Munkács

Ukrainian: Mukacheve

Hungarian: Munkács; Russian: Mukačevo; Yiddish: Minkatsch

Derived from the Hungarian word ‘munka’ (work).

Munkács lies on the River Latorica, a tributary of the Tisza (Tisa), on the border between the Pannonian Plain and the north-eastern Carpathians, 250 km south-west of Lemberg/L’viv/Lwów. Altitude: 128 m, coordinates: 48° 26′ north latitude, 22° 43′ east longitude.

Carpathian Ukraine

Ukraine. As a city with district status, Mukachevo is the administrative centre of the district (raion) of the same name, as well as of a Roman Catholic and a Greek Catholic diocese.

The town’s coat of arms depicts St Martin of Tours. It is first recorded in a document dating from 1376, issued by Elisabeth Piast (1305–1380), mother of King Louis I of Hungary (1326–1382).

The settlement of Munkács was inhabited by Slavs between the 6th and 9th centuries. At the end of the 9th century, the Magyars conquered the area. In the 14th century, the Ruthenian prince Fyodor Koryatovich was enfeoffed with this region by the Hungarian King Louis I. He expanded the border castle, built in the 13th century, which was situated in the immediate vicinity of the village. Munkács was granted a number of municipal privileges in 1378 and was elevated to the status of a free town by the Hungarian king in 1445. This led to conflicts between the townspeople and the lords of the castle, who insisted on the payment of taxes and the performance of feudal duties by the inhabitants.

The town is governed by a mayor and 42 councillors.

There is evidence of a Magyar and Ruthenian population dating back to the Middle Ages, when the first German settlers also established themselves in the Munkács area. In the 17th century, Plankendorf, a settlement next to the castle, was founded. Settlers from Main-Franconia settled in the Munkács estate in the mid-18th century. The town’s trilingual character was largely lost during the 19th century; many Germans initially assimilated into the Magyar community. As a result of forced industrialisation in the Soviet Union, the population grew significantly, particularly due to the influx of Ukrainians, who quickly came to form the majority in the town.

The number of Germans fell dramatically after the Second World War as a result of flight, expulsion and forced resettlement within the Soviet Union. German institutions were not preserved by the Soviet Union. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the majority of the remaining Germans emigrated to Germany.

Yiddish-speaking Jews had been present in Munkács since the 18th century. Due to heavy immigration from Galicia and Russia, the Jewish population grew rapidly during the 19th century. On the eve of the First World War, they accounted for almost half of the town’s population. The thriving Jewish community was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War. Survivors emigrated to New York; a small community remains in Munkács itself.

Right up until the 19th century, Munkatsch was characterised by craft trades and agriculture (viticulture). A gradual process of industrialisation began at the end of the 19th century (tobacco manufacturing), but it was not until the period following the Second World War that it gained momentum (with the emergence of food, furniture and textile industries).

St Nicholas’s Monastery, situated in the immediate vicinity of the town, was founded in the 15th century. It served as the seat of an Orthodox bishop. Following the Union of Ungvar/Užhorod in 1646, the monastery became the centre of the Greek Catholic Church in north-eastern Hungary. Although the diocese moved its seat to Ungvar in the mid-18th century, a new, imposing building was erected. After the Second World War, the Greek Catholic Church was forcibly merged with the Orthodox Church and the monastery was converted into a convent.

Munkács was home to the most significant Orthodox Jewish (Hasidic) community in Carpathian Ukraine. From the late 19th century until the Second World War, the Sapira family of rabbis and the local yeshiva were renowned far beyond the town’s borders. In 1924, a Jewish grammar school was founded by Zionist Jews, but it was heavily criticised by the ultra-conservative Hasidim and even by Rabbi Sapira (1872–1937).

The library of the Orthodox St Nicholas Convent is the most extensive collection of books in Carpathian Ukraine.

Since the 1990s, a number of German associations have been founded, including the ‘Wiedergeburt’ association (1990).

A modern school system did not emerge in Munkács until the 19th century. In primary school, lessons were taught in three languages (Hungarian, German and Ruthenian); from the 1860s onwards, they were taught exclusively in Hungarian. Secondary education with Hungarian as the language of instruction has existed since the mid-19th century. German-language institutions (schools, press) were first established in the interwar period, but were completely abolished after the Second World War. Today, the school system is dominated by the Ukrainian language, although some schools teach in Hungarian. There is no German-language school system in Mukachevo.

In 2009, two universities of applied sciences were merged and transformed into the State University (Mukačivs’kyj Deržavnyj Universytet).

• Yeshayahu A. Jelinek: The Carpathian Diaspora. The Jews of Subcarpathian Rus’ and Mukachevo 1848–1948. New York 2007 (East European Monographs 721).
• Georg Melika: The Germans of Transcarpathian Ukraine. The origins and development of their settlements and way of life in a multi-ethnic region. Marburg 2002 (Publications of the Commission for German and East European Folklore within the German Society for Folklore e. V. 84).

[1] Sources: 1880–1941: József Kepecs (ed.): Ethnic (native language) data on the settlements of Carpathian Ukraine (1880–1941) [Data on the nationalities (native languages) of the localities in Carpathian Ukraine]. Budapest 1996, pp. 100, 174; 2001: URL: 2001.ukrcensus.gov.ua/results/general/nationality/zakarpatia/ (accessed 18 July 2014).
The figures in brackets represent the percentage share.

[2] József Kepecs (ed.): Data on the Religions of the Settlements of Kárpátalja (1880–1941) [Data on the religious affiliations of localities in Carpathian Ukraine (1880–1941)]. Budapest 2000, pp. 89, 152.
The figures in brackets represent the percentage share.

Bálint Varga: Munkács/Mukachevo. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2014. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32314 (as at 12 May 2015).