Stalking
the Haban Houses...
I'm
a stalker...I freely admit it...
The
little girl who sat on the floor of the dining room in my mother's
house, randomly reading out of the set of encyclopedias in the
bookcase, searching for any bits of interesting information, has
grown into a mature woman who loves the internet. I love google and
all its search engines. I love google maps. I love google translate.
I love facebook. I stalk in a quiet fly-on-the-wall sort of way, but
I do stalk. This blog has given me many opportunities to justify my
stalking. It has led me to lots of interesting information and photos
and websites, some of which I'd like to share with you today.
As
I mentioned yesterday, any Hutterite remnants in our family line of
holding all things in common appeared to have faded away by my
generation. So I thought I'd like to examine the historical physical
remains of the the Bruderhofs in Grandma and Grandpa's home towns,
the houses where their ancestors lived when then did share all thing
in common.*
Sobotište,
Grandma's town, has an intact Habánský dvor,
or “Haban Court”. Sobotište had been a large Hutterite
settlement and the only Bruderhof that continually existed during the
Hutterites' time in Europe. (Unfortunately, there is no street
view for the Haban Court.) There
appears to be a concerted effort to restore this part of
Hutterite/Haban history into a museum area. If you are
interested, check out this video. It's in Slovak, I can't
figure out how to translate it, but has great shots of the Haban
Court and its interiors and it's worth the viewing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV5bp95nP1o
Want more? I believe the following link to be a proposal for the development of the museum area of the Haban Court. Scroll down for lots of great pics (If you want to dig deep, cut and paste into google translate to get the specifics...)
https://docplayer.cz/39889076-Sobotiste-pamiatkova-zona-habansky-dvor-zasady-ochrany-pamiatkoveho-uzemia.html
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| Old photo of the the Haban Court, Sobotiste |
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| From Hutterite Society by John A. Hostetler |
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| Google maps view of Habansky dvor or Haban Court within and around the loop of road. Yellow mark in upper right is where Grandma's house is located. Stodola is barn, mlyn is mill, kluciaren, I have no clue... |
Using
google maps street view, I did some stalking to find Grandma's house.
Below is the house from my blog photo and the street view house as it
looks today. The yellow mark on the above aeriel view shows the
location of the house in relation to the Haban Court. It also
shows the long, Bruderhof-style construction. I don't know the
age of the Grandma's house, but I think it is not as old as the
houses in the Haban Court.
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Grandma's house circa 1938? That's Grandma's mother in the Haban outfit.
|
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I think this is Grandma's house as it looks today.
|
Grandpa's
town, Moravský Svätý Ján, also has a Habánský dvor,
though it appears that it is somewhat behind in being developed into
a museum area. Unlike Grandma, Grandpa's family home was in the
the Haban Court. In a letter to my mother in the 1990s, one of
her cousins bemoaned the fact the house was now empty and abandoned.
I did as much stalking on google street view as I could, but again,
no street view for the Haban Court in Svätý Ján. Here
is an aeriel shot of the Court, similar in layout to the one in
Sobotište.
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|
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Another view of the Haban Court from a Svaty Jan website. You can see the chapel prominently placed in the center of the Court. The blue circle is where I think Grandpa's house might still be standing
|
Below
is an old photo of Grandpa's home. The roof was a classic
method of Hutterite construction, clay and thatch, which was both
durable and fireproof. It was later replaced by a shingled
roof.
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| Grandpa's Bruderhof home |
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| Illustration from Hutterite Society by John A. Hostetler, showing the classic thatched clay roof of the Hutterites, just like the roof on Grandpa's house |
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Looking
into the Moravsky Svaty Jan Haban Court area from the outside.
This might be the area where Grandpa's house is located.
Unfortunately, it might be quite run down by now.
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If you are interested in more Haban Svätý Ján and are on facebook, check out Habánsky dom o.z. Moravský Svätý Ján. Translated as "Haban House", this page has old photos and interesting articles and artifacts of the Haban, including the Haban pottery. The translations are a bit awkward, but mostly understandable. The photo below is from the facebook page. I was intrigued by the similarity between this photo and the one above of Grandpa's house, right down to the chickens and geese feeding in the front yard. This photo is believed to be from the 1930s.
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| So like Grandpa's house... |
At this point you may be thinking, "Hey, this isn't really stalking, just good historical research." Well, my "good historical research" into the undeveloped Haban area of Moravský Svätý Ján led me to real estate ads and online news articles about the area. I noticed the same person's name kept popping up as a byline, as a photo credit. The person had the same last name as Grandpa's sister Mary's married name. I looked him up on facebook, read profiles of him on his online newspaper website. He had pictures of himself attending the annual Habani festival they have in the Habánský dvor section of Moravský Svätý Ján. A great grandson of Grandpa's sister? (Moravský Svätý Ján is, after all, a small town of about 2,000 people.) I did send him a facebook message, and tried emailing him at work, briefly telling him how we might be related, and if we were, asking if he had any photos of the old family home. I have yet to hear back from him, so I won't include his name or photo. I'll just end this tour of the Haban courts with an ad for this year's Habánske Hody or "Haban Feast" in Moravský Svätý Ján. Who knows? Our maybe cousin may show show up again in the photos. New opportunities for stalking...
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| Party like a Haban...music, pie, ceremics |
*Don't
panic at the size of the pictures. If you click on a photo, it will
come up in a larger format.
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