Tuzsér Summary
Tuzsér
Summary
Summary
It is one of the ancient settlements of Rétköz, lying along the Tisza, in the north-east part of Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county. The village with an area of 2892 hectares (fifteen and a half square kilometres), and a population of 3372 (1999) is bordering on Tiszabezdéd in the north, Mándok in the east, Komoró in the south, and the Tisza and Zemplénagárd in the west.
The surface of its area is even, and its altitude over the sea level changes between 100–113 metres. Its highest point – the Vajas-dülő in the south- east part of the village – is 102.1 metres. The monotony of the surface is broken by the remains of some elevated natural levees, cleared sand hills, desolate river beds, basins and inland water draining canales.
The Holocene deposits (alluvial sand, alluvial mud, alluvial clay) cover the largest part of the area of the village. The sand formations typical of the Pleistocene (remaining crests, sand dunes, wind-furrows) are elevated like islands from the Holocene deposit, and elsewhere, from the direction of the north-east Nyírség, they cut into the east, south-east part of Tuzsér as a peninsula. In the lower parts with a worse drainage possibility, small spots of sodic clay and sodic mud can be noticed. This deposit arrangement on the surface also formed the different size soil covers, and has an influence on apple production, still the most important produce of the village.
In the area of Tuzsér, the man of the so called Gáva culture settled at the end of the late Bronze Age, and the beginning of the early Iron Age (1100–800 B.C.) as witnessed by three decorated bronze swords. The free ordinary stratum of the settling Hungarians invaded this area in the first two-thirds of the X century, and one of their small family graveyards was excavated in a vineyard called Boszorkány-hegy (Witches’ hill) in 1900.
The name of Tuzsér first appeared in written sources in 1212 (as a place giving directions). The village was divided into two parts in the XIII century, and one half was donated by the king to the Várdai family of the Gutkeled line, the owner of the nearby (Kis)Várda. This was called Gőstuzsér after its founder or owner in the Middle Ages, but when it was first mentioned in 1343, it did not have any population at all. The other Tuzsér was donated by king Stephen V. to master Rénold of the Básztély line, the ancestor of the Rozgonyi family, which became famous later. Charters called the village Rénoldtuzsér after him for a long time, and this was the predecessor of today’s Tuzsér.
The village, with not too many people living in it, however, was not owned by the Rozgonyies for long. In 1316, the village also having a harbour and a toll on the Tisza, was given to their serviens coming from Gecse (today: Geča, Slovakia) in Abaúj county, who during the system of county management sacrificed even their lives to protect their masters. This family, the Tuzsérs were the owners of the village with thirty serf plots of land and about one hundred and fifty inhabitants until the beginning of the XVI century.
In the XV century, another village, Kálong was also born in the land area owned by the Váradi family. The wooden chapels of both villages were mentioned in 1500.
The authors of the book overviewed the history of the village until the change of the political system (1990). They devoted a separate chapter to the Reformed church and education, existing since 1610. The Reformed church of the village under monumental protection today was built in 1823, and the chapel for the off-spring of the mostly Catholic servants, settled in the domain at the end of the XIX century, used together with the Greek Catholics, was built in 1991. The Baptist church took its beginning in 1928, and its followers erected their house for prayers to replace the old building in 1962.
In the Modern Age past of Tuzsér, the Lónyay family played an important role, who came from the nearby Bereg county (Nagy-and Kislónya) at the end of the XVII century. First, they established an estate, and later Ferenc Lónyay, who also had a regimen, had a manor house built in the village at the end of the XVIII century. This late baroque building, decorated with frescos, was re-built by adding an upper floor and extending it with wings by Menyhért Lónyay, minister of finance, later prime minister (1871–72), on the basis of the design of Ybl Miklós, the famous Hungarian architect, who also obtained the title of a count. The successors lived in the manor-house surrounded with a huge English park until 1945, the furniture of which – although it managed to survive the world war – was carried away. It burnt down twice since then, and the building, which has been reconstructed by today, and has been owned by the state, is now awaiting a clever user.
Another known member of the family was prince Miklós Odescalchi (1902–1945), the son of count Pálma Lónyay (1880–1967). This officer of the air force, known throughout the country because of his extremities wished to fly without a governmental permit to Rome at the beginning of 1944, but he made a mistake together with his escort, and due to some wrong navigation, landed in the German zone. They were arrested by the Gestapo that handed them over to the Hungarian authorities. The military court of the Hungarian nazi government, which came to power in the meantime, executed him as a traitor in January 21, 1945. He was rehabilitated in 1946, and advanced to a sergeant, and his body was buried in the graveyard of the manor-house, next to the graves of one of his wives and his daughter.
The gold of Tuzsér is apple. Its growing was started in the previous flood area, protected by a dam after the regulation of the Tisza at the end of the XIX century. First it was countess Margit Forgách, the daughter-in-law of the prime minister, who planted apple trees on one hundred and thirty holds. Later, the first husband of her daughter, Pálma, prince Zoárd Odescalchi increased it by ninety holds in 1912, and after his tragic death, the second husband, György Ambrózy from Séden established a model farm here by increasing it with a further two hundred holds at the beginning of the 1930-ies. In 1937, 47,754 trees yielded abundant fruit on one thousand and one hundred holds in the Model Farm of Rétköz, being the same unit with the orchard around Ibrány. From this, 32 thousand were apple trees, and more than one third of them, 12,400 trees were Jonathan, brought in from California. The annual yield of ninety wagons of apple was sorted and packed locally, and then placed in refrigerated storage facilities in Budapest, from where it was shipped abroad.
This farm became later the model for the industrial growth of apple in the country, and with the help of the gardeners, trained here, the apple orchards of the cooperative of the county was established at the beginning of the 1960-ies. The club of Garden Friends having the name of Sándor Nagy, who was a fruit growing supervisor experimenting with the grafting of Jonathan trees, was established to support the small growers in Tuzsér in 1968. The club has been operating for decades now.
A large change in the life of the village, cherishing the care of the domain, and living under its shadow for centuries, started at the end of the 1950-ies. The trans-loading of the wood import from the Soviet Union from the wide rail carriages into the normal, standard European carriages was done in the timber yard built near the village. In the 1970-ies already two and a half million cubic metres of wood was imported, out of which one million was pine wood, and one and a half million was log. The latter one was processed in two saw-mills, and an auxiliary plant producing apple cases from the by-product. In 1969, a cooling house for one thousand, and later one for three thousand carriages were built for the purposes of the apple export, where an annual two hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand tons of apples were purchased and trans-loaded before the change of the political and economic system. At that time, one thousand and eight hundred people worked at the Erdért timber yard, four to five hundred people at the cooling house, and three hundred and fifty to four hundred people worked in the area of the Hungarian State Railways, which totally tied up the labour force of the vicinity.
Although the Russian-Hungarian export-import have largely dropped by now, the cars arriving from there are still received in Tuzsér today (Vagép Rt.). Industrial black, the raw material of rubber manufacturing also arrives in here, to the Carbonpack plant of Taurus, which is trans-loaded and packed here for further shipment.
The authors review the history of the Lónyay manor-house in the last chapter of the book, demonstrating not only the history of architecture, but also the earlier functions of the individual facilities, as well as the botanical values of the protected park, part of which has been fully preserved. And finally, a list is given of all the sources in books and archives that they tapped in when developing the monograph of Tuzsér, a large village since 1989.
