The Siebengemeinden (Hebrew: Sheva Kehillot, שֶבַע קְהִלּוֹת; Hungarian: Hét község or Hét hitközség; English: Seven Communities) were seven historic Jewish communities in western Hungary, in the territory of present-day Burgenland, Austria. Until 1921 the communities belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary and were closely connected with the western Hungarian estates of the Esterházy family. The seven communities were Kismarton / Eisenstadt, Nagymarton / Mattersdorf, later Mattersburg, Kabold / Kobersdorf, Lakompak / Lackenbach, Boldogasszony / Frauenkirchen, Köpcsény / Kittsee and Németkeresztúr or Sopronkeresztúr / Deutschkreutz.
The formation of the communities was connected with several waves of Jewish displacement and resettlement in western Hungary and Central Europe. One early background was the expulsion of Jews from Sopron in the sixteenth century, after which some Jews excluded from the jurisdiction of the royal free town found room to settle on nearby noble estates, especially in the direction of Kismarton/Eisenstadt. A later and decisive factor was the settlement of Jews expelled from Vienna and other Austrian territories around 1670–1671, who found new opportunities in the western counties of the Kingdom of Hungary, especially under Esterházy protection.
The communities were predominantly associated with Orthodox Judaism and maintained synagogues, schools, cemeteries, ritual baths and rabbinical institutions. Their history belongs at once to the history of Hungarian Jewry, the regional history of western Hungary, the Orthodox Jewish religious tradition, and the memory of Jewish life in present-day Burgenland.
Name
The German name Siebengemeinden and the Hebrew name Sheva Kehillot both mean "Seven Communities". In Hungarian the group is known as Hét község or Hét hitközség. The term "community" did not refer merely to seven settlements, but to organised Jewish communal bodies functioning under the legal and social conditions of the early modern and estate-based order.
In the early period Lajtaújfalu / Neufeld an der Leitha was also connected with this group of Jewish settlements. German-language accounts describe Neufeld as an original eighth community that was dissolved by an estate decree in 1739; the expression "Eight Communities" did not become established in the documentary record. From the eighteenth century the name Siebengemeinden therefore referred to the seven remaining Jewish communities under Esterházy protection.
Meaning of "community"
In the context of the Siebengemeinden, the word Gemeinde or község referred not only to a locality but also to an organised Jewish community and congregation. In early modern and estate-based Hungary, communities living on a landlord's estate, including Hungarian, German or Croatian villages, had their own local leaders, internal rules, collective obligations and payments towards the estate. The Jewish communities of the Siebengemeinden functioned within a similar estate framework, but their internal organisation was based on religious and confessional structures.
Jewish communal self-government within such pre-modern frameworks was not unique to the Siebengemeinden. Jewish communities across Central and Eastern Europe commonly had internal leaders and institutions for religious, educational, charitable, disciplinary and fiscal affairs. The distinctive feature of the Siebengemeinden was rather that seven historically connected western Hungarian Jewish communities became institutionalised within the Esterházy estates and were known for generations as a regional group.
The leaders of the Jewish communities dealt both with the estate authorities and with their own community members. Their tasks included the management of collective payments, the maintenance of religious and social institutions, and the handling of internal communal affairs. The Siebengemeinden thus represented not simply seven places where Jews lived, but seven organised Jewish communities operating within the estate-based order, with their own religious and communal institutions.
After the revolutions of 1848 and the decline of feudal-estate structures, this legal and administrative framework lost its original meaning. The Jewish congregations continued to exist as religious and communal institutions, but the term Siebengemeinden increasingly referred to a historical group of communities rather than to a living estate-administrative category.
The seven communities
The Siebengemeinden consisted of the following western Hungarian Jewish communities:
Kismarton / Eisenstadt – in historic Sopron County; one of the best-known centres of the Siebengemeinden. Its Jewish quarter was the Unterberg, Hungarian Alsókismartonhegy. Nagymarton / Mattersdorf, later Mattersburg – in historic Sopron County; an important Orthodox Jewish community and centre of rabbinical learning. Kabold / Kobersdorf – in historic Sopron County; its historic Jewish cemetery is one of the surviving remains of the community. Lakompak / Lackenbach – in historic Sopron County; a Jewish community connected with the Esterházy estates. Boldogasszony / Frauenkirchen – in historic Moson County; one of the northern communities of the group. Köpcsény / Kittsee – in historic Moson County; a Jewish community on the western borderland of historic Hungary. Németkeresztúr or Sopronkeresztúr / Deutschkreutz – in historic Sopron County; a community with a significant Orthodox Jewish tradition.
History
Expulsions from Sopron and Austrian territories
The formation of the Siebengemeinden was not the result of a single event, but of several waves of Jewish displacement and resettlement that differed in date, scale and legal context. Among the western Hungarian precedents was the expulsion of Jews from Sopron in the sixteenth century. This took place in the unsettled aftermath of the Battle of Mohács in 1526, when the Kingdom of Hungary entered a period of dynastic conflict and civil war between the supporters of Ferdinand of Habsburg and John Zápolya, while facing the continuing threat of Ottoman expansion. In this environment of political fragmentation, military insecurity and financial strain, Sopron acted to remove its Jewish community, partly in defence of its own urban jurisdiction and financial interests.
In his 1896 history of the Jews of Sopron, Rabbi devoted a chapter to "The expulsion of the Jews from Sopron, 1526–1534" and to the later fate of Jews who had fled the town.
The expulsion from Sopron was primarily an exclusion from the jurisdiction of a royal free town. The Jews were driven out of Sopron's urban legal sphere, but they did not necessarily leave the legal-political framework of the Kingdom of Hungary. According to Pollák, some of the Jews who left Sopron fled towards Kis-Marton, that is Kismarton/Eisenstadt. This process can be seen as one of the early western Hungarian precedents of the later Siebengemeinden: Jews excluded from urban jurisdiction found a new framework for communal life on nearby noble estates, especially in the Kismarton region connected with the Esterházy family.
The seventeenth-century expulsions from Austrian territories differed in both scale and legal meaning. After the expulsion of Jews from Vienna and Lower Austria in 1670–1671, several Jewish families did not simply move from one urban jurisdiction to a neighbouring estate, but crossed from the Austrian hereditary lands into the western counties of the Kingdom of Hungary. In the history of the Siebengemeinden, the Sopron precedent is therefore best understood as a local western Hungarian urban-to-estate shift, whereas the Austrian expulsion represented a cross-border wave of flight and resettlement.
The later Siebengemeinden developed against this double background: Jews excluded from western Hungarian towns and Jews expelled from Austrian territories both found opportunities for settlement and communal life on noble estates, especially those of the Esterházy family.
Esterházy protection and estate status
The growth of the communities was closely tied to Esterházy estate protection. In the conditions of early modern estate society this protection provided a legal and social framework for settlement and communal life. The rights, duties and financial obligations of the Jewish communities were regulated by letters of protection, contracts and estate regulations. This system involved dependence on the landlord, but also gave the communities room to maintain their own religious and communal institutions.
The inhabitants of the communities paid protection fees and other dues to the Esterházy lords. In German-language scholarship they are described as having referred to themselves as Hochfürstlich Esterházy Schutzjuden, or princely Esterházy protected Jews. The term illustrates that, within the estate-based order of the period, dependence on the landlord was also a legally recognised status that provided a framework for settlement and communal life.
The communities had a degree of internal self-government. Their representatives met from time to time in Kismarton/Eisenstadt to discuss, among other matters, the distribution of taxes and payments imposed on the communities and the defence of their legal position. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the Esterházy letter of protection granted to the Jewish community of Eisenstadt in 1690 was later extended to all seven communities and formed an important basis of their autonomy.
The communities maintained synagogues, cemeteries, schools, ritual baths and rabbinates. They were particularly important in the history of Orthodox Judaism in western Hungary, and several of them developed strong traditions of rabbinical learning.
After 1848
The revolutions of 1848 and the abolition of feudal-estate structures transformed not only the Esterházy protection system but also the administrative and social framework in which the Siebengemeinden had originally been meaningful. With the development of modern civil administration, estate-based communities with collective rights and obligations lost their earlier administrative role. The Jewish congregations continued as religious and communal institutions, but the Siebengemeinden as an estate-based community group tied to the Esterházy estates lost its original legal and administrative meaning. The name survived mainly as a historical, religious and memorial term.
Until 1921 the communities were located within the Kingdom of Hungary. Their primary legal, administrative and social framework was therefore Hungarian, although their religious, family and commercial connections extended across the wider Central European Ashkenazi world. After the post-First World War border changes under the Treaty of Trianon and the creation of Burgenland as an Austrian province, the communities became part of Austria in territorial and administrative terms.
Related southern Jewish communities
The Siebengemeinden are often distinguished from Jewish communities that developed in the area of present-day southern Burgenland, usually under the protection of the Batthyány family. Such communities included Városszalónak / Stadtschlaining, Rohonc / Rechnitz and Németújvár / Güssing. Some Jewish historical summaries also include Felsőpulya / Oberpullendorf and Gáta / Gattendorf in this wider network, although Gattendorf is not geographically part of southern Burgenland and also appears historically in connection with the Esterházy sphere.