MTU Archives When this man arrived at Ellis Island from Hungary, his name was Zigmond Molnar. Because of differences in customs, once in the United States, his name was reversed, and became Molnar Zigmond. In Hungary, the family surname came first followed by the given name. The photograph, included with Declaration of Intention application for United States Citizenship, is dated January, 1938. His is listed as a laborer.

It could be argued that World War I, which began with Austria-Hungary, in 1914, actually began Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s grandson, in 840.

Charlemagne was the illegitimate son of Pippin III, the last of the last of the previous dynasty, the Merovingians. The family came to power as hereditary mayors of the palace of the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia. Pippin III held the title of Mayor of the Palace and he seized the throne with papal sanction several years after Charlemagne’s birth.

Although the Pope asked Pippin to name just one of his sons as king of Morovingian Empire, Pippin instead followed Frankish custom and divided his territories between Charlemagne (Charles) and Charlemagne’s brother, Carloman. Carloman died, (or joined a monetary, depending on who you ask) however, leaving Charlemagne as sole ruler.

Charlemagne extended Frankish power by conquering all of Gaul and into Germany and Italy, and he made tributaries of the Bohemians, Avars, Serbs, Croats, and other peoples of eastern Europe. He formed an alliance with the papacy and in 774 created a papal state in central Italy. On Christmas Day of 800, in the presence of Pope Leo III, he was crowned emperor of the restored Roman Empire, becoming the first emperor of Europe in more than 300 years.

Charlemagne died, leaving his son, Louis the Pious, as his successor, but Louis had three sons. When Louis died in 840, his sons contested the succession. The squabble ended (temporarily) with the Treaty of Verdun in 843, at which they agreed to divide the empire into three kingdoms. Francia Occidentalis in the west went to Charles II; Francia Orientalis in the east went to Louis II the German; and Francia Media, including the Italian provinces and Rome, went to Lothar, who also inherited the title of emperor.

As the editors of Britannica state, and one might have guessed, subsequent partitions of the three kingdoms, together with the rise of such new powers as the Normans and the Saxons, whittled away at Carolingian authority. The Carolingian Empire in the West becam fractionalized, and the last war to reunite it under one emperor ended in May, 1945.

The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806, but two years previous, Franz II, of the Habsburg Dynasty declared himself emperor of the Austrian Empire, which included what are today Austria and Hungary, as well as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia and parts of present Poland, Romania, Italy, Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia and Montenegro. In 1867, Austria formed a dual monarchy with Hungary: the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The dual monarchy had negative impacts on what had been the Kingdom of Croatia.

Croatia was within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, stated Ljubomir Antic, Filozofski fakultet, Zagreb, Republika Hrvatska, in his 1995 publication, “The Economic Causes of Emigration from Croatia in the Period from the 1880s to the First World War.” but was territorially and politically divided int the Banate of Croatia with Slovenia, and Dalmatia and Istria. He goes on to say that during this period, Dalmatia was a typically agricultural region. Of the 527,426 residents in 1890, 86.12% were involved in agriculture, while only 4.58% were involved in mining, crafts, and trades, and just 2.58% in intellectual professions.

In other words, the Croatians lived in both halves of the Dual Monarchy. Croatia, the heartland of the emerging Croat nation, was within the Austrian half, and Slavonia was in the Hungarian half.

A major cause of the mass emigration of the 1890s, however, began some 50 years before.

Even before the Austria-Hungary compromise of 1867, though, Croatia was thrown into chaos, Antic stated. The abolition of the Feudal System in 1848, caused drastic changes in Croatia’s social structure.

Antic explains that in the rural areas, the peasant became the owner of feudal land and was freed of forced labor and other duties stipulated by feudal law. The peasant, however, did not receive what Antic refers to as off-homestead lands, which did not belong belong to them under feudal law, while the rights to inn-keeping were still the privilege of the landowners, who also retained the use of the pastures and the forests. So, if peasants wanted off-homestead lands or vine yards, they had to purchase it. That worked out well for a while, until 1876.

In that year, a “special law” was introduced, under which the current owner of the land he occupied had to the pay the previous owner of that land in cash for the land. The payments were to be made every six months, or the estate owner received the monetary equivalent in promissory notes, so that the farmer became a debtor to the state government. Antic says the small estate holder lost, too, because the cash compensations they received could not cover the abolished serf duties.

To simplify the issue, the peasant farmers could not produce the cash, because they could not transition quickly enough to commercial production. There simply was no cash in rural Croatia.

If those conditions were not bad enough, from 1857 to 1859, Croatia was struck by drought and people began to starve. To add a soap opera touch, the grape vines were attacked by diseases, which disrupted the wine maket. Other issues contributed to the mass migration.

During the 1880’s Croats, Slovenes and Serbs from Austria-Hungary immigrated in masses to the States, Dragoslav Georgevich wrote in “Serbian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland.” A majority of Serbian immigrants were from provinces which were under the rule of Austria-Hungary: Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina. A large number of them were people whose ancestors were for centuries peasant-soldiers in the Military Frontier of the Austrian empire. Their situation after the abolition of the Military Frontier in 1873 became so unfavorable that they decided to immigrate to the United States.

In the 1880s, the Lake Superior copper region, as well as other areas in the United States, began experiencing the arrival of large numbers of immigrants from the Baltic States, particularly from Croatia and Slovenia.

The mining companies in the district employed many of them, but did not make any attempt to welcome them. In fact, in most instances, they were met with outright discrimination. Company records seem to indicate that this largely by the company managers as opposed to the eastern offices.

One of the causes of this may be attributed to the fact that the fast majority of these new immigrants had no experience in industrial work, lacked the skills necessary to mineral production, and as a result, were given very little respect. This begs two questions: Why did the mining companies employ men who knew absolutely nothing about metal mining or industry, and why did farmers come to Lake Superior to apply for jobs they for which they had absolutely no qualifications? The most readily available answers are that the companies needed laborers and the immigrants were willing to provide them. From a very practical standpoint of the companies, they needed men to haul rock from the working sections of the mine to the shafts and other jobs that required little or no skill to perform. These included installing waterlines, airlines and hoses and a host of other such jobs, installing timber supports, repairing tram tracks and rails in shafts, among others.

The Croatians, like the Finns, were needed. But the companies did not want them.

Sources:

• Antic, Ljubomir, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia, “The Economic Causes of Emigration from Croatia in the Period from the 1880’s to the First World War.” Historical Contributions (Historische Beiträge), Vol. 14, No. 14, 1995. (https://hrcak.srce. hr/file/157961)

• Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Carolingian dynasty.” Encyclopedia Britannica. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Carolingian-dynasty).

• Georgevich,Dragoslav, Maric, Nikolaj, Moravcevich, Nicholas: Serbian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland, Volume I. Cleveland Ethnic Heritage Studies, Cleveland State University Michael Schwartz Library and MSL Academic Endeavors,Cleveland State University, https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/serbian-americans-and-their-communities-of-cleveland-volume-one/chapter/serbian-immigration-to-the-united-states/

≤ J.R. Van Pelt Library at Michigan Technological University, MTU Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections, Keweenaw Ethnic Groups:The Croatians. An Interior Ellis Island, https://ethnicity.lib.mtu.edu/groups_Croatians.html

≤ Mutschlechner, Martin: “The Croats in the Habsburg Monarchy.” (https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/media).

≤ Snell, Melissa. “The Treaty of Verdun.” ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/the-treaty-of-verdun-1789809.