Szarvas is located in the Great Hungarian Plain upon the Körös River, 170 km (106 mi) southeast from Budapest. Highways 44 and 443, and the Mezőtúr-Orosháza-Mezőhegyes railway line also cross the town.[1] The geographic centre of Hungary was near Szarvas before the Treaty of Trianon; a memorial in a windmill shape now marks that location in a park on a bank of the Körös River across from the Arboretum.[2][3][4]
According to the Hungarian Royal Treasury (Hungarian: Magyar Királyi Kincstár) it was an ethnic Hungarian town in 1495.[5] The Medieval town was ruined due to the Ottoman wars, native Hungarian population fled from the area.[5] It was uninhabited until 1720, when Austrian baron Johann Georg Freiherr von Harruckern (György János Harruckern) invited mainly Slovak settlers from Upper Hungary to the deserted area. They built a brand new town by the help of Sámuel Tessedik, who invited engineers to plan the town.[6] Tessedik also established the first agricultural school in Hungary. Lutheran church was built from 1786 to 1788, the Roman Catholic from 1808 to 1812. Town hall was built in 1820.[6] Hungarians overtook Slovaks in the 1920s, become the majority according to the census was held in 1930.[5]
Since 1990 Szarvas is home to the Ronald S. Lauder Szarvas International Jewish Youth Camp (Hungarian: Szarvasi Nemzetközi Zsidó Ifjúsági Tábor).[7]
According to the 2011 census the total population of Szarvas was 16,954, of whom there were 14,325 (84.5%) Hungarians, 1,822 (10.8%) Slovaks, 489 (2.9%) Romani and 75 (0.4%) Germans by ethnicity. 15.4% did not declare their ethnicity,[8] excluding these people Hungarians made up 99.9% of the total population. In Hungary people can declare more than one ethnicity, so some people declared a minority one along with Hungarian.[9][10]
^ abcKároly Kocsis (DSc, University of Miskolc) – Zsolt Bottlik (PhD, Budapest University) – Patrik Tátrai: Etnikai térfolyamatok a Kárpát-medence határon túli régióiban, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) – Földrajtudományi Kutatóintézet (Academy of Geographical Studies); Budapest; 2006.; ISBN963-9545-10-4, CD Atlas
^ abAntal Papp: Magyarország (Hungary), Panoráma, Budapest, 1982, ISBN963 243 241 X, p. 860, pp. 448-449
Hungary
Baraolt, Romania
Bucine, Italy
Keuruu, Finland
Malacky, Slovakia
