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„Hemp seed I sowed, hemp seed I grow” – poster 4.

The development of industrial processing of hemp I.

As a citizen of Szeged, Nándor Bakay was an indispensable figure in the industrial organization of the city. He established the Szeged-centered, low land base of large-scale hemp processing. It was also decisive in the scale of historical Hungary. He was responsible for establishing the industrial hemp processing units.
Nándor Bakay’s ancestors – certainly up to his great-grandfather – practiced the rope-beating craft one after another, ensuring the quality of the profession is passed down within the family. The first of these was the grandfather of the factory founder who arrived in Szeged as a rope-beating lad from Senta in 1801. Nándor Bakay passed his master exam in 1859. The Great Plain provided favourable conditions for the developing this industry, due to the high demand arising from the need for ropes for fishing, shipping, agriculture and industrial purposes. From the second half of the 18th century, the treasury encouraged mass cultivation of industrial crops. In the middle of the 19th century, with the start of railway transport, the number of hemp processing factories also increased.


In the era of dualism, Szeged’s textile industry became known primarily through hemp processing. The centre of hemp production in Hungary was the southern part of the Great Plain, especially Bács-Bodrog County. In addition to the Saxon towns in Transylvania, rope production flourished mainly in certain settlements in southern Hungary.
In 1863, Nándor Bakay was able to start developing the machinery of the workshop he had taken over from his father, which was still operating within the framework of a guild, and to provide a wider range of products. He introduced the production of several products (fire harness, hose, iron wire rope) in Hungary. In 1872 free trading with industrial hemp became possible for everyone. He immediately developed his workshop into a mechanical rope-beating plant that multiplied its production.
In 1877 he converted his plant using steam power. He equipped it with modern English spinning and weaving machines. From then on, it allowed hemp to be processed on a truly large scale.


After the destruction of Szeged in 1879 following the flood, he managed to rebuild his own factory. Through a group of bankers and crop merchants, the plant operated as a new partnership from 1884 – Bakay’s spinning, weaving, rope factory and hemp redemption co. – and the founder continued to work as technical director until 1886. He was then the second secretary of the Szeged Chamber of Commerce and Industry founded in 1890 until his death in 1902.
The situation of the company stabilized only in 1890, when Szeged Hemp Spinning Factory Co. was founded in Budapest with a share capital of HUF (Hungarian Forints) 350,000 arranged by the Hungarian Industrial and Commercial Bank.

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„Hemp seed I sowed, hemp seed I grow” – poster 3.

Processing of hemp


As a first step hemp went through a soaking process. Depending on the temperature of the water, the hemp cork was soaked under water for 7 to 14 days to loosen the valuable fibre on the outside of the stem from the inner, woody tissue of the hemp. Hemp soaking was common in both still and running water. Soaking in major rivers was banned by authorities because substances leaching from hemp poisoned fish stocks. For hemp soaking, stakes were beaten down the bed of the water and placed tied sheaves either individually or in larger bundles of 5 to 20 sheaves held together with straw ropes when processing hemp. Depending on the depth of the water, it was stacked in several rows to be covered by water. Therefore, hemp put in the soaker was pressed: it was covered with straw, cross-stakes were used to put stumps, stones and possibly mud on top.

The second step was to process the fiber part gained from the soaking process. The inner woody part, rotten during the soaking procedure, was shattered so that it fell out of the precious fiber strips in small pieces. The debris thus falling out was called pozdorya or, in the southern part of the Great Plain, chepue. Hungarians used several ways to do this. The most common one is the hemp crusher, which is identical in shape and structure to the tiller, but has a stronger, coarser finish. Very often, the work was preceded by a pre-crush phase. Most of the time, this just meant having a handful of hemp choke in their hands, crunching them at quarters or fifths of their length so that they could break it more easily on the crusher. This so-called hemp crushing process was more popular in the Trans-Tisza region, where in addition to crunching into pieces, hemp fibers were also folded, that is people trampled on it thoroughly with their feet before the fiber was further processed with the hemp crusher.
Another way of hemp softening was done by a machine powered by water energy, usually operated by watermills, notably stream mills. Its structure was identical to those used in the compression of woolen fabric, except that in this case the dropped jerk fell on a smooth, dry sole beam, and softened the lump of fiber placed under it with his heavy, rhythmic blows. The built-in levers on the crankshaft rotating in a thick, iron-ended, iron-shaft-ended bushing bearing rotated by gear ratio, differing at an angle of about 30 degrees, collided with the handle of the hemp-breaker’s percussion mechanism or jerk during rotation, lifting it and dropping it. The rotational energy was thus transformed into intermittent motion, work. The falling jerk crushed the fibers of hemp laid on the base beam of the hemp crusher. The miller had to pay customs every tenth mark for using the hemp crusher.

After the softening process was over hemp fiber was combed on a hemp comb. A pure hemp bundle was classified according to the thickness of its fibers. From the thinner thread bundle, the yarn was braided with a spindle. The thread was lowered from a knot tied at the end of the gusage, which was braided into yarn by spinning the spindle. They spun yarn with fox from a tow, which was thicker. The braided yarn was thrown on his motoll. The amount of yarn was calculated from the length of the motolla and the number of lifts that were used to throw the yearn onto the motolla. Yarn making was the women’s winter occupation. The finished yarn was stored in balls. Depending on the quality of the yarn, the weaver weaved cloth and burlap from the material entrusted to him. From the coarsest bundle, he spun the obligatory steed, halter, rope, which he sold at fairs.

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„Hemp seed I sowed, hemp seed I grow” – poster 2.

Growing hemp

The native land of hemp is Central Asia. He reached Europe through mass migration. The Hungarians got to know it even before the Hungarian conquest, growing it for its yarn and oilseeds. In the Carpathian Basin it is distributed mainly in the central, southern and eastern areas. For centuries, hemp was the most important household industry crop on Hungarian peasant farms. It was usually grown in the border area near the settlement, in an area specially designated for this purpose. Their memory is still preserved by numerous geographical names.


A high-quality, usually deep-lying area was chosen as hemp land. Hemp was sown by hand, in the same way as cereals. It was either sprinkled and harrowed on fresh ploughing, or sown on flattened ploughing and hoeed in. When the color of the plant changed from green to yellow, it was plucked out. They tore it up by hand and laid it out in small handfuls and dried it.
After drying, in autumn, soaking and processing took place. For the most part, hemp was grown on a small area, as much as a family could process during the winter after autumn work. Subsistence peasant hemp production was suppressed by the expanding manufacturing industry from the second half of the last century.

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„Hemp seed I sowed, hemp seed I grow” – poster 1.

The origin of industrial hemp and its ethnographic traditions

Hemp is the most important industrial plant Hungary among those having rich bast fiber content. For a hemp land, a good quality area is chosen usually located at a deeper sea level. Hemp is sown by hand, in the same way as cereal crops. It is either sprinkled and harrowed on fresh ploughing, or sown on flattened ploughing and hoeed in. When the color of the plant changes from green to yellow, it is plucked out and the process is called hemp weaving. Then soaking and processing takes place. The native land of hemp is Central Asia. It reached Europe through mass migration. The Hungarians got to know it even before the Hungarian conquest, growing it to make yarn and for its oily seeds. In the Carpathian Basin it was grown mainly in the central, southern and eastern areas, while in the western and northern parts flax seeds remained to be the most important fiber crop. For centuries, hemp was the most important cottage industry crop on Hungarian peasant farms. It was grown usually in the outskirts of a settlement, in an area specially designated for this purpose. The memory of growing hemp is still preserved by numerous geographical names in Hungary, like Kenderes, Kendereskert, Kenderesföld and others. For the most part, hemp was grown on a small area, so that a family could process it during the winter after autumn work. Self-sufficent hemp production was suppressed by the expanding manufacturing industry starting from the second half of the last century.


Beliefs and magical procedures associated with hemp is usually the principle of analogy. For sowing hemp, the seed must be prepared on Shrove Tuesday. So, at the time of leaving meat behind and starting the fasting season, people would jump high,, cook long noodles in the soup, go to many places to dine, put hemp fiber in the rut to make hemp fibers long. Sowing was regulated by various regulations and prohibitions: according to a popular belief, Friday was the best day for sowing, even better if there was neither sun nor moon in the sky at that time. It was believed that hemp sown naked, speechless, from a new clay pot yielded a good long-stemmed crop. It was predicted that if there were long icicles at the end of Feb, hemp would be long. According to popular belief , the base of hemp breaks on St. Anne’s Day, and from then on it does not grow, only turns yellow. Green hemp when put in bed is useful against fleas, folk practice has held. Hemp seeds were also used to remove jinxes.

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The Mohács of the Southern Great Plain

Exhibition at the Ópusztaszer National Historical Memorial Park

In 2026, Hungarians will commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Mohács, which led to the collapse of the unified Kingdom of Hungary, then already more than half a millennium old. Following the death of King Louis II, a struggle began for control of the country between the Habsburg king Ferdinand I and the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I. The latter supported the Hungarian John Zápolya—who also considered himself the legitimate ruler of Hungary—until his death, while twice attempting (in 1529 and 1532) to capture Vienna, the Austrian center of the Habsburg Empire. After Zápolya’s death, Sultan Suleiman occupied the castle and city of Buda, the former center of the kingdom, leaving the eastern province of Transylvania to the king’s son (1541).

To secure Buda, the Ottomans sought to establish a defensive zone along the Danube, successively capturing major fortresses and cities, including Székesfehérvár, the coronation city of the Hungarian kings, and Esztergom, the center of Hungarian Catholic Christianity and former capital of the kingdom. On the largely flat Great Plain between the Danube and Tisza rivers—covered mainly by river sand—there were no significant fortresses except for the castle of the Archbishop of Kalocsa at Bács. Therefore, the Ottomans had to build their own fortifications if they wished to secure their conquests.

Szeged, located on the banks of the Tisza, fell into Ottoman hands without resistance at the end of 1542. Between 1548 and 1552, the occupiers constructed a fortress in the center of the populous royal town by reusing earlier urban fortifications and building materials taken from abandoned and demolished churches. Although the Hungarians, led by the former chief magistrate of Szeged, attempted to recapture it, their effort ended in failure.

Over the following two decades, the Ottomans built a series of palisade forts along the Danube (Szentkirály, Jankovac, Madaras, Baja, and Zombor) and the Tisza (Csongrád, Tömörkény, Szer, and Martonos) to protect roads and especially river crossings. Some of these forts have still not been located, while others have been identified through aerial photography and are currently being investigated with geophysical methods. The core of these palisade forts was usually an earlier structure, most often a church. Their walls were formed by rows of stakes woven together with branches and coated inside and out with clay to prevent accidental or deliberate fire. These forts housed between fifty and one hundred soldiers, who frequently clashed with cavalry from fortresses located two to three hundred kilometers away—such as Gyula, Szigetvár, and Eger, and later chiefly Fülek—which penetrated deep into nominally Ottoman-held territory to collect taxes.

Although the region between the Danube and Tisza had become a hinterland, the occupiers were never completely secure there. For this reason, Muslim civilian populations settled only in fortified towns such as Bács, Szeged, and Szolnok, though they were far outnumbered by immigrants from various Balkan peoples. In the early years of the occupation, Christian churches were used as mosques, but later purpose-built Islamic religious buildings were erected according to Ottoman architectural principles rooted in Byzantine traditions. Since Islam prescribed regular ritual cleansing, steam baths were established in all three towns mentioned above. Of these, only the bath in Bács still preserves standing walls. After the expulsion of the Ottomans, these structures disappeared relatively quickly, and even the Turkish cemeteries left almost no trace. Nevertheless, a türbe (mausoleum) still stood in the northern part of Szeged during the 1730s and continued to attract Muslim pilgrims.

When the Ottoman army advanced as far as Buda in 1526, it crossed the Danube and, upon retreating southward through the Danube–Tisza Interfluve, split into two columns. Cavalry units spread out in all directions, devastating hundreds of settlements and carrying off thousands of captives and livestock. The refugees who gathered between the city of Bács and the Danube may have outnumbered the participants in the Battle of Mohács itself; their camp was destroyed following a formal siege. The Hungarian population suffered severe losses between the Danube and Tisza already at this time, and much of the southern region, Bácska, remained deserted. In occupied areas, Hungarians were pushed into the suburbs. In the northern part of the Danube–Tisza Interfluve they remained the majority population, but they virtually disappeared from the southern half of the region. There, settlements of South Slavs—referred to in contemporary sources as Rács—who often led a semi-nomadic lifestyle, became predominant. Their material culture, including magnificent women’s jewelry, is known in part from their cemeteries.

Szeged remained predominantly Hungarian because its population withdrew to the southern suburb (today’s Alsóváros), while the Franciscan friars of the local monastery preserved Catholic traditions. The monastery safeguarded several medieval artifacts, including a fifteenth-century armchair belonging to James of the Marches and a chasuble made from a cloak donated to St. Demetrius Church during King Matthias Corvinus’s visit in 1475. The Franciscans frequently petitioned Ottoman authorities for permission to repair their church and monastery, carefully preserving the permits they received—some issued directly by the Sultan himself. Local judges (kadis) authenticated such documents with seals, and an Ottoman seal discovered by a metal detector is also displayed in the exhibition.

Excavations in Szeged have also uncovered pottery commonly described as “Turkish” but actually more characteristic of the Balkans. These finds include pedestal bowls, spouted jugs, baking bells that were already considered archaic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, shallow dishes, and pebble-tempered cooking pots often referred to by archaeologists as “Bosnian.” The exhibition also displays imported ceramics, including faience produced near İznik in Asia Minor and fragments of Chinese porcelain. Following the spread of tobacco smoking in the sixteenth century, pipes of various colors and decorations were manufactured, some even bearing inscriptions. Domestic material culture included candlesticks, which in medieval Hungary were often made of brass or bronze, while the tulip-shaped candleholder is particularly characteristic of the Ottoman period. Ottoman leatherworking was highly developed and influenced Hungarian culture, as reflected in numerous loanwords. Archaeologists have even uncovered a tannery workshop from this period within the fortress of Szeged, despite the strong odors associated with leather processing.

The exhibited artifacts come from the Hungarian National Museum, the Csongrád County Archives of the Hungarian National Archives, the József Katona Museum in Kecskemét, and the Ferenc Móra Museum in Szeged. The exhibition was supported by the Message of Szer Foundation.