Oberwart - Hungarians

Hungarians

In the course of the 20th century Magyars lost their historical majority in Felsőőr/Oberwart but the town remained the most important Hungarian educational, religious and cultural centre in Burgenland.

Nowadays there are appr. 1100 ethnic Hungarian inhabitants of the town, mostly members of the Calvinist parish. Felsőőr is the oldest Calvinist congregation in Austria. The Christian Reading Club of Young Men (founded in 1889) is an important cultural association of the Hungarian minority with a library, folk dance group and theater group. The new cultural center of the Calvinist Church was built in 1956-57. The Hungarian kindergarten was reestablished after World War II in 1951 and a new Bilingual Secondary School was set up in 1992.

The old Hungarian district of the town is called Fölszeg (i.e. Upper End). The neighbourhood is the oldest part of the town with narrow lanes and more than one hundred old houses which are typical examples of the rural architecture of the Felső-Őrség. The vaulted porches and the stuccoed gables are characteristic architectural features.

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