Magyarózd (Ozd, Thürendorf) is in Transylvania, Romania, and it is famous for its fortified mansion called Pekry-Radák kastély. The village of Magyarózd, located in the former Alsó-Fehér County of Hungary, is famous for the Pekry (or Pekri) family castle, as well as for the preservation of its traditional social structure and its colorful lore. With a population of a few hundred people, the village and its surroundings, which are still predominantly Hungarian, are populated by a horde of imaginary creatures. The stories and folklore about them could provide an excellent basis for horror filmmakers.
Magyarózd is hidden in the enchanting valley of the once pine-wooded, isolated valley of the mountain range between the Mures and the Kisküküllő. On the outskirts of the settlement, a magnificent, robust-looking four-cornered castle dominates the landscape on a high plateau.
According to the municipality’s website, “Magyarózd and its surroundings have been inhabited since ancient times. In the course of archaeological excavations, artifacts from the Mesolithic to the Hungarian occupation period have been found from the Körös, Péterfalvi, Cotofen, Bronze Age, Hallstatt, and La Tene cultures. A Scythian grave was excavated in 1968 on the outskirts of the village called Dégicsúp.”
They add: “The history of the village itself is traced back to the times of the Hungarian conquest when the name of the village is derived from the chieftain Ózd. The first written documents date back to the Árpád era. Professor of history Mályusz Elemér mentions Ózd as a village before the Tatar invasion.”
According to the 19th-century historian of the Székelys, Orbán Balázs, “our documentary record of Ózd can go back far in time, because in 1227 Ambrus, the priest of Ózd, was mentioned”. According to the papal deanery registers of 1332-1334, the village was already functioning as a parish at that time. The first known owners of Ózd were the sons of Simon, Duke of Somogy, and Balád. In 1358, on the 8th day after Pentecost, the judges of the Küküllő county divided Ózd between the sons of Duke Simon of Somogy, Mihály, Jakab, János, and Tamás, the son of Balád. The Baláds remained the owners of Ózd until the first half of the 16th century. The Unitarian parish flourished during the reign of János Zsigmond.
The imposing appearance of the two-story residence, surrounded by circular bastions, is enhanced by its history. When the mansion was built, the estate, which changed hands many times, belonged to the noble family of Count Pekry Lőrinc, who received it from Radák István as a pledge for 60 years.
Thus, the castle (or fortified mansion) was built before 1682 by Pekri Lőrinc who later became the brigadier of Prince Rákóczi II Ferenc. The mansion is also known as the “Holy” castle, since, according to oral tradition, it was built on the walls of the medieval church of Forró, using its ruins, in the late French Gothic and Transylvanian floral Renaissance style. Pekri’s wife, Petrőczy Kata Szidónia was the first known Hungarian poetess.
The Reformed Church of Magyarózd, completed in 1687, was also built by the Pekries. The new church was built on its site in 1909 with donations from the Radák family and money from the village. It was renovated in 2000 and celebrated its anniversary in 2009.
As a loyal member of the Habsburg family, Pekry was captured by the Kuruc troops (anti-Habsburg forces) in 1703, at which time he defected to Rákóczi and supported him in his election as Prince of Transylvania. In 1709, the Labanc (pro-Habsburg forces) pursued him to the castle, but the Kuruc defenders camped here held off the attackers until Pekry fled out the back exit. The building, which was found empty, was set on fire by the Labanc troops. Rákóczi’s confidence in Pekry was later shaken, as his ill-considered military moves allowed the Imperial commander Rabutin to occupy Transylvania. The castle’s new owner, Radák Ádám, Pekry’s son-in-law, later had it rebuilt.
In the 1930s Baron Johann Konradsheim and his wife, Count Teleki Ilona, lived in the castle. The baron was an amateur archaeologist and was interested in everything that the plough had turned out of the ground on his estate. The artifacts were kept in a special room in the castle. Another of the estate’s passions was winemaking, and the building’s vast wine cellars were lined with giant barrels of fine wine.
The war reached Magyarózd in August 1944. The Romanian soldiers looted everything and drank themselves “drunk to the ground” in the wine cellars. By the 1960s the building was run down and empty. The last owner of the castle was Baroness Teleki Ilona, who fled abroad after nationalization in 1945. The building was then used by the village, which had several institutions there: a kindergarten, a school, a cultural center, and the headquarters of the farmers’ cooperative.
The estate, which was nationalized and then restituted after the regime change, went to the Bonus Pastor Foundation through the heiress Countess Jude Maria, who lives in France. At the time, the eight-acre estate still included the granary, barn, and stables. The castle was the first to be rebuilt, to turn it into a conference center. The renovation of the granary began in 2003.
A cowshed was created to make use of the stables and land. To start and develop the farm, two Canadian farming families lent their expertise and experience and moved to Ózd for a year and a half. The farm is both a source of income for the foundation and a site for rehabilitation work therapy, as well as a model for the village’s livestock farmers. The renovation of the buildings was mainly financed by foreign grants. The work was partly carried out by the owners themselves, partly with the help of foreign teams, but the people of Ózd also contributed a great deal.
About the beliefs of Magyarózd
The village chronicler, the great Transylvanian poet Horváth István (Magyarózd, 9 October 1909 – Kolozsvár, 5 January 1977), had the opportunity to describe the living folklore system of a traditional village, which is very instructive and provides much exciting information for ethnography.
“On your way out from Magyarózd, under the forest, not far from the village, beyond the Rosszlábárka (Ditch of Bad Leg), you suddenly come to a cold air rushing from one step to the next. You go fifteen or twenty paces in it. You feel a strange tension, knowing from the old elders that there are mysterious spirits in the forest and in that lane, unclean spirits, whom it is not good to meet. You leave the cold air on the other side, and far away, beyond the Somosbérc, to the Kenderpataka (Hemp Stream) ditch, where the forest is half-circled, you forget your previous tension. But there you come again to the same air as before, and if you know that it was in that place that you heard the night crying and the chains rattling, you quicken your steps. You hurry to get out of the mysterious lane that flows coldly even in summer.”
But there are also unclean ones elsewhere: “Not far from Kenderpatak, on the borderland called Kőkút, there is a golden bell in a lost well. The elders said that on more than one occasion the ancients had found it. They dug down to the bell, but when they touched it, they were surprised, frightened, and disappointed, for at their touch it sank deeper from their hands, never to be caught. According to local lore, all treasures hidden in the earth are sooner or later seized by the ‘unclean’.”
But who are the “unclean”? According to Horváth István, it is very difficult to determine. For “all things and phenomena other than God, which they could not understand tangibly, were magnified in their imagination and were considered to be the activities of spirit beings, of impure beings. Among the impure, there are those with explicitly harmful intentions as well as those with neutral intentions. But the greatest impurity is still the dead. According to the poet, ‘the animist, pantheistic world view of the elders, the broader beliefs, was narrowed down and linked to beliefs about the dead’.”
The rainbow’s job is to suck water for the clouds from rivers, lakes and waterways. And if someone falls over at the end and touches the ground, their gender changes. But to do so would be impure. Also, anyone walking on the mountain at night (except in winter) who hears his name will be in trouble. If he answers, he will fall into the hands of the unclean who will torment him every night.
The lore of Magyarózd also included the white man, the nightmare, the glass-footed man, the witch, the prikolics (kind of werewolf), the táltos (shaman), the holy staff, the scientist or the baszkanyáló (a rapist ghost). There were beliefs linked to wheat, hemp, and animals, and customs connected to certain days. And of course, there were prohibitions, customs, and divinations. As well as the folk remedies, a nice picture can be obtained from the book Magyarózdi Toronyalja by Horváth István, which also contains a collection of local folk tales.
| The year | Hungarians | Romanians | Other | Total number |
| 1850 | 374 | 32 | 59 | 465 |
| 1880 | 896 | 17 | 70 | 983 |
| 1910 | 856 | 87 | 3 | 946 |
| 1941 | 844 | 10 | 51 | 905 |
| 1977 | 588 | 28 | – | 616 |
| 1992 | 415 | 18 | – | 433 |
| 2011 | 279 | 23 | 13 | 318 |
Sources: Szilvay Gergely, Rubicon
Here are some pictures of the castle and Magyarózd:
