The Barbara Procession Among Burgenland Croats in Horvátkimle in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Abstract The term “Burgenland Croats (Gradišćanskih Hrvati)” was coined by vicar, poet and scholar Mate Mersich Miloradić in 1921, after the majority of Western Hungary's Croatian population became annexed to Austria. By the interwar period an extended use of the term became the norm – it had come to refer to all Croatians living in the remaining areas of the Croatian diaspora, such as Western Hungary, Western Slovakia and Moravia, who had settled in these parts after fleeing the ravages of the anti-Ottoman wars of the 16th century. Worries about the mere existence and survival of the identity of the Burgenland Croat population has been a concern for well over two hundred years. It is fair to ask the question what kind of traditions the collector can expect to find and whether traditions are still in a collectable state in the 21st century, as we approach the 500th anniversary of the re-settlement of this population in Western Hungary. In the present paper I take the example of a specific custom, the Barbara procession of Horvátkimle, to show what it means for a community if one of their practices comes to be included on the ethnographic map of the country. We explore what sort of chances a community has to revive traditions that it had believed to be lost time and time again, and how it affects the life of the community if it succeeds in breathing new life into old traditions by accepting and adapting to the spirit of the times. The paper focuses not on the vanishing traditions, but on resilient tradition constructs that have proved flexible enough to survive. It concentrates not on the signs of the disappearance and assimilation of an ethnic community, but on the scenes and means of preserving such identity. I shed light on the role of individuals and of ethnographic scholarship in the process of preserving traditions.