Settlement of German Protestant Families in the Slavonian Military Frontier in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries

Sa？etak The effects of the Reformation in the Military Frontier on the territory of Croatia in the 16th century were weak. There was a Protestant preacher in Karlovac, the main stronghold of the Croatian Military Frontier, who took care of the few members of the Evangelical confession that were mostly officers of Austrian-German descent or were members of the German military garrisons. Bearing in mind the poor representation of confessions arising from the Reformation in the Military Frontier during the 16th and 17th centuries, the author focuses on the gradual change of this practice at the end of the 18th and during the 19th century which took place in the newly created sections of the Military Frontier, from Slavonia to Banat and Transylvania. This area, which became part of the expanded Habsburg military zone after the war with the Ottomans at the end of the 17th century, was the location of great administrative, demographic, ecclesiastical and confessional, and economic changes during the 18th century. The paper focuses on migrations and planned settlement in the Slavonia-Srijem part of the Military Frontier that was carried out in order to maintain a functional Military Frontier system. As part of the intense and numerous migrations in the Slavonia-Srijem regiment areas during the 18th and 19th centuries, the settlement of Protestant families was mainly centred around the Srijem part of the border, especially the Petrovaradin regiment. The number of Protestants in the Military Frontier during the early 19th century, as shown by Hietzinger in his book Statistik der Milit？rgr？nze (1817 – 1823), was several times smaller in comparison to the prevailing Catholic and Orthodox population. Taking into account the legal framework and provisions regulating the settlement of Protestants in the Military Frontier, and based on original archive material and the comparison with the published data, the paper presents the course of settling of Protestant families, their origin, socio-demographic characteristics, the conditions of their settlement and the attitude of the authorities and the local population towards them. The paper describes their material circumstances in the new environment, the possibilities of performing religious ceremonies, the attitude of the population of majority confessions towards them, and their civil and religious freedoms at the Slavonian border. The research for this paper is based on written historical sources from the Slavonian general command which are stored in the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb. This material includes various