Tombstones, Stonemasons, and Mental Maps
Vladimir Levin Ekaterina Oleshkevich
Abstract This article proposes a methodology for understanding the business networks and mental maps of Jewish communities in central and eastern Europe from the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. The methodology is based on scrupulous documentation of Jewish tombstones, especially the signatures of stonemasons. Through analysis of the signatures found in the Jewish cemeteries of Croatia, geographical networks become apparent, and we can reconstruct the mental maps of Croatian Jews, both in the Austro-Hungarian period and in interwar Yugoslavia. The Jewish cemeteries in some other central European cities serve as comparative material for our discussion.
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Brill
Abstract

This article proposes a methodology for understanding the business networks and mental maps of Jewish communities in central and eastern Europe from the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. The methodology is based on scrupulous documentation of Jewish tombstones, especially the signatures of stonemasons. Through analysis of the signatures found in the Jewish cemeteries of Croatia, geographical networks become apparent, and we can reconstruct the mental maps of Croatian Jews, both in the Austro-Hungarian period and in interwar Yugoslavia. The Jewish cemeteries in some other central European cities serve as comparative material for our discussion.

Jewish cemeteries of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in central Europe are filled with somber, marble obelisks. For those familiar with the highly ornamented gravestones in Jewish cemeteries in Ukraine and Moldova, these obelisks look very unassuming in comparison. However, if we examine the details more closely, this “forest of obelisks” is no longer monotonous. One such detail is the signature of the stonemason on the base of the tombstone (Figs. 1, 2). Researchers seldom pay attention to them, but there are many, in different languages and in various forms. These signatures bring up numerous questions and sometimes provide answers. This article is the result of the hunt for signatures of tombstone makers.

Tombstones have served as source material for the examination of Jewish life outside the cemetery for about two hundred years.1 Nineteenth-century historians carefully copied the epitaphs of rabbis and other prominent personalities, searching for information about their lives.2 Modern researchers have developed more sophisticated methods with which to investigate cemeteries.3 Medieval and early modern tombstones are especially valuable for historical research.4 Nineteenth-century cemeteries are also a source, mostly on the processes of modernization and acculturation.5 From this perspective, the entire cemetery is read as a text, similar to reading an urban text.6

In this article, we address a unique feature of tombstones from the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries that has never been used for historical research: the signatures of the tombstone makers. These signatures are engraved on the tombstones and are inseparable from their material body (Figs. 1, 2).

Since the mid-nineteenth century, some European tombstone makers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, began signing their names on their products. These signatures would only provide information about the local market and its dynamics,7 if not for the simultaneous intensification of economic connections between different regions boosted by the development of railways, which allowed for transportation of tombstones between cities.

Through the signatures mentioning the tombstone’s place of origin, we can analyze the networks connecting different towns and their Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants. We understand network as a system of interactions between individuals and groups based in different geographical locations. We argue that the networks discerned from the signatures on tombstones reflect the existing economic and personal connections, which are not limited to the graveyard or the tombstone industry.8

Besides demonstrating connections, the graveyard networks reflect the mental maps of the people involved. The perception of geographical space is never neutral, but depends on notions of familiarity and estrangement, appropriation and alienation, friendliness and animosity. Some areas are viewed as “ours” and some as “theirs,” with different understandings of where the center(s) lie(s) and where the periphery(s) begin(s), what is considered close and what is considered far away. The analysis of stonemasons’ signatures gives us a glimpse into those mental maps.

This article is based on the documentation of Jewish cemeteries in Croatia, and it describes the mental maps of Croatian Jews in the late Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and pre-World War II Yugoslavia. The significant involvement of Christian stonemasons in Jewish cemeteries also permits us to extrapolate our findings to the non-Jewish population, although systematic documentation of Christian cemeteries is needed for more thorough results.

However, our goal is not restricted to Croatian-Jewish history. This article proposes a methodology with which to understand the networks and mental maps of Jewish and non-Jewish communities across central and eastern Europe. Other features of tombstones, like stylistics, epitaphs, and the origins of rock, also may serve for the research on networks.9 However, for the purpose of this article, we concentrate on signatures only.

1 Exposition

1.1 Croatian Jews

The earliest Jewish settlements in the territory of modern Croatia were in the coastal cities of Dalmatia, but since no signatures of stonemasons were found there, we will not explore those ancient communities here.10 Significant numbers of Ashkenazic Jews began to arrive in Croatia and Slavonia11 from other Habsburg lands in the late eighteenth century, as a result of reforms by Joseph II. From 1840, Jews were allowed to live anywhere in Hungary and Croatia and in 1846, the toleration tax on Croatian Jews was eliminated. As a result of the Ausgleich of 1867, Croatia became part of the Hungarian-ruled part of the Habsburg Monarchy, but the Croatian-Hungarian Agreement of 1868 stipulated that the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia had broad internal autonomy and that its official language was Croatian. The full emancipation of Jews was granted by the Croatian Parliament (Sabor) in 1873.12

By 1910 there were 21,231 Jews in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, 0.8 % of the total population.13 According to categorization proposed by Ezra Mendelsohn, they were Jews of the West European type: mostly middle-class, highly urbanized, and making up a small minority in the cities.14 More than twenty Jewish communities existed in the country, the largest ones in Zagreb and Osijek. The Jews of Croatia were strongly acculturated in Croatian culture: in 1910, 46 % of Jews declared Croatian as their mother tongue.15 Acculturation is highly visible in the Jewish cemeteries too, where tombstones with epitaphs in Croatian appeared from the 1880s and became the norm by the early 1920s.

1.2 Sources

The bulk of materials analyzed in this article are tombstones in the Jewish cemeteries of Croatia. During a 2021 expedition to Croatia of the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,16 we documented 647 signed tombstones in sixteen major Croatian Jewish cemeteries (see Fig. 3; Appendix, Table 1). Although we did not survey all of the Jewish cemeteries in the country, and only in several cemeteries all the tombstones were documented, our collected sample is large enough to be representative, and enables the investigation of networks and mental maps.

The Croatian material in our research is supplemented by findings in other parts of pre-World War I Hungary. We use the complete documentation of the Dolga Vas Jewish cemetery in Lendava, Slovenia, undertaken in 2019 by Janez Premk in a collaborative project of the Center for Jewish Art and University of Maribor.17 We also use a survey of about 200 small Jewish cemeteries in Hajdú-Bihar and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg Counties in Hungary, conducted by the ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative in 2021 and shared with the Center for Jewish Art. Moreover, we make use of the website “Žilina Gallery” created by Jozef Feiler, which contains documentation of all tombstones in the Jewish cemetery of Žilina, Slovakia.18 The number of signatures found in these three projects combined is almost equal to the number discovered in Croatia. Some characteristics of the stonemasons’ signatures in Croatia are compared to findings from the Center for Jewish Art’s expeditions to central and eastern Europe and Russia. References to them are made mostly in the footnotes. Finally, we support our conclusions with accounts from the local Croatian and Hungarian press.19

The chronological scope of this article is from the last decades of the nineteenth through the first four decades of the twentieth century. In this period, the custom of signing tombstones was widely practiced in Habsburg Hungary and continued to be practiced in the successor states. After World War II, however, the custom almost vanished.20 At this stage of research, it seems that in Romania, Imperial Russia, and Germany, the idea of signing a tombstone was never as popular as in Croatia and other parts of Hungary.

2 Signed Tombstones—Main Characteristics

Signed tombstones make up between 10 % and 30 % of all tombstones found in cemeteries in Croatia and some other parts of pre-World War I Hungary (see Appendix, Table 1). Although these numbers are derived from information that is a priori incomplete, since only the stones standing today are documented, they still reflect the approximate percentage of signed stones among all the tombstones.

While it is tempting to consider a stonemason’s signature as the expression of his self-image as an artist, our research demonstrates that the signatures served as commercial advertisement. The signatures are usually on the lower part of the front side of the stone, and are easily noticed by passers-by (Figs. 1, 2). Workshops situated in large cities often included their street address, which was sometimes replaced by a telephone number in the 1920s.21 When a stone was shipped to another location, the signature of the stonemason often included the name of the town where he was based (compare Figs. 1 and 2).22

A signature on a gravestone was a modern method of advertisement, and did not appear on Jewish gravestones until the second half of the nineteenth century. More traditional stonemasons probably did not adopt this novelty, even in the early twentieth century. Those masons, who were perhaps the only ones in their town, probably considered such signatures unnecessary, as will be demonstrated below.

The advertising of tombstone makers was a feature of the mass market aimed at middle-class customers. The majority of signed headstones are made of marble and granite, though some relatively simple limestone stelae are also signed. In contrast, prominent gravestones with artistic sculptures in Croatia usually do not bear any signature of the artist or stonemason.23 Most likely, the workshops serving the elite and producing very expensive tombstones did not need this kind of advertisement. Therefore, the stonemason signatures describe the networks and perceptions of the middle class, not the richest or poorest strata of the population.

The majority of stonemasons who made gravestones for Croatian Jewish cemeteries were Christians. Of 90 stonemasons who left their signatures on Jewish tombstones in Croatia, only 11 were surely Jewish. Only two of them were based in Croatia (Mavro Wamoscher in Đakovo, and Josip Rendeli in Karlovac), while the others worked in Vienna, Budapest, Nagykanizsa, Graz, and other places. Jewish stonemasons must have worked for other ethno-religious groups as well. In Croatia, the Jewish population was relatively small and most Jewish communities had only a few hundred members, a tiny minority among the Christian population. Thus, it would not have been cost-effective for a stonemason to serve only Jewish customers.

As demonstrated by the material of the Center for Jewish Art from different countries, non-Jewish stonemasons easily produced gravestones with long Hebrew epitaphs. They probably employed Jewish workers familiar with Hebrew script. In Croatia, especially in the interwar period, the majority of tombstones no longer had Hebrew epitaphs, but only traditional abbreviations ‮פ״נ‬‎, ‮פ״ט‬‎, and ‮תנצב״ה‬‎,24 which could be easily reproduced even by a non-Jewish worker. Jewish tombstones were not unique in this regard: tombstones inscribed with Cyrillic characters were also produced by Croatian stonemasons.25

Regardless of the language used for the epitaphs, all the signatures found in the Jewish cemeteries of Croatia are written in Latin letters (in Croatian, Hungarian, or German). In other regions, however, stonemasons made wide use of Hebrew characters.26 This practice is especially noticeable in the cemeteries of Orthodox communities in the northeast of today’s Hungary. Reflecting the halakhic rulings of the Hungarian Orthodox rabbis, the epitaphs there contained no Latin letters and the signatures of the stonemasons were also in Hebrew.27 In other words, the language of the signature reflected the preferences of the client: non-Jewish stonemasons could also sign in Hebrew.28

Communal institutions responsible for the upkeep of the Jewish cemetery often controlled the process of erecting tombstones. However, it seems that this control was limited to the features and epitaphs of the tombstones, not the choice of a stonemason. Thus, the members of community could freely decide where they ordered a tombstone and were rarely restricted by some monopoly.29

3 Tombstones Produced Locally

Sixty-two percent of the signed tombstones documented in Croatia were produced in the same city or town where they were situated (see Appendix, Table 1). Except for the smallest towns, most had their own stonemasons, which made it possible and practical to purchase a tombstone near the cemetery where it would be placed. Many stonemasons did not sign their stones made for the local cemetery and therefore we assume that most of the unsigned stones were produced locally. Other stonemasons chose to carve their names because the competition between them made such advertisement necessary (see Fig. 1).

The larger the city, the more options the residents had for purchasing tombstones. For example, 97 % of signed tombstones documented in both of the Jewish cemeteries in Osijek were produced locally.30 The most popular workshop there was that of Franjo Hendrich (1870–1936, see Figs. 1, 2). The less prolific workshops were those of Ante Slaviček (1864–1931) and Dragutin Payerle.31 All three workshops had both Jewish and Christian residents of Osijek as customers.32 Similarly, 94 % of the signed tombstones surveyed in the Mirogoj Cemetery in Zagreb were made locally.33 The two most productive stonemasons there were Ljudevit Pierotti, who owned a workshop in Zagreb from 1875, and Jaroslav Strecha (1881–?), who settled in Zagreb in 1910.34 Another prominent figure was Ignjat Franz (1855–1942), a renowned stonemason and sculptor who taught in Zagreb’s School of Arts and Crafts.35

In smaller towns, local stonemasons were also dominant, but to a lesser extent. In Karlovac, 54 % of the signed Jewish tombstones were locally produced, mostly by Rudolf Neuhold, Mane Tatalović, and by a local Jewish workshop headed by Josip Rendeli (1865–?). In Varaždin, 56 % of signed tombstones were locally produced. The market was dominated by the workshop of Rudolf Paskutini (?–1930), later inherited by his son, Josip Pascuttini.36 In Bjelovar, it was the Tribusson family who produced the majority of signed tombstones there.37

Thus, local stonemasons satisfied most of the local demand for tombstones. Even when we do not find tombstones signed by local stonemasons, it is very likely, as stated above, that most of the stones were produced locally. In Čakovec, for example, all 16 signed gravestones were non-local. Yet, from 1899 there was at least one renowned stonemason: Bódog Tersztenyák (1867–1912), whose business was continued by his wife.38 Tersztenyák signed his works in other places, but not in his hometown, although he probably produced tombstones for the local customers as well.39

In the smallest towns there may not have been a local stonemason. The town of Gospić, for example, did not have a stonemason until the early twentieth century.40 Gospić, however, seems to have been the exception rather than the rule. It is located in the mountains and until now remains the smallest seat of county government in Croatia.

4 Tombstones Brought from Other Locations

One could order a gravestone from a local stonemason, or else order it from another city or town. The data on non-local tombstones reveals the networks between cities and towns. For the sake of geographical analysis, we have cross-indexed two locations: that of the tombstone itself and that of the stonemason’s workshop. Below, we will discuss two possible situations: tombstones that were shipped long distances from major urban centers and tombstones from another town that were shipped a short distance under approximately 100 km. Gravestones that were ordered from a local stonemason do not require explanation, but the purchase of a stone from another location raises questions about the reasons for such a decision.

4.1 Reasons to Order a Tombstone Non-locally

Thirty-eight percent of signed tombstones in Croatia were not produced locally, and such stones are found in every documented Croatian Jewish cemetery (see Appendix, Table 1). To order a tombstone from a non-local stonemason, one needed to be aware, first of all, of the existence of such a stonemason. With the development of daily and weekly newspapers, the public obtained this knowledge through advertisements. For example, the Zagreb stonemason Pierotti actively published ads in the Varaždin newspapers, and apparently not only there, which may have contributed to his popularity.41 Such advertisements usually featured the address of the workshop or of a local agent who would facilitate the ordering process. Because of these agents, it was not much more complicated to order a tombstone from a non-local stonemason as opposed to someone local.

One example of such an agent is found in the Varaždin newspapers. The ads of Mirko Weiss, a stonemason in Graz, give the name of Stjepan Haller, the administrator of the local cemetery, as his agent.42 This fact can explain why half of the non-locally produced tombstones in Varaždin came from Weiss’ workshop in Graz (see Fig. 4).43 Graz is quite far away (130 km) and although the work of Graz-based stonemasons is present in other Jewish cemeteries in Croatia, no other cemetery has so many (Appendix, Tables 2 and 3). The existence of a local agent in Varaždin for the Graz-based stonemason does not seem coincidental. In 1904, Weiss wrote a short personal letter (in Croatian) to the Varaždin newspaper, which showed his personal connection to the city.44 This story may be exceptional, but it demonstrates that agents appeared when there were contacts between towns and the agents were, inter alia, the embodiment of these contacts.

Another reason to order a tombstone non-locally could have been the wish to purchase it directly from a quarry. For example, in Žilina, Slovakia, 16 tombstones came from the area of the village of Supíkovice, known as the “Silesian Carrara,” almost 200 km away.45 In Croatia, however, we found no such cases.

The local identity of the deceased and his or her town of origin may also have influenced the ordering of a tombstone. If a person died outside of their hometown and local identity was of importance also to the family, the tombstone may have been ordered from the hometown. For example, the epitaph of Adolf Schwarz, buried in Osijek in 1928, states that the deceased was from Vukovar. The signature on the tombstone shows that the stone came from Vukovar as well.46 Another reason could be that the children of the deceased migrated to different locations and ordered tombstones in the cities where they resided. Thus, the signatures could also reflect migratory processes.47

Prestige was another factor in ordering tombstones non-locally. Such stones were a status symbol for the family of the deceased. Stones from large, faraway urban and cultural centers were considered more prestigious, as will be discussed in the next section.

4.2 Tombstones from Major Urban Centers

About a third of non-locally produced tombstones in Croatia came from faraway big cities: Vienna (the capital of the Habsburg Monarchy), Budapest (the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary), and Zagreb (the capital of the autonomous Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia), as well as large urban centers like Ljubljana (today Slovenia), Graz (today Austria), Subotica and Novi Sad (today Serbia).

Why would a family decide to order a tombstone from the capital? In the case of Zalmen Schur from Mogilev in the Russian Empire (today Mahilioŭ in Belarus), the decision was perhaps one of convenience. As written in his epitaph, Schur died in Opatija in 1911, apparently while on a seaside vacation, and was buried in the neighboring city of Rijeka.48 Schur’s family ordered a granite obelisk from the most reputable Viennese producer of tombstones, the Sommer & Weniger company.49 Apparently, the family found it more convenient to negotiate with a large and well-known firm rather than to look for small local workshops with whom they had no connections. Prestige was probably not a factor in choosing the services of this Viennese firm, since the family did not reside in Rijeka but in Mogilev, two thousand km away.

In the case of Mayer and Theresie Broch, buried in Varaždin, prestige played a bigger role than convenience.50 The couple were local residents, but their tombstone was ordered from the famous Viennese company of Anton Wasserburger and his son Paul, Habsburg court stonemasons and architects. In addition to constructing multiple buildings in Vienna, they made tombstones for many famous people including an obelisk for Ludwig van Beethoven, who was reinterred in Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof in 1888.51 The Broch family was probably following the example of two other families in Varaždin, who had ordered tombstones from the Viennese company of Sommer & Weniger in 1885 and 1892.52 All three grave monuments look expensive and differ from the common grave markers in the Varaždin cemetery.

Another Viennese firm, Wulkan & Neubrunn, with Jewish owners Emanuel Emil Neubrunn and Jacob Loebel Leopold Wulkan, seems to have been popular with Jews across the Habsburg Monarchy and in the neighboring countries. Their works are found in Zagreb, Karlovac, and Vukovar in Croatia,53 Eisenstadt in Austria,54 Břeclav, Olomouc, and Holešov in the Czech Republic,55 Cieszyn in Poland,56 Veszprém in Hungary,57 as well as in Bucharest and Brăila, Romania,58 and Belgrade, Serbia.59

Ordering tombstones from afar added to the family’s prestige and status and had symbolic meaning for them. Such orders demonstrated the family’s position within the community, since the stones were probably more expensive than locally made tombstones and their transportation was also costly.60 Yet, money was not the only factor. Ordering a stone from distant Vienna meant that in the eyes of the purchaser, Vienna was not just the symbolic capital of the empire, but a real place, which they had probably visited more than once. Ordering a tombstone from Vienna or Budapest required more knowledge and communication than ordering from a local stonemason. Thus, the tombstones from large cities show that the families who ordered them had such experience and probably possessed a network of connections far outside their place of residence.

Before World War I, Vienna and Budapest were the most important urban centers in this part of Europe, and they also had symbolic value as the capitals of the empire. As a consequence of the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy and the establishment of new states in 1918, Vienna and Budapest were no longer the capitals for Croatian Jews. Of the 25 tombstones from Vienna and Budapest, only two date from after 1918. The shipping of tombstones from Graz, Austria, to Croatia seriously diminished after 1918 and waned after 1929. After the establishment of Yugoslavia, urban centers within the new country, like Zagreb, Subotica, and Ljubljana were the focus. Stonemasons from these cities were well represented in Croatian Jewish cemeteries before 1918, but after the collapse of the empire they filled the gap in the market of prestigious tombstones. Notably, we did not find a single stone in Croatia signed by a stonemason from Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia.61 Although larger than Zagreb, Belgrade was clearly outside the realm of the Jews of Croatia, and culturally alien to them.

4.3 Tombstones Produced in the Vicinity

Less than a third of the non-locally produced tombstones in Croatia came from cities far away, while more than two thirds were made nearer to the town where they stood. This ratio is reflected in the median shipping distance of non-locally produced stones, which was only 68 km.62 In the northeast of today’s Hungary this pattern was even stronger: 84 % of non-local signed tombstones were from cities and towns in the vicinity, so that the median distance was only 36 km (this number also reflects the different structure of the Jewish population in different areas: the network of Jewish communities in northeastern Hungary was much denser than in Croatia).

One logical hypothesis is that the stones were brought from larger regional centers to smaller towns. Sometimes this was the case. In the region of Slavonia, the largest city was Osijek and it would make sense to find many tombstones by Osijek’s stonemasons in the towns in the vicinity. Indeed, in Đakovo, 40 km from Osijek, 53 out of 58 non-locally produced stones were made in Osijek (see Fig. 5). This trend is apparent from the late 1880s through the late 1930s, at least half a century. The Jews of Đakovo ordered tombstones from seven Osijek workshops, which shows their strong connections to this city.

One might assume that tombstones were ordered from Osijek because Đakovo had no local stonemasons. However, there were at least three of them, working in different periods. The first was V. Donegani, mentioned in 1892.63 The second was a Jewish entrepreneur named Mavro (Moric) Wamoscher (Wamašer, 1861–1932).64 Tombstones signed by him date from the mid-1910s through the late 1920s.65 The third was Majerhofer, who apparently launched his business later—his signatures appeared from 1934 to 1940.66 Although local stonemasons could easily satisfy the demand for tombstones of the rather small Jewish community, Đakovo’s Jews preferred to order stones from Osijek. In their mental map, Osijek was clearly the regional center and they considered themselves in its periphery. Such one-sided connections between a large city and a nearby small town (we found no stones from Đakovo in Osijek) can be defined as “hierarchical.” A similar connection existed in Opatija, where two out of three non-local tombstones came from nearby Rijeka, a city five times larger in size (see Appendix, Table 2).

Hierarchical connections also existed in the vicinity of the largest Croatian city, Zagreb. In central Croatia, about half the non-locally produced stones came from Zagreb (see Appendix, Table 3), considered the regional center. There are especially many Zagreb-made tombstones in the cemeteries of Karlovac, Koprivnica, and Križevci (see Appendix, Table 3), which may be explained by the early construction of the main railway line Budapest-Rijeka that directly connected those towns with Zagreb.67 This line strengthened the position of Zagreb as the regional center.

Zagreb was also the Croatian national capital, so the tombstones made there had similar symbolic value as those from Vienna and Budapest. Therefore, in central Croatia, Zagreb was viewed both as a regional and a symbolic center, resulting in a larger number of Zagreb-made tombstones (see Appendix, Table 3). In Slavonia, where Zagreb was not considered the regional center, the number of tombstones from Zagreb is comparable with those from Vienna and Budapest (see Appendix, Table 4).

The hierarchical relationship between the center and the periphery can be seen even more clearly in the cemeteries of today’s Hajdú-Bihar and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg Counties in northeastern Hungary. Of 328 non-local signed tombstones, 103 (31 %) were produced in Debrecen—the center of historical Hajdú County and the largest city in this part of Hungary, and 109 tombstones (33 %) were made in Nyíregyháza, the center of historical Szabolcs County. The overwhelming majority of the stones were ordered in the vicinity of these two cities: 88 % of stones produced in Debrecen and 86 % of stones produced in Nyíregyháza were transported no more than 60 km, notwithstanding the administrative borders between the counties.

In contrast to northeastern Hungary, proximity in Croatia was not always a deciding factor. In Slavonski Brod, the regional center of Osijek, located 85 km away, seems to have been less significant than Sombor, a city the same size as Osijek, but located 145 km away (now in Serbia) (see Fig. 6). Seven tombstones in Slavonski Brod came from Sombor, and only four from Osijek. Together, they make up half of the non-locally produced tombstones. The strong connection of Brod to Sombor may be explained by the early construction of a direct railway line Budapest-Subotica-Sombor-Dalj-Brod, which simplified the transportation of people and goods.68 Three other important locations for the Jews of Brod were Subotica (200 km away, but on the same railway, now in Serbia), Novi Sad (170 km away, now in Serbia) and Pécs (124 km away, now in Hungary). There was one tombstone from each of these towns in Brod. Thus, the Jewish population of Slavonski Brod did not deal exclusively with the nearest major city, but had connections to different regional centers. Brod’s networks were broader than those of Đakovo described above, oriented exclusively toward Osijek.

The geography of signed tombstones also demonstrates the intensity of horizontal connections, meaning the connections between towns of approximately the same size. In Slavonski Brod, six tombstones came from such towns: Požega (45 km from Brod), the center of the county where Brod was located, Vukovar (90 km), Vinkovci (70 km), and Bjelovar (155 km) (see Appendix, Table 4). In Đakovo, only one stone came from Slavonski Brod (43 km away), as opposed to 53 stones from Osijek, as discussed above (Figs. 5, 6).

The analysis of signed tombstones shows the networking typology of the town. Đakovo had very close ties to Osijek and therefore hardly any horizontal connections with other cities. In contrast, Slavonski Brod not only had hierarchical contacts with several regional centers, but also had active horizontal connections with towns its size. To put it in numbers, the median distance of shipment in Đakovo was 40 km and it had one hierarchical connection and one horizontal, while in Slavonski Brod the median distance was 145 km and it had five hierarchical connections and four horizontal ones.

In Žilina (now Slovakia), horizontal connections were even more developed. The town had one primary hierarchical connection, to the city of Ostrava (today the Czech Republic), which was ten times larger. Twenty tombstones standing in Žilina came from Ostrava. Eighty-five of the 135 non-locally produced tombstones came from towns of the same size or smaller than Žilina in the proximity (the median distance for all the tombstones is 75 km). These numbers reflect Žilina’s horizontal networks and connections to nine other towns in Eastern Slovakia, Moravia, and Silesia.

The example of Križevci in Croatia shows that one town could combine different types of connections (see Fig. 5). Zagreb, 60 km away, was clearly viewed there as the regional center: 13 out of 21 non-locally produced tombstones were Zagreb-made. Bjelovar and Koprivnica, both approximately twice the size of Križevci and located about 35 km away, were seen as secondary centers: four tombstones were imported from these two towns. Another four tombstones came from Čazma (37 km away) and Sveti Ivan Žabno (10 km away). Both were small villages with a population of less than a thousand people. We do not know why these two villages had stonemason’s workshops that did work for other towns. It seems that this situation was unusual, but not unique.69 Apparently, the connections of both villages to Križevci were not limited to the tombstone trade.

Village Jews, quite unexpectedly, ordered their tombstones not only from nearest urban centers, but from faraway cities as well. The median shipping distance for villages in Hajdú-Bihar and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg Counties was 57 km, almost twice that of towns with a population between 2,000 and 10,000, whose median shipping distance was only 35 km. Cities with more than 10,000 residents had an even smaller median shipping distance of 25 km. A similar pattern can be detected in the small Croatian towns of Daruvar and Cernik. The first had a median distance of 124 km, and the second 150 km. Perhaps Jews who lived in villages and very small towns were mostly tradesmen and therefore had working communications with larger centers.

A cemetery can also demonstrate a town’s lack of connections. For example, among the signed tombstones found in Vukovar, only one was produced in Osijek.70 Vukovar was similar in size to Đakovo and the distance from Vukovar to Osijek was almost the same as Đakovo to Osijek. Nonetheless, there were almost no connections between Vukovar and Osijek. Somehow, the mental maps of Vukovar’s Jews did not include this regional center. This peculiar situation finds its expression in the fact that the only tombstone in Osijek produced in Vukovar marks the grave of a Vukovar resident.71

4.4 Case Study of the Prekmurje–Međimurje Region

The comparison of cemeteries in neighboring towns provides a detailed and colorful picture of inter-town connections. In this section, we will focus on Varaždin, the center of Croatian Varaždin County, Čakovec and Lendava, both in Hungarian Zala County before World War I, and will explore their connections to the cities of Nagykanizsa and Zagreb. Although today they are located in different countries, they are part of one broader region of Prekmurje–Međimurje. Koprivnica, although not part of this region, is located nearby and shared the same connection patterns (see Fig. 4 above).

All four towns had different ethnic profiles, which also had an influence on the Jewish population and its networks. Lendava was a town with a primarily Hungarian population, and Hungarian identity was prevalent among the Jews—a third of the signed Jewish tombstones came from Nagykanizsa and another third from the Hungarian towns of Keszthely, Szombathely, and Zalaegerszeg.

In pre-World War I Čakovec, some half the citizens were Croats and half Hungarians. Jews, 12 percent of the population, leaned more to the Hungarian side, as can be deducted from epitaphs in Hungarian on the Jewish tombstones. Yet, Zagreb was still mentally closer to them and Jewish tombstones with Hungarian epitaphs came from there too.

In Varaždin and Koprivnica, the majority of the population was Croat, and we found no Hungarian epitaphs in the Jewish cemeteries there. Apparently, the Jewish population of both towns leaned toward Croatian identity. Yet, there were contacts with Hungary and three tombstones were brought to these towns from Nagykanizsa.72 All three have German epitaphs, which means that the act of ordering in Hungary was not dictated by language issues, but was representative of the inter-town connections.

In Čakovec, Varaždin, Koprivnica, and Lendava, the connection to Hungary existed only until 1918/20 when these towns became part of Yugoslavia. After that, influenced by the new border, these connections decreased dramatically and later vanished.

The rupture of connections to Hungary was not significantly apparent in the cemeteries of Čakovec, Varaždin, and Koprivnica. All in all, even before World War I, these towns were much more oriented toward Zagreb than toward Nagykanizsa, despite Nagykanizsa being closer than Zagreb. Twelve stones in total were brought to Čakovec, Varaždin, and Koprivnica from Zagreb before 1918, and only four from Nagykanizsa. After 1918, the shipping from Zagreb continued and that from Nagykanizsa ended. Zagreb was obviously mentally closer to the Jewish population of these Croatian towns, although located geographically farther away.

In contrast, Lendava was strongly oriented toward Hungary, and Croatian towns were initially only secondary centers for it. Before 1918, 35 stones came from Hungarian cities and only two from Croatian ones. After 1918, Lendava’s Jews began to establish broader connections to the neighboring Murska Sobota (now Slovenia) and to Croatian Zagreb, yet they continued to write their epitaphs in Hungarian (like some Čakovec Jews as well).

When Lendava and Čakovec again became part of Hungary in 1941, connections to Nagykanizsa were reestablished. Quite remarkably, the tombstones for people who died in 1940 were ordered in 1941 from Christian stonemason József Kovács in Nagykanizsa, whose workshop did not exist prior to World War I. This fact means that Jews in Lendava and Čakovec ordered the stones not because of their familiarity with the stonemason, but because Nagykanizsa, the regional center in their mental maps, had become accessible again.

Tombstone connections are a possible expression of other personal and economic contacts as well. A good example is that of stonemason Bódog Tersztenyák, mentioned earlier. Born in 1867, he studied in a Catholic gymnasium in Nagykanizsa and later was trained as a stonemason in the same city. In 1899, Tersztenyák opened a branch of his workshop in Čakovec and eventually relocated there completely in 1902–1903.73 We found no trace of tombstones signed by him in Čakovec; apparently, he considered it unnecessary to sign his products intended for local use, but tombstones signed with his name are found in Lendava, showing the connections between the towns.74 Newspaper articles on Tersztenyák suggest that he had strong connections encompassing, besides Čakovec and Lendava, the nearby towns of Ráckanizsa (Razkrižje, now in Slovenia), Zalaujvár (Pribislavec, now part of Čakovec), Prelog, and Zalaegerszeg, the capital of Zala County.75

Another workshop—that of Pascuttinis, father and son—demonstrated similar geographical scope in the 1920s–1930s. Primarily based in Varaždin, it had strong connections to Čakovec and Lendava.76 The workshop of Josip Močnik, which operated in Murska Sobota from the late 1910s to the 1930s, is another example of a similar pattern, being connected to Lendava, Čakovec, and Varaždin as seen both in the tombstones signatures and newspaper ads.77 Thus, the geographical scope of stonemasons’ activity reflects the perception of this region as one unit and shows the intense networks between its towns.

The examples above demonstrate that the connections within and beyond the region were not only shaped by the proximity of towns to each other. Tersztenyák seemingly never reached Varaždin with its predominantly Croatian population, although it is located just 15 km from Čakovec. There is no mention of him in Varaždin’s Croatian newspapers and all his ads and the articles describing his work were in the Hungarian press. Thus, inter-town connections were also influenced by the ethnic composition of population and by the perception of ethnic and linguistic borders. In the interwar period, the workshops of Pascuttini and Močnik were already working in the entire region, from Varaždin to Lendava, and perceived it as a whole, when all the discussed towns became part of Yugoslavia.

The examples of Čakovec, Varaždin, and Lendava demonstrate that the connections we deduce from signed tombstones correspond to the connections we find in other sources and thus are a trustworthy reflection of inter-town networks. The hierarchical connections are not surprising, since they seem predetermined by the size of the towns. Even here, however, the network derived from signed tombstones demonstrates the relative value of different regional centers for a certain town. This information is even more valuable in the case of horizontal connections, which are much more difficult to predict and to grasp from other sources. The connections that became evident from signed tombstones and newspaper ads show the mental maps of local inhabitants and demonstrate that the geographical perceptions of Jews and Christians in this region coincided.

5 Parallels in Christian Cemeteries

Jews were not the only ones who ordered tombstones from other towns, near and far. With a brief glance at Christian cemeteries in Croatia, we find that the situation there was very much the same as in Jewish cemeteries.

We did not survey Christian cemeteries during our expedition to Croatia, and there seems to be no complete documentation of any of the Christian cemeteries there that consecutively mentions stonemasons’ signatures. However, the signatures of stonemasons are at times mentioned in publications dwelling on certain cemeteries or in projects for their preservation. This scarce material allows some comparison and demonstrates hierarchical connections identical to those found in Jewish cemeteries.

In Karlovac, the same workshops that served the Jewish cemetery, produced tombstones for the Catholic cemetery. Local stonemasons Neuhold and Tatalović, who made the majority of the locally produced signed tombstones in the Jewish cemetery, seem to have made most of the signed tombstones in the Catholic one as well.78 Other Catholic tombstones bear the signatures of the Zagreb-based Pierotti, Strecha, and B. Strešnjak.79 In the Jewish cemetery, Strecha signed four stones and Pierotti and Strešnjak three each.

The Serbian Orthodox cemetery in Glina in central Croatia (68 km from Zagreb and 56 km from Karlovac) features all the same stonemasons from Zagreb and Karlovac whom we find in the Jewish cemeteries: Baumgarten, Fuchs, Pierotti, and Strecha from Zagreb, Neuhold and Tatalović from Karlovac.80 The names of the same stonemasons, with the addition of Grein (Graz), Industrija mramora Subotica, A. Cerenogy (Budapest), and Marković (Perušić), appear on gravestones in Gospić in southern Croatia (142 km from Karlovac and 197 km from Zagreb).81 All of them, except Marković, made multiple stones for various Jewish cemeteries. In the Christian cemetery of Đurđevac in northern Croatia (100 km from Zagreb and 28 km from Bjelovar), we find the same omnipresent Strecha and Pierotti with the addition of Bjelovar stonemasons, the Tribusson family.82 The Osijek stonemasons Hendrich, Payerle, and Herman Wirrer are well represented in the Catholic and Orthodox cemeteries of Čepin, located only 10 km away.83

Judging from the available material, it seems that the networks of the Jewish and non-Jewish populations in Croatian towns were similar and not defined by denominational identity. This conclusion makes sense, since Jewish communities in Croatia were quite small. Both populations ordered tombstones from the same workshops, and these workshops, in turn, attempted to satisfy the demands of all customers. Further research is required, however, based on a proper survey of Christian cemeteries.

6 Conclusion: Mental Maps of Croatian Jews

The analysis of stonemasons’ signatures allows for a partial reconstruction of the mental maps of Croatian Jews in the late nineteenth and the first four decades of the twentieth century.

The signatures demonstrate that the Jews of Croatia—not surprisingly—viewed all of Austria-Hungary as their territory. Among 647 signed tombstones, only one was produced in Munich, outside the Habsburg realm.84 The capital of the empire, Vienna, had symbolic status, and ordering tombstones from there was considered prestigious. The same attitude prevailed in relation to Budapest, the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary. Croatian Jews ordered tombstones from other cities of the Dual Monarchy, to the north and east of Croatia: Graz and Ljubljana in the Austrian Empire, and Subotica, Sombor, Novi Sad, Nagykanizsa, Pécs, and Kaposvár in the Kingdom of Hungary. In this way, they differed from the Jews of northeastern Hungary, who purchased tombstones only within the Kingdom of Hungary. At the same time, Croatian Jewish cemeteries clearly demonstrate the absence of connections to Bosnia and Herzegovina, just south of Croatia. Although ruled by Austria-Hungary from 1878, this country was absent from Jewish-Croatian mental maps.

The new borders drawn in 1918 inevitably changed the status of Austrian and Hungarian cities in Jewish-Croatian mental maps, but did not eliminate them. While trans-border trade in tombstones probably became complicated, it never stopped completely and we still found single tombstones made in Vienna, Budapest, and Graz in the interwar period. Ljubljana, Subotica, Sombor, and Novi Sad, now within Yugoslavia, continued to supply stones for Croatian Jews. An important feature of the mental maps of Croatian Jews is that when Vienna and Budapest ceased to be political capitals for Croatia, they were not replaced by Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia. Although Belgrade is much closer to eastern Croatia than Budapest, we did not find a single tombstone signed by a stonemason from that city. It is clear that the new political center could not replace the old ones, since it was culturally alien to Croatian Jews.

A similar phenomenon can be seen in the Jewish cemeteries of Transylvania, which was part of the Kingdom of Hungary prior to 1918 and became part of Romania afterwards. While before World War I many stones were ordered from Budapest, we found only one tombstone made in the Romanian capital of Bucharest, in 1939.85 In other words, it took twenty years until some Transylvanian Jews began to consider the capital of their new country as an important center on their mental map.

Signatures on tombstones also demonstrate that Croatian Jews considered Croatia as their primary territory and Zagreb as their capital, loaded with symbolic meaning. Tombstones made in Zagreb consistently appeared in Croatian Jewish cemeteries from 1881 to 1940. The proportion of tombstones originating in Zagreb clearly divides the Jewish communities of Croatia into two distinct regions. In the towns of central Croatia, Zagreb played the role of regional center, while further east, in Slavonia, it was regarded as the national capital, similar to Vienna and Budapest.

The signatures of stonemasons allow us to follow the hierarchical and horizontal connections between towns, that is, the relations between center(s) and periphery(s). Such connections were sometimes created or strengthened by the existence of railway lines. A clear example of the center-periphery relationship is the hierarchical connection between Đakovo and Osijek, where the majority of tombstones in Đakovo came from Osijek. In other words, Osijek was the major center on the mental map of Đakovo Jews. An equally clear example of the absence of connections is the case of Osijek and Vukovar, which demonstrates that Osijek had almost no place in the mental maps of the Vukovar Jews.

While center-periphery relationships can often—but not always—be deducted from the respective sizes of the populations, the networks among peripheral towns are not obvious and analysis of stonemason signatures helps to reconstruct them. The horizontal connections between towns demonstrate that the areas regarded by Croatian Jews in mid-size towns as “theirs” did not coincide with existing administrative districts. The networks between people and towns were driven by other factors such as geographical proximity or convenience of communication. Intensive horizontal connections were a consequence of the urban structure of Croatia, with only a few large cities, and the structure of the Jewish population, dispersed in small numbers in mid-size towns. At the same time, such connections allowed the small numbers of Jews in neighboring towns to feel closer to each other.

Acknowledgments

We are thankful to Alexandra Fishel and Milda Jakulytė for providing us with valuable suggestions and to Arkadi Zeltzer, Anna Berezin, and Marcin Wodziński, whose feedback on the first drafts of this article was crucial.

Appendix

Cemetery

Total number

Number of documented Jewish tombstones with

of tombstones

stonemasons’ signatures

in the

cemetery

Number of

Percentage of

Number of

Percentage of

signed tomb-

signed tomb-

non-locally made

non-locally made

stones in

stones among

tombstones in

tombstones

the cemetery

all tombstones

the cemetery

among signed

in the cemetery

tombstones

Bjelovar

81

19

23 %

3

16 %

Čakovec

185

16*

6 %

16

100 %

Cernik

94

7*

7 %

7

100 %

Đakovo

259

71

27 %

58

82 %

Daruvar

170

17

10 %

9

53 %

Karlovac

151

54

36 %

25

46 %

Koprivnica

330

29

9 %

22

76 %

Križevci (two cemeteries)

104

20

19 %

20

100 %

Opatija

72

3

4 %

3

100 %

Osijek (two cemeteries)

1,823

185

10 %

6

3 %

Rijeka

511

15**

3 %

12

80 %

Slavonski Brod

176

39

22 %

25

64 %

Varaždin

310

62

20 %

27

44 %

Virovitica

about 150

6*

4 %

5

83 %

Vukovar

255

9*

4 %

3

33 %

Zagreb

about 1,500

95

6 %***

6

6 %

Total in Croatia

6,171

647

10 %

247

38 %

Lendava, Slovenia

184

62

34 %

59

95 %

Žilina, Slovakia

1,450

278

19 %

135

49 %

Total

7,805

987

13 %

441

45 %

Source: Documentation by the Center for Jewish Art; Documentation by ESJF European Jewish Cemetery Initiative; website “Žilina Gallery.”

Cemetery

Place of production

Rijeka

Opatija

Total

Budapest

4

4

Graz

2

1

3

Ljubljana

1

1

Rijeka

–

2

2

Sušak (2 km from Rijeka)

4

4

Vienna

1

1

Total

12

3

15

Cemetery

Place of production

Bjelovar

Čakovec

Karlovac

Koprivnica

Križevci

Varaždin

Zagreb

Total

Bjelovar

–

1

1

Budapest

3

3

Čazma

1

2

1

4

Graz

1

3

15

2

21

Koprivnica

–

3

3

Ljubljana

2

1

1

4

Nagykanizsa

2

2

1

5

Senj

1

1

Sisak

1

1

Subotica

1

1

Sušak

1

1

Sveti Ivan Žabno

3

3

Varaždin

6

–

6

Vienna

2

4

2

8

Zagreb

1

5

19

14

12

6

–

57

Total

3

16

25

22

20

27

6

119

Cemetery

Place of production

Cernik

Đakovo

Daruvar

Osijek

Slavonski Brod

Virovitica

Vukovar

Total

Bjelovar

1

1

Budapest

1

1

1

1

2

1

7

Daruvar

–

2

2

Kaposvár

1

1

Munich

1

1

Nagykanizsa

1

2

3

Novi Sad

1

1

2

Osijek

53

–

4

1

58

Pécs

1

1

Požega

1

2

3

Retfala (4 km from Osijek)

1

1

Slavonski Brod

1

–

1

Sombor

7

7

Subotica

2

1

3

Vienna

1

1

2

Vinkovci

1

1

Vukovar

1

2

3

Zagreb

5

3

5

3

16

Total

7

58

9

6

25

5

3

113

Jewish cemeteries of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in central Europe are filled with somber, marble obelisks. For those familiar with the highly ornamented gravestones in Jewish cemeteries in Ukraine and Moldova, these obelisks look very unassuming in comparison. However, if we examine the details more closely, this “forest of obelisks” is no longer monotonous. One such detail is the signature of the stonemason on the base of the tombstone (Figs. 1, 2). Researchers seldom pay attention to them, but there are many, in different languages and in various forms. These signatures bring up numerous questions and sometimes provide answers. This article is the result of the hunt for signatures of tombstone makers.

Tombstones have served as source material for the examination of Jewish life outside the cemetery for about two hundred years.1 Nineteenth-century historians carefully copied the epitaphs of rabbis and other prominent personalities, searching for information about their lives.2 Modern researchers have developed more sophisticated methods with which to investigate cemeteries.3 Medieval and early modern tombstones are especially valuable for historical research.4 Nineteenth-century cemeteries are also a source, mostly on the processes of modernization and acculturation.5 From this perspective, the entire cemetery is read as a text, similar to reading an urban text.6

In this article, we address a unique feature of tombstones from the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries that has never been used for historical research: the signatures of the tombstone makers. These signatures are engraved on the tombstones and are inseparable from their material body (Figs. 1, 2).

Since the mid-nineteenth century, some European tombstone makers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, began signing their names on their products. These signatures would only provide information about the local market and its dynamics,7 if not for the simultaneous intensification of economic connections between different regions boosted by the development of railways, which allowed for transportation of tombstones between cities.

Through the signatures mentioning the tombstone’s place of origin, we can analyze the networks connecting different towns and their Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants. We understand network as a system of interactions between individuals and groups based in different geographical locations. We argue that the networks discerned from the signatures on tombstones reflect the existing economic and personal connections, which are not limited to the graveyard or the tombstone industry.8

Besides demonstrating connections, the graveyard networks reflect the mental maps of the people involved. The perception of geographical space is never neutral, but depends on notions of familiarity and estrangement, appropriation and alienation, friendliness and animosity. Some areas are viewed as “ours” and some as “theirs,” with different understandings of where the center(s) lie(s) and where the periphery(s) begin(s), what is considered close and what is considered far away. The analysis of stonemasons’ signatures gives us a glimpse into those mental maps.

This article is based on the documentation of Jewish cemeteries in Croatia, and it describes the mental maps of Croatian Jews in the late Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and pre-World War II Yugoslavia. The significant involvement of Christian stonemasons in Jewish cemeteries also permits us to extrapolate our findings to the non-Jewish population, although systematic documentation of Christian cemeteries is needed for more thorough results.

However, our goal is not restricted to Croatian-Jewish history. This article proposes a methodology with which to understand the networks and mental maps of Jewish and non-Jewish communities across central and eastern Europe. Other features of tombstones, like stylistics, epitaphs, and the origins of rock, also may serve for the research on networks.9 However, for the purpose of this article, we concentrate on signatures only.

1 Exposition

1.1 Croatian Jews

The earliest Jewish settlements in the territory of modern Croatia were in the coastal cities of Dalmatia, but since no signatures of stonemasons were found there, we will not explore those ancient communities here.10 Significant numbers of Ashkenazic Jews began to arrive in Croatia and Slavonia11 from other Habsburg lands in the late eighteenth century, as a result of reforms by Joseph II. From 1840, Jews were allowed to live anywhere in Hungary and Croatia and in 1846, the toleration tax on Croatian Jews was eliminated. As a result of the Ausgleich of 1867, Croatia became part of the Hungarian-ruled part of the Habsburg Monarchy, but the Croatian-Hungarian Agreement of 1868 stipulated that the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia had broad internal autonomy and that its official language was Croatian. The full emancipation of Jews was granted by the Croatian Parliament (Sabor) in 1873.12

By 1910 there were 21,231 Jews in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, 0.8 % of the total population.13 According to categorization proposed by Ezra Mendelsohn, they were Jews of the West European type: mostly middle-class, highly urbanized, and making up a small minority in the cities.14 More than twenty Jewish communities existed in the country, the largest ones in Zagreb and Osijek. The Jews of Croatia were strongly acculturated in Croatian culture: in 1910, 46 % of Jews declared Croatian as their mother tongue.15 Acculturation is highly visible in the Jewish cemeteries too, where tombstones with epitaphs in Croatian appeared from the 1880s and became the norm by the early 1920s.

1.2 Sources

The bulk of materials analyzed in this article are tombstones in the Jewish cemeteries of Croatia. During a 2021 expedition to Croatia of the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,16 we documented 647 signed tombstones in sixteen major Croatian Jewish cemeteries (see Fig. 3; Appendix, Table 1). Although we did not survey all of the Jewish cemeteries in the country, and only in several cemeteries all the tombstones were documented, our collected sample is large enough to be representative, and enables the investigation of networks and mental maps.

The Croatian material in our research is supplemented by findings in other parts of pre-World War I Hungary. We use the complete documentation of the Dolga Vas Jewish cemetery in Lendava, Slovenia, undertaken in 2019 by Janez Premk in a collaborative project of the Center for Jewish Art and University of Maribor.17 We also use a survey of about 200 small Jewish cemeteries in Hajdú-Bihar and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg Counties in Hungary, conducted by the ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative in 2021 and shared with the Center for Jewish Art. Moreover, we make use of the website “Žilina Gallery” created by Jozef Feiler, which contains documentation of all tombstones in the Jewish cemetery of Žilina, Slovakia.18 The number of signatures found in these three projects combined is almost equal to the number discovered in Croatia. Some characteristics of the stonemasons’ signatures in Croatia are compared to findings from the Center for Jewish Art’s expeditions to central and eastern Europe and Russia. References to them are made mostly in the footnotes. Finally, we support our conclusions with accounts from the local Croatian and Hungarian press.19

The chronological scope of this article is from the last decades of the nineteenth through the first four decades of the twentieth century. In this period, the custom of signing tombstones was widely practiced in Habsburg Hungary and continued to be practiced in the successor states. After World War II, however, the custom almost vanished.20 At this stage of research, it seems that in Romania, Imperial Russia, and Germany, the idea of signing a tombstone was never as popular as in Croatia and other parts of Hungary.

2 Signed Tombstones—Main Characteristics

Signed tombstones make up between 10 % and 30 % of all tombstones found in cemeteries in Croatia and some other parts of pre-World War I Hungary (see Appendix, Table 1). Although these numbers are derived from information that is a priori incomplete, since only the stones standing today are documented, they still reflect the approximate percentage of signed stones among all the tombstones.

While it is tempting to consider a stonemason’s signature as the expression of his self-image as an artist, our research demonstrates that the signatures served as commercial advertisement. The signatures are usually on the lower part of the front side of the stone, and are easily noticed by passers-by (Figs. 1, 2). Workshops situated in large cities often included their street address, which was sometimes replaced by a telephone number in the 1920s.21 When a stone was shipped to another location, the signature of the stonemason often included the name of the town where he was based (compare Figs. 1 and 2).22

A signature on a gravestone was a modern method of advertisement, and did not appear on Jewish gravestones until the second half of the nineteenth century. More traditional stonemasons probably did not adopt this novelty, even in the early twentieth century. Those masons, who were perhaps the only ones in their town, probably considered such signatures unnecessary, as will be demonstrated below.

The advertising of tombstone makers was a feature of the mass market aimed at middle-class customers. The majority of signed headstones are made of marble and granite, though some relatively simple limestone stelae are also signed. In contrast, prominent gravestones with artistic sculptures in Croatia usually do not bear any signature of the artist or stonemason.23 Most likely, the workshops serving the elite and producing very expensive tombstones did not need this kind of advertisement. Therefore, the stonemason signatures describe the networks and perceptions of the middle class, not the richest or poorest strata of the population.

The majority of stonemasons who made gravestones for Croatian Jewish cemeteries were Christians. Of 90 stonemasons who left their signatures on Jewish tombstones in Croatia, only 11 were surely Jewish. Only two of them were based in Croatia (Mavro Wamoscher in Đakovo, and Josip Rendeli in Karlovac), while the others worked in Vienna, Budapest, Nagykanizsa, Graz, and other places. Jewish stonemasons must have worked for other ethno-religious groups as well. In Croatia, the Jewish population was relatively small and most Jewish communities had only a few hundred members, a tiny minority among the Christian population. Thus, it would not have been cost-effective for a stonemason to serve only Jewish customers.

As demonstrated by the material of the Center for Jewish Art from different countries, non-Jewish stonemasons easily produced gravestones with long Hebrew epitaphs. They probably employed Jewish workers familiar with Hebrew script. In Croatia, especially in the interwar period, the majority of tombstones no longer had Hebrew epitaphs, but only traditional abbreviations ‮פ״נ‬‎, ‮פ״ט‬‎, and ‮תנצב״ה‬‎,24 which could be easily reproduced even by a non-Jewish worker. Jewish tombstones were not unique in this regard: tombstones inscribed with Cyrillic characters were also produced by Croatian stonemasons.25

Regardless of the language used for the epitaphs, all the signatures found in the Jewish cemeteries of Croatia are written in Latin letters (in Croatian, Hungarian, or German). In other regions, however, stonemasons made wide use of Hebrew characters.26 This practice is especially noticeable in the cemeteries of Orthodox communities in the northeast of today’s Hungary. Reflecting the halakhic rulings of the Hungarian Orthodox rabbis, the epitaphs there contained no Latin letters and the signatures of the stonemasons were also in Hebrew.27 In other words, the language of the signature reflected the preferences of the client: non-Jewish stonemasons could also sign in Hebrew.28

Communal institutions responsible for the upkeep of the Jewish cemetery often controlled the process of erecting tombstones. However, it seems that this control was limited to the features and epitaphs of the tombstones, not the choice of a stonemason. Thus, the members of community could freely decide where they ordered a tombstone and were rarely restricted by some monopoly.29

3 Tombstones Produced Locally

Sixty-two percent of the signed tombstones documented in Croatia were produced in the same city or town where they were situated (see Appendix, Table 1). Except for the smallest towns, most had their own stonemasons, which made it possible and practical to purchase a tombstone near the cemetery where it would be placed. Many stonemasons did not sign their stones made for the local cemetery and therefore we assume that most of the unsigned stones were produced locally. Other stonemasons chose to carve their names because the competition between them made such advertisement necessary (see Fig. 1).

The larger the city, the more options the residents had for purchasing tombstones. For example, 97 % of signed tombstones documented in both of the Jewish cemeteries in Osijek were produced locally.30 The most popular workshop there was that of Franjo Hendrich (1870–1936, see Figs. 1, 2). The less prolific workshops were those of Ante Slaviček (1864–1931) and Dragutin Payerle.31 All three workshops had both Jewish and Christian residents of Osijek as customers.32 Similarly, 94 % of the signed tombstones surveyed in the Mirogoj Cemetery in Zagreb were made locally.33 The two most productive stonemasons there were Ljudevit Pierotti, who owned a workshop in Zagreb from 1875, and Jaroslav Strecha (1881–?), who settled in Zagreb in 1910.34 Another prominent figure was Ignjat Franz (1855–1942), a renowned stonemason and sculptor who taught in Zagreb’s School of Arts and Crafts.35

In smaller towns, local stonemasons were also dominant, but to a lesser extent. In Karlovac, 54 % of the signed Jewish tombstones were locally produced, mostly by Rudolf Neuhold, Mane Tatalović, and by a local Jewish workshop headed by Josip Rendeli (1865–?). In Varaždin, 56 % of signed tombstones were locally produced. The market was dominated by the workshop of Rudolf Paskutini (?–1930), later inherited by his son, Josip Pascuttini.36 In Bjelovar, it was the Tribusson family who produced the majority of signed tombstones there.37

Thus, local stonemasons satisfied most of the local demand for tombstones. Even when we do not find tombstones signed by local stonemasons, it is very likely, as stated above, that most of the stones were produced locally. In Čakovec, for example, all 16 signed gravestones were non-local. Yet, from 1899 there was at least one renowned stonemason: Bódog Tersztenyák (1867–1912), whose business was continued by his wife.38 Tersztenyák signed his works in other places, but not in his hometown, although he probably produced tombstones for the local customers as well.39

In the smallest towns there may not have been a local stonemason. The town of Gospić, for example, did not have a stonemason until the early twentieth century.40 Gospić, however, seems to have been the exception rather than the rule. It is located in the mountains and until now remains the smallest seat of county government in Croatia.

4 Tombstones Brought from Other Locations

One could order a gravestone from a local stonemason, or else order it from another city or town. The data on non-local tombstones reveals the networks between cities and towns. For the sake of geographical analysis, we have cross-indexed two locations: that of the tombstone itself and that of the stonemason’s workshop. Below, we will discuss two possible situations: tombstones that were shipped long distances from major urban centers and tombstones from another town that were shipped a short distance under approximately 100 km. Gravestones that were ordered from a local stonemason do not require explanation, but the purchase of a stone from another location raises questions about the reasons for such a decision.

4.1 Reasons to Order a Tombstone Non-locally

Thirty-eight percent of signed tombstones in Croatia were not produced locally, and such stones are found in every documented Croatian Jewish cemetery (see Appendix, Table 1). To order a tombstone from a non-local stonemason, one needed to be aware, first of all, of the existence of such a stonemason. With the development of daily and weekly newspapers, the public obtained this knowledge through advertisements. For example, the Zagreb stonemason Pierotti actively published ads in the Varaždin newspapers, and apparently not only there, which may have contributed to his popularity.41 Such advertisements usually featured the address of the workshop or of a local agent who would facilitate the ordering process. Because of these agents, it was not much more complicated to order a tombstone from a non-local stonemason as opposed to someone local.

One example of such an agent is found in the Varaždin newspapers. The ads of Mirko Weiss, a stonemason in Graz, give the name of Stjepan Haller, the administrator of the local cemetery, as his agent.42 This fact can explain why half of the non-locally produced tombstones in Varaždin came from Weiss’ workshop in Graz (see Fig. 4).43 Graz is quite far away (130 km) and although the work of Graz-based stonemasons is present in other Jewish cemeteries in Croatia, no other cemetery has so many (Appendix, Tables 2 and 3). The existence of a local agent in Varaždin for the Graz-based stonemason does not seem coincidental. In 1904, Weiss wrote a short personal letter (in Croatian) to the Varaždin newspaper, which showed his personal connection to the city.44 This story may be exceptional, but it demonstrates that agents appeared when there were contacts between towns and the agents were, inter alia, the embodiment of these contacts.

Another reason to order a tombstone non-locally could have been the wish to purchase it directly from a quarry. For example, in Žilina, Slovakia, 16 tombstones came from the area of the village of Supíkovice, known as the “Silesian Carrara,” almost 200 km away.45 In Croatia, however, we found no such cases.

The local identity of the deceased and his or her town of origin may also have influenced the ordering of a tombstone. If a person died outside of their hometown and local identity was of importance also to the family, the tombstone may have been ordered from the hometown. For example, the epitaph of Adolf Schwarz, buried in Osijek in 1928, states that the deceased was from Vukovar. The signature on the tombstone shows that the stone came from Vukovar as well.46 Another reason could be that the children of the deceased migrated to different locations and ordered tombstones in the cities where they resided. Thus, the signatures could also reflect migratory processes.47

Prestige was another factor in ordering tombstones non-locally. Such stones were a status symbol for the family of the deceased. Stones from large, faraway urban and cultural centers were considered more prestigious, as will be discussed in the next section.

4.2 Tombstones from Major Urban Centers

About a third of non-locally produced tombstones in Croatia came from faraway big cities: Vienna (the capital of the Habsburg Monarchy), Budapest (the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary), and Zagreb (the capital of the autonomous Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia), as well as large urban centers like Ljubljana (today Slovenia), Graz (today Austria), Subotica and Novi Sad (today Serbia).

Why would a family decide to order a tombstone from the capital? In the case of Zalmen Schur from Mogilev in the Russian Empire (today Mahilioŭ in Belarus), the decision was perhaps one of convenience. As written in his epitaph, Schur died in Opatija in 1911, apparently while on a seaside vacation, and was buried in the neighboring city of Rijeka.48 Schur’s family ordered a granite obelisk from the most reputable Viennese producer of tombstones, the Sommer & Weniger company.49 Apparently, the family found it more convenient to negotiate with a large and well-known firm rather than to look for small local workshops with whom they had no connections. Prestige was probably not a factor in choosing the services of this Viennese firm, since the family did not reside in Rijeka but in Mogilev, two thousand km away.

In the case of Mayer and Theresie Broch, buried in Varaždin, prestige played a bigger role than convenience.50 The couple were local residents, but their tombstone was ordered from the famous Viennese company of Anton Wasserburger and his son Paul, Habsburg court stonemasons and architects. In addition to constructing multiple buildings in Vienna, they made tombstones for many famous people including an obelisk for Ludwig van Beethoven, who was reinterred in Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof in 1888.51 The Broch family was probably following the example of two other families in Varaždin, who had ordered tombstones from the Viennese company of Sommer & Weniger in 1885 and 1892.52 All three grave monuments look expensive and differ from the common grave markers in the Varaždin cemetery.

Another Viennese firm, Wulkan & Neubrunn, with Jewish owners Emanuel Emil Neubrunn and Jacob Loebel Leopold Wulkan, seems to have been popular with Jews across the Habsburg Monarchy and in the neighboring countries. Their works are found in Zagreb, Karlovac, and Vukovar in Croatia,53 Eisenstadt in Austria,54 Břeclav, Olomouc, and Holešov in the Czech Republic,55 Cieszyn in Poland,56 Veszprém in Hungary,57 as well as in Bucharest and Brăila, Romania,58 and Belgrade, Serbia.59

Ordering tombstones from afar added to the family’s prestige and status and had symbolic meaning for them. Such orders demonstrated the family’s position within the community, since the stones were probably more expensive than locally made tombstones and their transportation was also costly.60 Yet, money was not the only factor. Ordering a stone from distant Vienna meant that in the eyes of the purchaser, Vienna was not just the symbolic capital of the empire, but a real place, which they had probably visited more than once. Ordering a tombstone from Vienna or Budapest required more knowledge and communication than ordering from a local stonemason. Thus, the tombstones from large cities show that the families who ordered them had such experience and probably possessed a network of connections far outside their place of residence.

Before World War I, Vienna and Budapest were the most important urban centers in this part of Europe, and they also had symbolic value as the capitals of the empire. As a consequence of the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy and the establishment of new states in 1918, Vienna and Budapest were no longer the capitals for Croatian Jews. Of the 25 tombstones from Vienna and Budapest, only two date from after 1918. The shipping of tombstones from Graz, Austria, to Croatia seriously diminished after 1918 and waned after 1929. After the establishment of Yugoslavia, urban centers within the new country, like Zagreb, Subotica, and Ljubljana were the focus. Stonemasons from these cities were well represented in Croatian Jewish cemeteries before 1918, but after the collapse of the empire they filled the gap in the market of prestigious tombstones. Notably, we did not find a single stone in Croatia signed by a stonemason from Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia.61 Although larger than Zagreb, Belgrade was clearly outside the realm of the Jews of Croatia, and culturally alien to them.

4.3 Tombstones Produced in the Vicinity

Less than a third of the non-locally produced tombstones in Croatia came from cities far away, while more than two thirds were made nearer to the town where they stood. This ratio is reflected in the median shipping distance of non-locally produced stones, which was only 68 km.62 In the northeast of today’s Hungary this pattern was even stronger: 84 % of non-local signed tombstones were from cities and towns in the vicinity, so that the median distance was only 36 km (this number also reflects the different structure of the Jewish population in different areas: the network of Jewish communities in northeastern Hungary was much denser than in Croatia).

One logical hypothesis is that the stones were brought from larger regional centers to smaller towns. Sometimes this was the case. In the region of Slavonia, the largest city was Osijek and it would make sense to find many tombstones by Osijek’s stonemasons in the towns in the vicinity. Indeed, in Đakovo, 40 km from Osijek, 53 out of 58 non-locally produced stones were made in Osijek (see Fig. 5). This trend is apparent from the late 1880s through the late 1930s, at least half a century. The Jews of Đakovo ordered tombstones from seven Osijek workshops, which shows their strong connections to this city.

One might assume that tombstones were ordered from Osijek because Đakovo had no local stonemasons. However, there were at least three of them, working in different periods. The first was V. Donegani, mentioned in 1892.63 The second was a Jewish entrepreneur named Mavro (Moric) Wamoscher (Wamašer, 1861–1932).64 Tombstones signed by him date from the mid-1910s through the late 1920s.65 The third was Majerhofer, who apparently launched his business later—his signatures appeared from 1934 to 1940.66 Although local stonemasons could easily satisfy the demand for tombstones of the rather small Jewish community, Đakovo’s Jews preferred to order stones from Osijek. In their mental map, Osijek was clearly the regional center and they considered themselves in its periphery. Such one-sided connections between a large city and a nearby small town (we found no stones from Đakovo in Osijek) can be defined as “hierarchical.” A similar connection existed in Opatija, where two out of three non-local tombstones came from nearby Rijeka, a city five times larger in size (see Appendix, Table 2).

Hierarchical connections also existed in the vicinity of the largest Croatian city, Zagreb. In central Croatia, about half the non-locally produced stones came from Zagreb (see Appendix, Table 3), considered the regional center. There are especially many Zagreb-made tombstones in the cemeteries of Karlovac, Koprivnica, and Križevci (see Appendix, Table 3), which may be explained by the early construction of the main railway line Budapest-Rijeka that directly connected those towns with Zagreb.67 This line strengthened the position of Zagreb as the regional center.

Zagreb was also the Croatian national capital, so the tombstones made there had similar symbolic value as those from Vienna and Budapest. Therefore, in central Croatia, Zagreb was viewed both as a regional and a symbolic center, resulting in a larger number of Zagreb-made tombstones (see Appendix, Table 3). In Slavonia, where Zagreb was not considered the regional center, the number of tombstones from Zagreb is comparable with those from Vienna and Budapest (see Appendix, Table 4).

The hierarchical relationship between the center and the periphery can be seen even more clearly in the cemeteries of today’s Hajdú-Bihar and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg Counties in northeastern Hungary. Of 328 non-local signed tombstones, 103 (31 %) were produced in Debrecen—the center of historical Hajdú County and the largest city in this part of Hungary, and 109 tombstones (33 %) were made in Nyíregyháza, the center of historical Szabolcs County. The overwhelming majority of the stones were ordered in the vicinity of these two cities: 88 % of stones produced in Debrecen and 86 % of stones produced in Nyíregyháza were transported no more than 60 km, notwithstanding the administrative borders between the counties.

In contrast to northeastern Hungary, proximity in Croatia was not always a deciding factor. In Slavonski Brod, the regional center of Osijek, located 85 km away, seems to have been less significant than Sombor, a city the same size as Osijek, but located 145 km away (now in Serbia) (see Fig. 6). Seven tombstones in Slavonski Brod came from Sombor, and only four from Osijek. Together, they make up half of the non-locally produced tombstones. The strong connection of Brod to Sombor may be explained by the early construction of a direct railway line Budapest-Subotica-Sombor-Dalj-Brod, which simplified the transportation of people and goods.68 Three other important locations for the Jews of Brod were Subotica (200 km away, but on the same railway, now in Serbia), Novi Sad (170 km away, now in Serbia) and Pécs (124 km away, now in Hungary). There was one tombstone from each of these towns in Brod. Thus, the Jewish population of Slavonski Brod did not deal exclusively with the nearest major city, but had connections to different regional centers. Brod’s networks were broader than those of Đakovo described above, oriented exclusively toward Osijek.

The geography of signed tombstones also demonstrates the intensity of horizontal connections, meaning the connections between towns of approximately the same size. In Slavonski Brod, six tombstones came from such towns: Požega (45 km from Brod), the center of the county where Brod was located, Vukovar (90 km), Vinkovci (70 km), and Bjelovar (155 km) (see Appendix, Table 4). In Đakovo, only one stone came from Slavonski Brod (43 km away), as opposed to 53 stones from Osijek, as discussed above (Figs. 5, 6).

The analysis of signed tombstones shows the networking typology of the town. Đakovo had very close ties to Osijek and therefore hardly any horizontal connections with other cities. In contrast, Slavonski Brod not only had hierarchical contacts with several regional centers, but also had active horizontal connections with towns its size. To put it in numbers, the median distance of shipment in Đakovo was 40 km and it had one hierarchical connection and one horizontal, while in Slavonski Brod the median distance was 145 km and it had five hierarchical connections and four horizontal ones.

In Žilina (now Slovakia), horizontal connections were even more developed. The town had one primary hierarchical connection, to the city of Ostrava (today the Czech Republic), which was ten times larger. Twenty tombstones standing in Žilina came from Ostrava. Eighty-five of the 135 non-locally produced tombstones came from towns of the same size or smaller than Žilina in the proximity (the median distance for all the tombstones is 75 km). These numbers reflect Žilina’s horizontal networks and connections to nine other towns in Eastern Slovakia, Moravia, and Silesia.

The example of Križevci in Croatia shows that one town could combine different types of connections (see Fig. 5). Zagreb, 60 km away, was clearly viewed there as the regional center: 13 out of 21 non-locally produced tombstones were Zagreb-made. Bjelovar and Koprivnica, both approximately twice the size of Križevci and located about 35 km away, were seen as secondary centers: four tombstones were imported from these two towns. Another four tombstones came from Čazma (37 km away) and Sveti Ivan Žabno (10 km away). Both were small villages with a population of less than a thousand people. We do not know why these two villages had stonemason’s workshops that did work for other towns. It seems that this situation was unusual, but not unique.69 Apparently, the connections of both villages to Križevci were not limited to the tombstone trade.

Village Jews, quite unexpectedly, ordered their tombstones not only from nearest urban centers, but from faraway cities as well. The median shipping distance for villages in Hajdú-Bihar and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg Counties was 57 km, almost twice that of towns with a population between 2,000 and 10,000, whose median shipping distance was only 35 km. Cities with more than 10,000 residents had an even smaller median shipping distance of 25 km. A similar pattern can be detected in the small Croatian towns of Daruvar and Cernik. The first had a median distance of 124 km, and the second 150 km. Perhaps Jews who lived in villages and very small towns were mostly tradesmen and therefore had working communications with larger centers.

A cemetery can also demonstrate a town’s lack of connections. For example, among the signed tombstones found in Vukovar, only one was produced in Osijek.70 Vukovar was similar in size to Đakovo and the distance from Vukovar to Osijek was almost the same as Đakovo to Osijek. Nonetheless, there were almost no connections between Vukovar and Osijek. Somehow, the mental maps of Vukovar’s Jews did not include this regional center. This peculiar situation finds its expression in the fact that the only tombstone in Osijek produced in Vukovar marks the grave of a Vukovar resident.71

4.4 Case Study of the Prekmurje–Međimurje Region

The comparison of cemeteries in neighboring towns provides a detailed and colorful picture of inter-town connections. In this section, we will focus on Varaždin, the center of Croatian Varaždin County, Čakovec and Lendava, both in Hungarian Zala County before World War I, and will explore their connections to the cities of Nagykanizsa and Zagreb. Although today they are located in different countries, they are part of one broader region of Prekmurje–Međimurje. Koprivnica, although not part of this region, is located nearby and shared the same connection patterns (see Fig. 4 above).

All four towns had different ethnic profiles, which also had an influence on the Jewish population and its networks. Lendava was a town with a primarily Hungarian population, and Hungarian identity was prevalent among the Jews—a third of the signed Jewish tombstones came from Nagykanizsa and another third from the Hungarian towns of Keszthely, Szombathely, and Zalaegerszeg.

In pre-World War I Čakovec, some half the citizens were Croats and half Hungarians. Jews, 12 percent of the population, leaned more to the Hungarian side, as can be deducted from epitaphs in Hungarian on the Jewish tombstones. Yet, Zagreb was still mentally closer to them and Jewish tombstones with Hungarian epitaphs came from there too.

In Varaždin and Koprivnica, the majority of the population was Croat, and we found no Hungarian epitaphs in the Jewish cemeteries there. Apparently, the Jewish population of both towns leaned toward Croatian identity. Yet, there were contacts with Hungary and three tombstones were brought to these towns from Nagykanizsa.72 All three have German epitaphs, which means that the act of ordering in Hungary was not dictated by language issues, but was representative of the inter-town connections.

In Čakovec, Varaždin, Koprivnica, and Lendava, the connection to Hungary existed only until 1918/20 when these towns became part of Yugoslavia. After that, influenced by the new border, these connections decreased dramatically and later vanished.

The rupture of connections to Hungary was not significantly apparent in the cemeteries of Čakovec, Varaždin, and Koprivnica. All in all, even before World War I, these towns were much more oriented toward Zagreb than toward Nagykanizsa, despite Nagykanizsa being closer than Zagreb. Twelve stones in total were brought to Čakovec, Varaždin, and Koprivnica from Zagreb before 1918, and only four from Nagykanizsa. After 1918, the shipping from Zagreb continued and that from Nagykanizsa ended. Zagreb was obviously mentally closer to the Jewish population of these Croatian towns, although located geographically farther away.

In contrast, Lendava was strongly oriented toward Hungary, and Croatian towns were initially only secondary centers for it. Before 1918, 35 stones came from Hungarian cities and only two from Croatian ones. After 1918, Lendava’s Jews began to establish broader connections to the neighboring Murska Sobota (now Slovenia) and to Croatian Zagreb, yet they continued to write their epitaphs in Hungarian (like some Čakovec Jews as well).

When Lendava and Čakovec again became part of Hungary in 1941, connections to Nagykanizsa were reestablished. Quite remarkably, the tombstones for people who died in 1940 were ordered in 1941 from Christian stonemason József Kovács in Nagykanizsa, whose workshop did not exist prior to World War I. This fact means that Jews in Lendava and Čakovec ordered the stones not because of their familiarity with the stonemason, but because Nagykanizsa, the regional center in their mental maps, had become accessible again.

Tombstone connections are a possible expression of other personal and economic contacts as well. A good example is that of stonemason Bódog Tersztenyák, mentioned earlier. Born in 1867, he studied in a Catholic gymnasium in Nagykanizsa and later was trained as a stonemason in the same city. In 1899, Tersztenyák opened a branch of his workshop in Čakovec and eventually relocated there completely in 1902–1903.73 We found no trace of tombstones signed by him in Čakovec; apparently, he considered it unnecessary to sign his products intended for local use, but tombstones signed with his name are found in Lendava, showing the connections between the towns.74 Newspaper articles on Tersztenyák suggest that he had strong connections encompassing, besides Čakovec and Lendava, the nearby towns of Ráckanizsa (Razkrižje, now in Slovenia), Zalaujvár (Pribislavec, now part of Čakovec), Prelog, and Zalaegerszeg, the capital of Zala County.75

Another workshop—that of Pascuttinis, father and son—demonstrated similar geographical scope in the 1920s–1930s. Primarily based in Varaždin, it had strong connections to Čakovec and Lendava.76 The workshop of Josip Močnik, which operated in Murska Sobota from the late 1910s to the 1930s, is another example of a similar pattern, being connected to Lendava, Čakovec, and Varaždin as seen both in the tombstones signatures and newspaper ads.77 Thus, the geographical scope of stonemasons’ activity reflects the perception of this region as one unit and shows the intense networks between its towns.

The examples above demonstrate that the connections within and beyond the region were not only shaped by the proximity of towns to each other. Tersztenyák seemingly never reached Varaždin with its predominantly Croatian population, although it is located just 15 km from Čakovec. There is no mention of him in Varaždin’s Croatian newspapers and all his ads and the articles describing his work were in the Hungarian press. Thus, inter-town connections were also influenced by the ethnic composition of population and by the perception of ethnic and linguistic borders. In the interwar period, the workshops of Pascuttini and Močnik were already working in the entire region, from Varaždin to Lendava, and perceived it as a whole, when all the discussed towns became part of Yugoslavia.

The examples of Čakovec, Varaždin, and Lendava demonstrate that the connections we deduce from signed tombstones correspond to the connections we find in other sources and thus are a trustworthy reflection of inter-town networks. The hierarchical connections are not surprising, since they seem predetermined by the size of the towns. Even here, however, the network derived from signed tombstones demonstrates the relative value of different regional centers for a certain town. This information is even more valuable in the case of horizontal connections, which are much more difficult to predict and to grasp from other sources. The connections that became evident from signed tombstones and newspaper ads show the mental maps of local inhabitants and demonstrate that the geographical perceptions of Jews and Christians in this region coincided.

5 Parallels in Christian Cemeteries

Jews were not the only ones who ordered tombstones from other towns, near and far. With a brief glance at Christian cemeteries in Croatia, we find that the situation there was very much the same as in Jewish cemeteries.

We did not survey Christian cemeteries during our expedition to Croatia, and there seems to be no complete documentation of any of the Christian cemeteries there that consecutively mentions stonemasons’ signatures. However, the signatures of stonemasons are at times mentioned in publications dwelling on certain cemeteries or in projects for their preservation. This scarce material allows some comparison and demonstrates hierarchical connections identical to those found in Jewish cemeteries.

In Karlovac, the same workshops that served the Jewish cemetery, produced tombstones for the Catholic cemetery. Local stonemasons Neuhold and Tatalović, who made the majority of the locally produced signed tombstones in the Jewish cemetery, seem to have made most of the signed tombstones in the Catholic one as well.78 Other Catholic tombstones bear the signatures of the Zagreb-based Pierotti, Strecha, and B. Strešnjak.79 In the Jewish cemetery, Strecha signed four stones and Pierotti and Strešnjak three each.

The Serbian Orthodox cemetery in Glina in central Croatia (68 km from Zagreb and 56 km from Karlovac) features all the same stonemasons from Zagreb and Karlovac whom we find in the Jewish cemeteries: Baumgarten, Fuchs, Pierotti, and Strecha from Zagreb, Neuhold and Tatalović from Karlovac.80 The names of the same stonemasons, with the addition of Grein (Graz), Industrija mramora Subotica, A. Cerenogy (Budapest), and Marković (Perušić), appear on gravestones in Gospić in southern Croatia (142 km from Karlovac and 197 km from Zagreb).81 All of them, except Marković, made multiple stones for various Jewish cemeteries. In the Christian cemetery of Đurđevac in northern Croatia (100 km from Zagreb and 28 km from Bjelovar), we find the same omnipresent Strecha and Pierotti with the addition of Bjelovar stonemasons, the Tribusson family.82 The Osijek stonemasons Hendrich, Payerle, and Herman Wirrer are well represented in the Catholic and Orthodox cemeteries of Čepin, located only 10 km away.83

Judging from the available material, it seems that the networks of the Jewish and non-Jewish populations in Croatian towns were similar and not defined by denominational identity. This conclusion makes sense, since Jewish communities in Croatia were quite small. Both populations ordered tombstones from the same workshops, and these workshops, in turn, attempted to satisfy the demands of all customers. Further research is required, however, based on a proper survey of Christian cemeteries.

6 Conclusion: Mental Maps of Croatian Jews

The analysis of stonemasons’ signatures allows for a partial reconstruction of the mental maps of Croatian Jews in the late nineteenth and the first four decades of the twentieth century.

The signatures demonstrate that the Jews of Croatia—not surprisingly—viewed all of Austria-Hungary as their territory. Among 647 signed tombstones, only one was produced in Munich, outside the Habsburg realm.84 The capital of the empire, Vienna, had symbolic status, and ordering tombstones from there was considered prestigious. The same attitude prevailed in relation to Budapest, the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary. Croatian Jews ordered tombstones from other cities of the Dual Monarchy, to the north and east of Croatia: Graz and Ljubljana in the Austrian Empire, and Subotica, Sombor, Novi Sad, Nagykanizsa, Pécs, and Kaposvár in the Kingdom of Hungary. In this way, they differed from the Jews of northeastern Hungary, who purchased tombstones only within the Kingdom of Hungary. At the same time, Croatian Jewish cemeteries clearly demonstrate the absence of connections to Bosnia and Herzegovina, just south of Croatia. Although ruled by Austria-Hungary from 1878, this country was absent from Jewish-Croatian mental maps.

The new borders drawn in 1918 inevitably changed the status of Austrian and Hungarian cities in Jewish-Croatian mental maps, but did not eliminate them. While trans-border trade in tombstones probably became complicated, it never stopped completely and we still found single tombstones made in Vienna, Budapest, and Graz in the interwar period. Ljubljana, Subotica, Sombor, and Novi Sad, now within Yugoslavia, continued to supply stones for Croatian Jews. An important feature of the mental maps of Croatian Jews is that when Vienna and Budapest ceased to be political capitals for Croatia, they were not replaced by Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia. Although Belgrade is much closer to eastern Croatia than Budapest, we did not find a single tombstone signed by a stonemason from that city. It is clear that the new political center could not replace the old ones, since it was culturally alien to Croatian Jews.

A similar phenomenon can be seen in the Jewish cemeteries of Transylvania, which was part of the Kingdom of Hungary prior to 1918 and became part of Romania afterwards. While before World War I many stones were ordered from Budapest, we found only one tombstone made in the Romanian capital of Bucharest, in 1939.85 In other words, it took twenty years until some Transylvanian Jews began to consider the capital of their new country as an important center on their mental map.

Signatures on tombstones also demonstrate that Croatian Jews considered Croatia as their primary territory and Zagreb as their capital, loaded with symbolic meaning. Tombstones made in Zagreb consistently appeared in Croatian Jewish cemeteries from 1881 to 1940. The proportion of tombstones originating in Zagreb clearly divides the Jewish communities of Croatia into two distinct regions. In the towns of central Croatia, Zagreb played the role of regional center, while further east, in Slavonia, it was regarded as the national capital, similar to Vienna and Budapest.

The signatures of stonemasons allow us to follow the hierarchical and horizontal connections between towns, that is, the relations between center(s) and periphery(s). Such connections were sometimes created or strengthened by the existence of railway lines. A clear example of the center-periphery relationship is the hierarchical connection between Đakovo and Osijek, where the majority of tombstones in Đakovo came from Osijek. In other words, Osijek was the major center on the mental map of Đakovo Jews. An equally clear example of the absence of connections is the case of Osijek and Vukovar, which demonstrates that Osijek had almost no place in the mental maps of the Vukovar Jews.

While center-periphery relationships can often—but not always—be deducted from the respective sizes of the populations, the networks among peripheral towns are not obvious and analysis of stonemason signatures helps to reconstruct them. The horizontal connections between towns demonstrate that the areas regarded by Croatian Jews in mid-size towns as “theirs” did not coincide with existing administrative districts. The networks between people and towns were driven by other factors such as geographical proximity or convenience of communication. Intensive horizontal connections were a consequence of the urban structure of Croatia, with only a few large cities, and the structure of the Jewish population, dispersed in small numbers in mid-size towns. At the same time, such connections allowed the small numbers of Jews in neighboring towns to feel closer to each other.

Acknowledgments

We are thankful to Alexandra Fishel and Milda Jakulytė for providing us with valuable suggestions and to Arkadi Zeltzer, Anna Berezin, and Marcin Wodziński, whose feedback on the first drafts of this article was crucial.

Appendix

Cemetery

Total number

Number of documented Jewish tombstones with

of tombstones

stonemasons’ signatures

in the

cemetery

Number of

Percentage of

Number of

Percentage of

signed tomb-

signed tomb-

non-locally made

non-locally made

stones in

stones among

tombstones in

tombstones

the cemetery

all tombstones

the cemetery

among signed

in the cemetery

tombstones

Bjelovar

81

19

23 %

3

16 %

Čakovec

185

16*

6 %

16

100 %

Cernik

94

7*

7 %

7

100 %

Đakovo

259

71

27 %

58

82 %

Daruvar

170

17

10 %

9

53 %

Karlovac

151

54

36 %

25

46 %

Koprivnica

330

29

9 %

22

76 %

Križevci (two cemeteries)

104

20

19 %

20

100 %

Opatija

72

3

4 %

3

100 %

Osijek (two cemeteries)

1,823

185

10 %

6

3 %

Rijeka

511

15**

3 %

12

80 %

Slavonski Brod

176

39

22 %

25

64 %

Varaždin

310

62

20 %

27

44 %

Virovitica

about 150

6*

4 %

5

83 %

Vukovar

255

9*

4 %

3

33 %

Zagreb

about 1,500

95

6 %***

6

6 %

Total in Croatia

6,171

647

10 %

247

38 %

Lendava, Slovenia

184

62

34 %

59

95 %

Žilina, Slovakia

1,450

278

19 %

135

49 %

Total

7,805

987

13 %

441

45 %

Source: Documentation by the Center for Jewish Art; Documentation by ESJF European Jewish Cemetery Initiative; website “Žilina Gallery.”

Cemetery

Place of production

Rijeka

Opatija

Total

Budapest

4

4

Graz

2

1

3

Ljubljana

1

1

Rijeka

–

2

2

Sušak (2 km from Rijeka)

4

4

Vienna

1

1

Total

12

3

15

Cemetery

Place of production

Bjelovar

Čakovec

Karlovac

Koprivnica

Križevci

Varaždin

Zagreb

Total

Bjelovar

–

1

1

Budapest

3

3

Čazma
