Warasdin

Croatian: Varaždin

Hungarian: Varasd; Latin: Varasdinum

The spelling of the place name in the oldest documents, dating from the 11th to the 15th century, was not consistent (e.g. Garestin, Guarastin, Warasd, Worosd, Worost and Vorosd). The origin and original meaning of the name have not been conclusively established. Some scholars explain the meaning of the name as deriving from the locative form ‘várasdon’ of the Hungarian diminutive ‘várasd’ (= small town).

Warasdin is situated at 46° 18' north latitude and 16° 20' east longitude, approximately 70 km north of Agram/Zagreb, at an altitude of 169–173 m above sea level.

The town lies on the western bank of the Drau, on the edge of the Pannonian Plain and the Alps.

Austrian Military Frontier

Republic of Croatia. Varaždin is the administrative centre of Varaždin County ( Varaždinska županija). Since 1997, the town has been the seat of the Catholic Diocese of Varaždin.

King Matthias Corvinus (1443–1490) granted the town a coat of arms and a seal in 1464. The coat of arms depicts an angel holding a shield on a blue field. On the shield, which is horizontally striped in red and white, stands a square tower topped with a golden cross. To the left of the tower is a golden crescent, and to the right a golden star. The inscription ‘Sigillum majus ciuitatis Warasdien[sis]’ runs around the shield. The coat of arms and the seal modelled on it were used officially from 1464 to 1934.

In modern times, Warasdin was known as the ‘City of the Baroque’ because of its Baroque architecture, as ‘Little Rome’ because of its numerous church towers, and as‘Little Vienna’because of the luxurious lifestyle led by its inhabitants in the 18th century.

Roman roads ran through Warasdin, linking the historic towns of Pettau/Ptuj (Latin: Poetovio) and Bad Warasdin/Varaždinske Toplice (Latin: Aquae Iassae) with Sissek/Sisak (Latin: Siscia) and Esseg/Osijek (Latin: Mursa).

Warasdin belonged to the Kingdom of Croatia (925–1102) until 1102 and thereafter to the Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia (personal union) until 1526. The town suffered destruction during the Mongol invasion of 1241–42. After János Hunyadi (1387–1456) and his soldiers failed to capture the fortress of Warasdin during the conflict with the Counts of Cilli, they burnt the town to the ground in 1446 in an act of revenge. Parts of Warasdin were partially destroyed by repeated fires (1220, 1420, 1435, 1582, 1587); in 1592, the suburbs, the town hall (Domus civitatis) and the parish church were destroyed. In the 16th century, the castle and town were fortified to defend against the Ottomans and surrounded by a moat.

After the First World War , Varaždin became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1918–1929), the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929–1941), then the Independent State of Croatia (1941–1945), the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (1945–1963), the Socialist Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (1963–1991) and, since Croatian independence (1991), the Republic of Croatia.

As early as the first year of the newly founded state union (1919), an uprising took place in Varaždin involving Croatian officers – who had been replaced by Serbian officers by the government – and left-wing citizens. Seven people were killed and many injured; 250 rebels were imprisoned and, after a year’s detention in Niš, Serbia, were brought to trial in 1920. In the wake of the uprising, the absolutist government in Belgrade dissolved the Varaždin city council on 24 November 1919.

With the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH, Nezavisna država Hrvatska) on 10 April 1941, Varaždin became the seat of the regional administration of the so-called Zagorje County. As early as the following day, 11 April, the German army marched into Varaždin, during which a Serbian brigade and its general were taken prisoner. Between 12 and 14 July, an estimated 200–300 Jews were arrested and transported to a central camp in Agram. On 24 May 1944, Warasdin was bombed by the Allies; although there was no major destruction, 30 people were killed and 37 seriously injured.

After the end of the war in 1945, the Communists carried out acts of revenge against their former opponents. The official plan drawn up by the communist secret police, OZNA, on 31 March 1945 for the arrest of ‘enemies of the people’ – in reality, political opponents – in Warasdin contained the names of 443 individuals. A further list containing approximately 80 names was announced.^[1]

These individuals, among whom were members of the (German) Cultural Association, were sentenced by the Communist courts to death or to long prison terms. Thirty-nine German soldiers and prisoners of war are also buried in Varaždin’s municipal cemetery.

During Croatia’s ‘Homeland War’ against the Yugoslav Army and Serbian rebels (1991–1995), the 32nd Corps of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), together with its commanders (930 soldiers including officers), surrendered to the Croatian armed forces on 22 September 1991.

Ever since King Andrew II (1177–1235) granted the privilege of a free royal town (1209) to the ‘villa varasd’, there have been two municipalities within the territory of the town of Varaždin: the Old Town municipality and the free royal municipality. The Old Town municipality of Varazdin (also known as the fortress or castle municipality; Croatian: Starogradska općina; Latin: Castrum Varasd) was administered by burgraves (comites castri), who were subordinate to the kings. From the 15th century onwards, it was administered by the respective castle owners for around two centuries. The free royal town of Varaždin (Croatian: slobodna Varoš Varaždin; Latin : libera Villa Varasd or libera Civitas Warasdi(n)ensis), on the other hand, was under the direct administration of the kings, but enjoyed local self-government. Every year, on the first Sunday after St Martin’s Day, the officials were elected, including the town judge (rihtardus, Croatian: sudec/sodec, Latin: judex) and 12 town councillors. The two municipalities were not united until 1861.

In 1772, there were 1,635 citizens living in Warasdin; the total population was around 2,000. In 1857, the town had 9,358 inhabitants (of whom 310 were Germans, 220 Hungarians and 20 were of other nationalities). The Germans were predominantly merchants, whilst the Hungarians were craftsmen. In 1880, of the 11,445 citizens of Warasdin, 8,909 were Croats and Serbs by mother tongue, 866 Germans, 753 Hungarians, 725 Slovenes, 127 Czechs and Slovaks, 47 Italians, 12 Poles and 6 of other nationalities.^[2] The first census after the Second World War (1948) recorded 17,314 inhabitants, whilst by 1981 the figure had risen to 39,545.^[3] In 1991, the town’s population stood at 41,846, including 14 Germans.^[4]

Agriculture was initially central to the economic development of Warasdin: as soon as it was granted the royal charter of free city status, the municipal community acquired extensive estates in its immediate vicinity. Georg von Brandenburg (1484–1543), for example, owner of Warasdin Castle from 1509 to 1523, invited over 60 estate managers from Hungary, Croatia and Styria to Warasdin in 1513 to discuss the administration of his estates with them.^[5]

In 1406, the people of Varaždin were granted the right by Sigismund of Luxembourg (1368–1437) to hold regular markets in the town; from 1431 onwards, they were permitted to trade throughout the kingdom. Evidence of organised craft trades dates back to the 15th century; the first guild regulations – for surgeons, barbers and bath attendants – date from 1557. By 1795, ten further guilds had been established (some with trilingual guild regulations in Croatian, Latin and German).

Manufactories began to be established from the 18th century onwards; by the mid-19th century, there were 14. A continuous economic upswing was recorded up to 1930. In 1931, there were 699 craft businesses and 362 commercial enterprises, as well as 25 industrial firms, with the textile industry leading the way. The dominant economic sectors after the Second World War were the textile, timber, metal and food industries, which are now only partially represented. These are supplemented by a large number of small businesses offering a wide range of manufacturing and service activities.^[6]

In the 16th century, the noble Ungnad family supported the spread of Protestantism in Warasdin. Baron Hans Ungnad (1493–1564) moved to Urach in Württemberg in 1560, where he established a printing press and printed Protestant works in Croatian and Slovenian from 1561 to 1564. As Protestantism had gained a foothold in Varaždin by this time, the Croatian Parliament (Sabor) demanded in 1613 that the town’s administration at that time be replaced. A genuine Counter-Reformation only began with the arrival of the Jesuits in 1628 and ensured that the majority of the population remained Roman Catholic.

In 1857, 8,983 of the inhabitants were Catholic, 336 were Jewish, 25 were Orthodox and 14 belonged to other religious communities. In 1880, 10,500 of Varaždin’s inhabitants were Catholic, 589 were Jewish, 217 were Protestant and 98 were Orthodox; 31 professed other denominations.^[7]

In 1923, the Varaždin City Museum (Gradski muzej Varaždin) opened, comprising archaeological, historical, art-historical and entomological sections. The city has also been home to the Varaždin State Archives (Državni arhiv Varaždin) since 1951, since 1983 a branch of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Zavod HAZU), the ‘Metel Ožegović’ Municipal Library (Gradska knjižnica ‘Metel Ožegović’) and the Varaždin National Theatre.

The earliest records of organised schooling in Warasdin date back to the 13th century. As early as 1550, the town council urged parents to send their children and foster children to school for lessons. In 1588, the post of headmaster was officially established. In 1636, the Jesuits founded a grammar school; in 1771, the Paulines opened a primary school; there is also evidence of a German-speaking school from this period. The Ursulines opened a girls’ school in 1777. Maria Theresa introduced compulsory education for children aged six and over and founded the Studium Politico-Camerale in Warasdin in 1769. Between 1826 and 1875, Warasdin had a Jewish school, which was merged with the general primary school in 1875. In the 1960s, the Higher School of Textiles (1961), the Higher School of Economics (1962) and the Higher School of Geotechnical Engineering (1970) were founded; all were later converted into universities of applied sciences or schools.

Varasdin is regarded as the best-preserved town in northern Croatia in terms of Baroque, Rococo and Classical architecture. The parish church of St Nicholas and St Vitus Church date back to the Middle Ages, but were extended and remodelled during the Baroque period. The Church of the Assumption, built by the Jesuits between 1642 and 1646, is the town’s most significant early Baroque religious building. The medieval Franciscan Church of St John, which was burnt to the ground in 1582, was also rebuilt in the Baroque style in 1650. The Ursuline Church (Nativity of Jesus Christ), built between 1722 and 1729, is regarded as the city’s most harmonious religious building. Other Baroque buildings include the chapels of St Florian (1669–1672), St Fabian and St Sebastian (1681) and St Roch (1690), all of which were built outside the city centre. Due to the town fire of 1776, most of Varaždin’s surviving buildings date from the late 18th century and the first half of the 19th century (Classicism).

There is evidence of an organised system of town defence as early as the 15th century. The town’s districts were under the authority of the district masters (Quartari), who, together with the town judge, were responsible for safeguarding firearms and gunpowder. In the 16th century, elected captains led two companies comprising citizens of Croatian and German nationality (germanice nationis). Both companies were under the command of the captain of the castle community. In 1538, King Ferdinand I (1503–1564) introduced a permanent military garrison, with the commanders’ headquarters in Varaždin (from 1630, the Varaždin Generalate), in response to the Turkish threat.

For the purposes of promoting tourism, the phrase ‘The City of Baroque, Flowers and Music’ is often used today to describe Warasdin; this phrase is frequently combined with the refrain from Emmerich Kálmán’s operetta *Countess Mariza* (1924): ‘Come with me to Warasdin’.

In 1927, the Society for the Beautification of the City erected a monument to the doctor Wilhelm Bernhard Müller (1785–1863), a doctor originally from Braunschweig, who, as the town physician (from 1826), had championed the creation of the town park, the planting of trees and the establishment of hospitals.

A memorial in the Warasdin cemetery commemorates the 33 German soldiers buried there who were killed in the Second World War or sentenced to forced labour as prisoners of war.

• Mirko Androić: Ekonomika srednjovjekovnog grada Varaždina [The Economy of the Medieval Town of Varaždin]. Varaždin 2009.
• Mirko Androić: Six Hundred Years of History of the Royal Free City of Varaždin. 13th–18th Centuries. In: International Cultural-Historical Symposium Mogersdorf 1972. Vol. 4. Szombathely 1974, pp. 169–198.
• Mirko Androić: Starogradska varaždinska općina [The Old Town Municipality of Varaždin]. Varaždin 2008.
• Ladislaus Ebner: Historical, Statistical and Topographical Description of the Royal Free City of Varasdin. Varasdin 1827.
• Rudolf Horvat: Povijest grada Varaždina [History of the City of Varaždin]. Varaždin 1993.
• Miroslav Klemm: Baroque Art in Varaždin. In: Encyclopedia moderna 18/48 (1988), pp. 117–120.
• Ivy Lentić-Kugli: Varaždin: The Historical and Urban Core of the City [The historical and urban core of the city of Warasdin]. Zagreb 1977 (Society of Croatian Art Historians 24).
• Magdalena Lončarić: The City of Varaždin. In: Cities and Municipalities of the Republic of Croatia. Zagreb 2004, pp. 136–146.

• Yearbook of the Varaždin City Museum, 1961–1988.
• Minutes of the Magistrates of the Free and Royal City of Varasdin. [Minutes of the Magistrates of the Free and Royal City of Varasdin]. Archivum publicum civitatis Varasdini [Public Archive of the City of Varasdin], Volumes I (1990) – XI (2006).
• The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts: Papers of the Institute for Scientific Research in Varaždin: Radovi Zavoda za znanstveni rad Varaždin. [Proceedings of the Institute of the Academy of Sciences in Varaždin], vols. 1 (1986) – 23 (2012).

www.varazdin.hr (Website of the town of Warasdin)

www.gmv.hr (multilingual website of the City Museum)

dav.arhivpro.hr (multilingual website of the State Archives)

www.biskupija-varazdinska.hr (Diocese website in Croatian)

Vid Lončarić: Warasdin/Varaždin. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2014. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32432 (accessed 23 February 2021).