MEANS OF TRANSPORT IN THE TIMES OF MATTHIAS CORVINUS

MEANS OF TRANSPORT IN THE TIMES OF MATTHIAS
CORVINUS
IN HUNGARY
Kocsi /the coach
The Hungarian village Kocs is best known internationally as
giving rise to the English word coach and its equivalents in
nearly all European languages, for
example: Czech kočár, Slovak koč,German Kutsche, Dutch ko
ets, Spanish, Portuguese, and French coche, Italian cocio.
During the reign of King Matthias Corvinus in the 15th
century, the wheelwrights of Kocs began to build a horse-
drawn vehicle with steel-spring suspension. This "cart of
Kocs" as the Hungarians called it (kocsi szekér) soon became
popular all over Europe. The spread of the kocsi szekér has
been linked by some theories personally to the king of
Hungary Ferdinand III, the younger brother of Charles V who
became the king of Spain, Emperor of Germany, and lord of
the Burgundian Netherlands, in the 16th century, and who
promoted the comfortable, spring-suspended wagons among
the wealthy European nobility. A 16th century German
depiction of a kocsi without springs puts this theory in
doubt, however, and it is uncertain whether the springs or
some other feature were responsible for the spread of the
word throughout Europe Thurn and Taxis, the imperial post
service, employed the first horse-drawn mail coaches in
Europe since Roman times in 1650 –, as they started in the
town of Kocs the use of these mail coaches gave rise to the
term "coach" In contemporary colloquial Hungarian the word
"kocsi" is most often used to mean "car".
One of the best of these multi-horse carts was called in
Hungarian kocsi szekér ‘a wagon from Kocs.’ In Kocs, one of
the first successful, reasonably comfortable passenger
coaches, a light, graceful, four-wheeled wagon with a strap
suspension, was built. Its design was so compact, elegant and
sturdy that this coach design spread throughout Europe in
the 15th and 16th centuries. The German-speaking Viennese
started to call this vehicle a Kutsche, which is how they
heard Hungarians saying the name of the little carriagemaking town. From Vienna these lively vehicles travelled to
Paris and the French, adapting the Austrian word, called it
a coche. In Rome it was, and still is, in Italian cocchio.
Eventually the English borrowed the word and the vehicle
and called it a coach.
There is strong evidence (printed) that when Anne of
Bohemia married England’s Richard II in 1382 CE, she
brought carriages from Kocs, Hungary with her to England.
There were post car roads throughtout Europe in the middle
ages.
In Hungary the first car post was between Buda and Wien,
founded by King Mathias.
A group of students from our school was taking part in an
exciting trip visiting the coach museum in Kocs, Hungary. All
the pictures were taken there.
In the rooms of the museum we took part in activities which
showed us how to use the tools. For example, the students
have learned about different jobs int he past. The smith
makes the iron parts of a coach and shods the horses.
The shaddler makes harness made of leather
The wheelmaker makes the wooden parts of the coach
The „fifth wheel” that was developed in Kocs helped to be
faster and lighter. It was spread around in Europe and lots
of European languages have simular names for it: English –
coach, Italiano – coccio, Polish – kocz, and Germany,
Catalan, Spanish, Flemish, Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian,
Serbian, Slovenian, Swedish, French.
A coach
With children on the trip
Coach used by fire-fighters
The students are making the wooden coaches
Ready-made coaches
Made by students from 5.b, 6.a, 7.a, 8.a from Eötvös József ÁMK DiósdHungary
Teachers: Halmos Éva, Kemény Kornél, Madarász Arnold, Fodor Erzsébet,
Ludescher Mónika