Serbian Hungarian Baranya Baja Republic

History

The republic was established on 14 August 1921 and was dissolved on 20 August 1921. The area of southern Hungary was occupied by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes' army and was administrated by the people's administration from Novi Sad. Following the defeat of Béla Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic in the summer of 1919, many communist dissidents from Budapest, escaping from the "white terror" of Admiral Miklós Horthy, emigrated to Baranya, where Béla Linder, mayor of Pécs, gave them refuge. Linder, the military attaché of the Hungarian Soviet Republic based in Vienna in Austria, became the mayor of Pécs in September 1920.

In the Great People's Assembly of Pécs on 14 August, where in front of 15-20,000 people painter Petar Dobrović suggested the formation of independent republic that would include region of Baranya and northern part of Bačka around Baja. Petar Dobrović became president of executive committee of the new Republic.

The lobbying at the peace conference in Paris under the Belgrade-appointed Yugoslav Prefect Pandurovitch, it is said to have included two great Hungarian landowners, Count Pavao Keglević and Count Ivan Drašković, in addition to the leading Baranya jurist Tivadar Andrits, a former member of the Hungarian Parliament. Due to a miscarriage of justice Ivo Andrić was arrested some years before. Laszlo Pandurovitch certainly did not know this Pavao Keglević personally. Živko Petričić a far relative of this Pavao Keglević was the chief-negotiator of the Yugoslav peoples committee of the Croatian Parliament with the Government of Hungary. This Pavao Keglević (1911–2004) was one of the grandsons of the wholesaler of pork Franjo/Ferenc Keglević/Keglovich (1859 [baptized 1864]-1916) who in 1905 had emigrated from Hungary to Croatia and changed his name from Ferenc Keglovich to Franjo Keglević, and was at that time about 8 years old. It came to an inquiry in Hungary on this Committee of Pandurovitch, because Pandurovitch was an Austro-Hungarian officer. The members of his alleged Committee Iván Gróf Draskovich, Pál Gróf Keglevich, Tivadar Andric, Vladimir Stojcsics and Koszó Gyorgyevics were summoned, but this two alleged counts alias Draskovich and alias Keglevich quickly disappeared again, it was not established their true identity.

However, the authorities of the new republic did not manage to gain international recognition, and since the withdrawal of the Yugoslav kingdom's army, Horthy's forces entered into region and put an end to the Republic. From 21–25 August 1921, the region was reintegrated into Hungary, represented by Commissioner Károly Soós Bádoki, as had been allocated at the Treaty of Trianon of 1920.

On 12 October 1921, Ferenc Fischer, the tutor of Paul Keglevich (1911–2004), became the supreme governor of Baranya County. Furthermore, the history of Paul Keglevich is very controversial and not well researched, may be because of the changes in 1918 in the Tatra company, with which he was connected through his family, or may be because tutor Fischer had financed the so-called zeleni kadar (green cadres), which both became the reasons for the compulsory purchase of Paul Keglevich by his tutor Fischer. The newspapers in Pécs have written in 1930, when Paul Keglevich turned 19 years old, that he would have been a traitor of his country. May be because he was poor, what was better for his protection in those times. Or because he lived in Yugoslavia near Legrad, but the name of the train station in Hungary was until a few years ago also Legrad even if Legrad was not in Hungary. Or because of the upcoming nationalistic propaganda among Germans in Hungary in 1930, or because of the upcoming Nazi propaganda against also his surname in Austria. Pesti Hírlap with the Legrady brothers wrote in 1930 in Budapest: "Justice for Hungary! The Cruel Errors of Trianon." Miroslav Krleža wrote later that Josip Broz Tito was an illegitimate child of the above-mentioned Franjo Keglević.

Population

Most of the inhabitants of the republic were ethnic Hungarians, while other ethnic groups that lived in the area included Croats, Serbs, Germans, Romanians, Slovaks and others.

This differences clearly demonstrate the Serb efforts of annexation, moreover, at the Serbian Census, they had to calculate the members of the Serbian Army into the census because there was a classified order about this.

President

The President of the Executive Committee (14–20 August 1921), i.e. President of the Republic, was Petar Dobrović (1890–1942), an ethnic Serb.