Gespanschaft

Gespanschaft (Kroatien): deutsche Erklärung in der Wikipedia.

I knew that Bosnia has cantons, but I didn’t know that Croatia has Gespanschaften.

Gespanschaft was originally a German term for a regional administrative unit in Hungary (which included what is now Croatia) during the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, also known as Komitat. The head was a Gespan (Hungarian ispan), usually translated as Graf / Count. In Croatian the term for Gespanschaft is županija and that for Gespan is župan. (I suppose this is not directly relevant to the pig breeder Zsupán in Der Zigeunerbaron).

It seems logical but somehow disappointing that these districts translate into English as counties.

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