Jimbolia

Jimbolia (Romanian pronunciation: [ʒimˈboli.a]; Hungarian: Zsombolya; German: Hatzfeld; Serbian: Жомбољ, Žombolj; Banat Bulgarian: Džimbolj) is a town in Timiș County, Romania.

Jimbolia is located in the west of Timiș County, 39 km (24 mi) from the county seat, Timișoara, which is connected by the county road DJ59A and the Kikinda–Jimbolia–Timișoara railway. It lies in the Banat Plain, at the contact between the Timiș Plain and the Mureș Plain. An alignment of villages marks the boundary between the two relief units: Checea–Cărpiniș–Satchinez. The average altitude of the town is 82 m (269 ft). It is located at the intersection of some roads that connect Romania and Serbia, being also a rail and road border point at the frontier between the two countries.

Jimbolia's climate is characterized by average temperatures of 10.7 °C (51.3 °F) and average rainfall of 570 mm (22 in) per year. The vegetation consists of steppe meadows largely replaced by agricultural crops. The soils are very fertile and belong to the category of chernozems.

The ancient history of the town began to be documented in 1332–1333, when a papal census of the lands of Banat for the establishment of taxes (tithe) took place. In these papal registers, the name Chumbul appears. From the researches of Hungarian historian Samu Borovszky [hu], it appears that originally it was a Cumano-Vlach locality, a fact proved by the existence of a Romanian parish. This Chumbul is also mentioned in Hungarian documents from 1489, which speak of the existence of the communes of Chumbul Mare ("Great Chumbul"), Chumbul Mic ("Little Chumbul") and Chumbul Intern ("Inner Chumbul"), most likely owned by the Csomboly family. The last document from this period, recorded by historian Nicolae Ilieșiu [ro], shows that in 1520 there was a certain Mihai of Chumbul, a close man of the king. After this appearance in documents from the beginning of the Middle Ages, nothing is said about this locality in documents from the Turkish rule of Banat.

The historical thread is resumed after the conquest of Banat by the Austrians, but for a period it does not appear to be inhabited. Only in 1766 was the new town born, by colonization with German population from Mainz, Trier, Sauer, Pfalz, Lorraine, and Luxembourg. It originally consisted of two separate areas, Landestreu and Hatzfeld, a little further west, but two years later the two merged under the name Hatzfeld, a name given in honor of Empress Maria Theresa's prime minister, Carl Friedrich Hatzfeldt zu Gleichen (1718–1793). The conditions to which the first settlers were subjected were particularly harsh: because of the swamps surrounding the settlement and the unsanitary conditions, 168 people died in the first year of establishment alone. A plague epidemic ensued in 1770 that killed no less than 553 people. In 1781 Hatzfeld was leased to József Csekonics [hu], then sold to him. Later, the Csekonics family [hu] began to colonize the town with Hungarians.

After the 1848–1849 revolution, the region became part of the Austrian Crown Land of the Serbian Voivodeship and Temeswarer Banat. Jimbolia began to develop in the second half of the 19th century, with the rise of industrialization that swept all of Banat. In 1857, the railway between Timișoara and Kikinda was completed, which also passed through Jimbolia and connected further with Szeged, being the main route from Timișoara to Budapest and Vienna. Access to this railway allowed it to develop rapidly, slowed only by the cholera epidemic of 1873, which killed more than 1,000 people. During this period, the brick factory (1864) opened, attracting agricultural workers from all over southern Banat, especially Hungarians. Thus was born the Futok district (of the "fugitives", from the name given to the Hungarians fleeing from the agricultural estates).

In 1861, Emperor Franz Joseph I decreed the renewed validity of the Hungarian state constitution (Austro-Hungarian Compromise), whereby the town once again belonged to the Hungarian part of the country, as it had before 1848. Under Hungarian administration, more and more Hungarians moved to the town, which was officially called Zsombolya from 1899.

In 1895 the Jimbolia–Ionel railway was put into use. In 1906, the railway from Jimbolia to Grabaț, Lenauheim and Lovrin was completed, built with the help of workers from Țara Moților, some of whom settled in the south of the town. At the turn of the century, Jimbolia was three-quarters German and one-quarter Hungarian, with only a few Romanians and Serbs.