Re: Gr Betschkerek Salzamt

Andreas, Peter et al;

Many thanks for your useful comments on the Hapsburg salt trade.

When trying to write a bit of background to the Salzamt I turned to Google, expecting to find reference to a detailed history of the Hapsburg trade.  Nothing definitive. There appears to be a  PhD thesis here waiting to be written.  The Hapsburg mines seemed to centered on Hall and Hallstatt in the Salzkammergut of the Tirol and Gmunden on the Traunsee as the distribution center.  There was considerable conflict between the Hapburgs and the ArchBishop of Salzburg over the salt trade up until Napoleonic times when he put a stop to such nonsense.  The salt tax was an important source of income for the Hapsburgs and, indeed, it appears that these taxes helped pay for some of the costs in the settlement of the Banat.   Those boats which carried our forefather colonists down the Donau just didn't come free.    

My initial problem in writing this background was to establish which Banat localities possessed a Salzamt.  It was clear that a Salzamt occurred in Gr Betschkerek and Temeswar but I was looking for confirmation that they also were in Lugosch and Orawitza so now we need to add Lippa and an important place like Arad is a given, but we could argue that it is not properly a Banat locality since it is in Arad county.

Best I  stop now for I am hardly an expert on the Tirol, especially in an arena of experts whose neighborhood it is.   I will end by noting that there is a well known restaurant in Wien called the Salzamt and I wish I were t here now!

Dave Dreyer