Bane in 1361, Turček in 1371, Horná Štubňa in 1390, Krahule in 1422, and Janova Lehota in 1487.
The largest Hauerland municipality was Handlová, established in 1367 within the Bojnice Castle estates, where in the 19th century, coal deposits were discovered. In the northern part, the town of Nitrianske Pravno was founded about 1337, followed by Malinová in 1339, Kľačno, Tužina about 1350, Vrícko in 1488, and Chvojnica in 1614.
Over the centuries, the German-speaking population diminished, decimated already in the Hussite Wars of the 1420s and 30s, in the 16th century Ottoman–Habsburg wars, and again by insurgent Hungarian troops under Stephen Bocskay in 1605/06, succeeded by the forces of Gabriel Bethlen and George I Rákóczi.