by Ralph Böhlke (D)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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The so-called Saxons are a minority group in Romania with a German origin. The following essay traces their history from the beginning in the 12th century until today. In a first (of three parts) a brief historical overview of German settlements in the area of today's Romania will be given. The second part focuses the impact of the World War I, while finally the consequences of the Socialist era in the post-war Romania will be discussed.

1. A view back in history: From the 12th century to World War I

Around 1900 German language was spoken by approximately 60 million in the Reich and about 10 million in Austro-Hungary and in Switzerland.

Islands of German speakers existed in many areas of Europe between Bohemia and the Volga river, between the Baltics and the Black Sea. Their history goes back to the end of last millennium.

Before World War I, about 80,000 were living in Bessarabia and in the neighbouring Bucovina. They followed an invitation of tsar Catherine the Great in the 18th century to theses lands between Dniestr and Pruth. A little community of some few thousands settled down later in the Dobruja region, in villages around Constant a at the Black Sea.

The more important settlements of Germans in south-eastern Europe were at that time on the territories dominated by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The 'lands beyond the forest' - the first German settlers. The 'lands beyond the forest' (Transylvania), the basin surrounded by the Carpathian mountain range was conquered by Magyar nomads in the 9th century. But the new occupied territories were just sparsely populated, so the Hungarian kings needed Germans. It was king Géza II, who invited the first Germans in mid of the 12th century into the country. And they were settled to the area of the later Hermannstadt (Nagyszeben/Sibiu). It did not take very long until more and more villages were founded on the Royal Lands.

Nobody knows exactly where these immigrants were from. In the first known documents they appear as people from the Flanders, but they considered themselves Germans (Teutons). In the official correspondence of the Hungarian Court they appeared as 'Saxons', and this designation still remains.

The reason for their coming was demographic pressure in the lands of their origin. Available land was rather limited in the heart of Europe, but the recently settled areas in East-Central and in Eastern Europe offered various opportunities for livelihood. The colonisation trek was just harshly interrupted with the uprising of the plague (1348/49), which diminished the population of the region by a third, and halted the movement towards the East.

A 'state within a state' - the German nation within the Hungarian Kingdom. In 1224 king András II renewed the promise of his grandfather, Géza, and granted his "faithful guest settlers from beyond the forest" the great privilege of their freedoms, with the so-called Andreaneum. According to that document the Southern Transylvanian Saxons got the right to elect their own judge (with his residence in Hermannstadt) and their own priest. The juridical-political community was only answerable to the king and not anyone else. Only the count of Hermannstadt was appointed by the king. The county of Hermannstadt turned out to be the centre of all Transylvanian Saxons forming an integrated whole of a juridical-administrative unit. Seven other court districts ('chairs of justice') were subordinated under the upper court in Hermannstadt. The term 'Seven Chairs' became soon the juridical determination for the German settled area in Transylvania.

The provisions of the Andreaneum were not only confirmed by the later sovereigns, they were even expanded to all Saxon territories in Transylvania. The 'Universitas Saxonum', was a kind of public body, its aim was to protect the Saxon nation, its independent position from a 'state within a state', and to save the lands, their political and their economic structure. What the Hungarian crown got for this was the loyalty of his German supporters.

The Turks, the new rulers in the Transylvanian basin. By the 15th century it was - as a result of the Ottoman expansion - getting more and more difficult for the Hungarian Kingdom to defend its borders. Following the fall of Buda in 1541, the Hungarian Kingdom was dismembered into three areas, Hungary was occupied by the Turks, the western land absorbed by the Habsburgs as a buffer state between the Holy-Roman Empire and the Ottoman power. Transylvania and the Paubium became the tax paying vassal state of the Sultan.

Disregarding the Habsburg hereditary titles, the Transylvanian nations elected their own counts. But the situation remained unstable. The Turk wars from the 16th and 17th did not spare Transylvania and led to a great deal of destruction.

In more and more villages the Saxons made Romanian farmers settle in their villages to share the burden of taxes. The new settlers were excluded from political participation, but their economical and political position improved significantly in comparison with their compatriots in Wallachia and Moldavia. In the long-term, the ethnic composition of Saxon settlements turned in favour of the Romanian element.

By the end of the 17th century Transylvania became a battlefield of interests between the house Habsburg and the Ottoman Empire

Finally the Austrian succeeded. Officially Leopold confirmed the old rights of the Transylvanian citizens, in reality the political importance of the former nations of Transylvania declined. The era of absolutism favoured the imperial organs in Vienna.

The impact of the French Revolution affected the political landscape of whole Europe. Austria turned to its eastern neighbour, Hungary, following its defeats by Prussia. In 1867 Austria had to relent to Hungary's efforts of independence. The Habsburg monarchy was turned into a dual monarchy Austro-Hungary. Transylvania joined Hungary proper in 1848 or rather the Hungarian government formed a union with Transylvania. Thus its independent status ceased to exist from 1848. The Transylvanian parliament dissolved all historical rights for self autonomy of Hungarians, Szeklers and Saxons. The 'Universitas Saxonum' was converted into a foundation, the so-called 'Union of Three Nations'. Its aim was to protect the cultural, economical and social duties financed by its own huge land property.

The pressure to adapt to the Magyar dominance increased in the following years By that another process was speeded up: The nations which did not consider themselves Hungarians sought their own national identity. The Saxons discovered their own national identity too.

2. The Impact of World War I

The European system of the 19th century in the Eastern part of the continent was dominated by the four big powers, Russia, Austria, Prussia and the Ottoman Empire. Under their leadership many ethnic groups lived together. But the differences between the nationalities were too big, and it was just a question of time until the dissatisfaction would dissolve the whole structure with a clash.

The decade of nation states. The assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz-Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 triggered off World War I, which was the beginning of the disintegration of the multi-national empires. Even before the beginning of the peace conference the victorious powers agreed that the causing states had to be split up to reduce away their enormous influence. A 'new Europe of nations' should replace the supranational huge states in Eastern Europe.

A new international organisation, developed on the Paris Peace Conferences from 1919/20, was based on the principals of nation states. The peace conference also agreed to the traditional solution of the victors. The defeated powers were made to pay the reparations and the lose territories. Austria was cut down to a rump state between Vienna and the Swiss border. Almost the same scale of reduction happened to Hungary. All other regions of the Empire were given to other, partly new created states.

But Eastern Europe was not ready for the creation of nation states with its mixture of grown settlement structures. Lines were drawn that marked the borders in this part of the continent. The logical consequence was that in almost all new nation states considerable ethic minorities existed. The new states had to commit their protection to the minorities, a profile that in most cases happened just on the paper.

Following the peace treaties. One of these reinstated after the war with some enormous ethnic problems was Romania. Greater Romania was one of the new states originally made up of Wallachia and Moldavia, the two principalities formed in the Middle Ages. The unification in 1859 of these predominantly Romanian speaking provinces was the nucleus of the modern Romania.

Romania entered the war in 1916 on the side of the Allies, being on the side of the victors, it obtained the Bukovina in the North, Bessarabia in the East, parts of Bulgaria in the South and the huge Transylvanian basin in the West. This almost doubled the area of the country.

While a part of Great Romania, the former principalities Wallachia and Moldavia, were mostly oriented to the Balkans and the population consisted of Romanians, the new part of the country, Transylvania, was linked towards Central Europe by tradition and history. The majority of Transylvanian population was ethnically non-Romanian, mostly Hungarian and German. The share of non-Romanians in the whole country rose to 28 percent.

Following the collapse of the dual monarchy the representatives of the Transylvanian Romanians met in Alba Iulia (Karlsburg) for a national assembly and voted (on 1 December 1918) for the unification of Transylvania with Romania. At the same time they promised the "total national freedom for all cohabiting nation [...]. Every nation will get education, administration and administration of justice in its own language, by persons from among them. And every nation will get the right to be represented in constitutional corporations and in the government according to the quantity of their people": On the basis of this pledge the Transylvanian Saxons made their 'Mediascher Abschlußerklärung', their final declaration of Mediasch (Medias ) from January 8, 1919. There they declared themselves as citizens of the Kingdom of Romania.

The 4th Saxon Assembly ('Sachsentag') from November 1919 emphasised the decisions from Mediasch and demanded the creation of a special constitutional law the right for all Germans in greater Romania "to fulfil their particular cultural, national and economic purposes to organise themselves freely as an independent nation" By that they undertook to protect the unification of the heterogeneous German groups by a future constitutional regulation. As the Saxons were the only ones with a autonomous political tradition, they took over the leading position of ethnic Germans in Romania.

In contrast to the Banat Swabians, who were repugnant to separate from Hungary, the Saxons gave a clear vote in favour of the Romanian state. This vote and the long term Saxon-Romanian solidarity against the Hungarianisation in Transylvania seemed to be a good basis for coexistence in the future. Moreover there was another reason: Differently from the Hungarians in Transylvania or the Germans in Sudetenland, the ethnic Germans in Romania were no border minority, and so they were free of any attempts to join the country of their origin.

Germans were not the only minority in Romania and from the point of view of the government even not the most important one. With regard to all the ethnic subgroups the governmental politics facing to the Germans was decisively determined by the complexity of the minority question as a whole.

"A minority protection treaty has been presented to the Romanian government already in December 1919, which has been signed with huge reluctance. The agreement did not only give general regulations to the legal position of minorities, it gave even more explicitly full autonomy in religious and educational matters to Szeklers and the Saxons in Transylvania." But from the beginning it stood in a latent contradiction to the centralised politics followed by Bucharest, which gave scant attention to historical and regional particularities.

In the upcoming years the members of ethnic minorities have been displaced systematically by the central government from important positions in cultural policy or the economical life. They were replaced by Romanians from the old Empire.

The dissolution of the Union of Nations. The agrarian reform of 1921 was already proclaimed in the resolutions from Karlsburg. In contrast to old part of the Romanian Empire its aim was not only a social one it had national implications too.

Large estates were rare among the Transylvanian Saxons, so the redistribution of land concerned only very few persons. Just the corporate bodies, especially the foundation Union of Nations and the Saxon parishes on the former royal lands were substantially damaged. There, the common land - mostly forest and pasture- made up on the average more than a quarter of the whole arable land and it was an important basis for the small farmers. Subsequently the income of the Union of Nations declined radically. By 1937 the foundation Union of Nations had been dissolved.

The inter-war period brought a large number of economical setbacks: from the loss of traditional sales markets to the big economic crises from the 1930s. It was not always a specific minority problem, but difficulties for all citizens of Romania and particular for the south-east of Europe. The Germans got off comparatively lightly. Their revenues from the agricultural sector were relatively high, thanks to a well developed co-operative sector and a relatively high level of know how and education.

About a quarter of the ethnic Germans lived in towns. The German share of 25 percent in production of trade and small trade in the new, greater Romania was proportionally high. In Romanian industry as well as in trade the German participation was significant.

With reference to the Karlsburg resolutions the union of Germans in Romania claimed not only religious and educational autonomy, but also their recognition as a juridical body with their right for taxation. The Romanian constitution from 1923 did not take this claim into account - the statute for minorities was never signed. German parliamentarians tried to reach their objectives by co-operating with the government, however it was unsuccessful.

The period of National Socialism. In Romania, like in Yugoslavia, the 'movement of renewal' came up. In 1933, at the 5th Saxon Assembly, they obtained the majority of votes under the impression of the National Socialist victory in Germany.

The leader of the moderate part of the 'movement of renewal', Fritz Fabitius, took over the presidency of the union of Germans in Romania in 1931.

"To this development the nearly permanent crisis situation in this great Romanian state in the decades after the World War and the failure of democratic parties especially in the economic policies [...] contributed a lot. Without any doubt the success of the NSDAP in Germany was fatal for the political rise of the 'renewers'. Despite of all ideological and partly personal contacts with them, the Romanian-German National Socialism tried to take another direction: Already the national political importance of the churches [...] made a certain consideration necessary. Towards the Jews as well they felt a certain solidarity of minorities."

Only in 1938 the 'Bureau for National German Questions Abroad' in Berlin intervened in the inner affairs of the ethnic Germans in Romania. The liberal Fabritius was replaced by the 28-year old Andreas Schmidt. He turned out to be the long arm of the SS in the Reich and brought the German national group completely in line. Soon after that, one thing occurred after another":

In June 1940 the Romanian government had to concede to the Soviet will, Bessarabia and the Northern Bukovina had to be given up to the USSR. Only some weeks later Transylvania was split up: Hungary obtained the Northern part of the territory, while the Central and Southern part remained with Romania. A short time later, under the pressure of the 'Third Reich', the government in Bucharest passed a law about ethnic minorities in Romania: According to this the Germans in Romania obtained the special status of a corporate public body. "The NSDAP of the ethnic Germans in Romania" has been officially declared as "national representative of their interests". The 'price' was high for the minority statutes extorted from Berlin and other concessions made by the regime in Bucharest: The German nationals had to put themselves in the service of the nazi domination and war politics. Though, after Romania changed sides, to the anti-Hitler coalition, at 23 August 1944, when the defeat of the Third Reich was inevitable.

3. Death throes after 1945

In 1947, at the Paris Peace Treaty, the borders of Transylvania were restored to its pre-1938 limits. At that time the German population consisted mostly of children and old people. The men, called up to the German army, had been killed, were missed or had been taken as prisoners. The majority of women between 18 and 35 years and the men between 17 and 45 years, who remained home, had been displaced as forced labour convicts to the Soviet Union. Few managed to escape to the West; others like the inhabitants of Northern Transylvania had been evacuated before the end of the war. Altogether the number of Saxon from Transylvania diminished between 1940 and 1950 by more than 90,000 persons. In the other parts of the country the situation has not been better. For a first registration in January 1948 only 345,000 German were recorded (compared to the 1930 census of 700,000) in Romania.

Exclusion from society. The situation was catastrophic. The minority statutes, which passed already in February 1945 the Romanian parliament, did not apply to the Germans speaking population. Their nationality had not been decided and they had been expropriated, German schools were nationalised and their associations and unions were dissolved. Against all expectations, the German minority has at least not been deported from Romania. After a period of uncertainty, their political rights were restored, of course only within the limitations of the Stalinist system.

Until the mid-sixties the legal situation of the Germans, with regard to freedom of confession and secondary school education, was not too bad and partly even better than in other Eastern European countries. The previous confessional schools with German as teaching language were continued as independent bodies as long as there were at least 25 pupils in one class. German classes existed in Romanian schools as well. Children visiting them were not discriminated, on the contrary, even Romanian parents tried to get their children accepted there. However, only the subjects of general education were taught in German, all others were just allowed to be in Romanian.

On television special hours were reserved for German programmes, German daily and weekly newspapers were allowed, books and cultural events in German language as well. Even more they got sometimes support form the official side.

Under the communist Nicolae Ceaus escu, who came into power in 1965, the more and more national Romanian course leaded in the following period in a gradual reduction of collective minority rights. By that the Hungarian part of the population has been hit even harder than the Germans.

The end of a multi-ethnic Romania. In May 1966 Ceausescu declared that Romania is not longer a multi-ethnic country. On all levels politics turned towards a glorification of the 'uniform Romanian nation state'. Ceaus escu's megalomania from political, cultural and economical point of view changed Romania slowly but surely since the mid-seventies to a very poor country. Its citizens, no matter if Romanians or dependants of minorities, were confronted with the omnipresence of control mechanisms and personal humiliation.

The professional structure of the ethnic Germans in Romania changed completely after 1945. Towards the end of the war almost only a quarter of the Transylvanian Saxons and the Banat Swabians were working in the agricultural sector; industrial workers were existing in a number worth mentioning only around Bras ov, Sibiu, Medias and some few other towns. According to the census from 1956 the share of farmers working in the private or collective sector declined to 22 percent, while 71 percent of the Germans were workers or employees. The change in employment structure had far-reaching effects on the life in the villages. Small towns and villages aged, their traditions lost their importance and the traditional community life got lost. The former Transylvanian-Saxon places received a different appearance and a new ethnic structure after the settlement of Romanians and Gypsies from the old Empire.

The destruction of the traditional structures and linked with that a pressure to conformist were definitely no phenomenon restricted to Romania. But here they had an overwhelming effect, because the old structure were just replaced by dreary new ones. Under theses circumstances it is not surprising that ethnic Germans took the first best opportunity to leave their homelands forever.

Those who applied for leaving the country had to expect numerous difficulties. Applicants were threatened with a ban on working. Those who finally left had to sell their properties for knock-down prices and could even not exchange the obtained money, it had to be deposed on a Romanian bank account and by that be accessed earliest during a visit two years hence.

Since the mid-Fifties, with support of the Red Cross, the reunification of families get started. In the Seventies and Eighties the Exodus of Germans speeded up from year to year. Until today the number of ethnic Germans in Romania shrinked down to approximately 200,000 people.

Another, very important reason for leaving the country were the extreme political and economic problems all Romanians were confronted with until the collapse and death of Ceausescu. The total insufficient supply to hunger, shortage of all essential good and the permanent suppression by the omnipresent machinery of the security police 'Securitate' made the life in Romania insupportable.

Many Germans had left already their communities, which are more and more dissolved by the move and mixed marriages. The German villages and communities in Romania are dying out. pastors teachers and young people are missed. Many German school classes have to be closed, and this is again a reason more for the people to decide to leave the country to keep their children and grandchildren the national identity - and a better standard of living. And better sooner than later, because the opposition in Germany is growing.

In the land of the ancestors - the situation in Germany. According to the German constitution, article 116, Germans are persons with a German citizenship, ethnic German fugitives and expellees, their husbands/wives and descendants, who lived on the territory of the German Reich from 31 December 1937.

Still in September 1989 the German government proclaimed that "German repatriates are welcome. And they are a huge gain for our country and for us all." In the same year 343,854 repatriates from Eastern and Central Eastern Europe were counted. Although the number decreased in the last years, the situation on the German labour market is tensed. Beside the almost four million residential unemployed, nearly 100,000 repatriates were counted. Rejections within the population against (all kinds of) immigrants turn into hostility. Fire attacks on camps and hostels are becoming public again and again. It does not express the particular rejection of German repatriates but all kinds of immigrants caused by very personal economic fear.

The fact that in Eastern and Central Eastern Europe are still more than three million ethnic Germans living, should motivate the ruling parties in Germany to think about different concepts for this question. At least the half-hearted attempts in the past were never really convincing.

4. Conclusion

In the past the huge variety of ethnic groups were characteristic for the Romania of this Century. But minority questions never fit in Ceaus escus' idea of Romania. They were simply ignored. Maybe the easiest way it was, to adopt the lifestyle of the whole Romanian population to that one which was in Ceausescus' mind: Equality in housing, lifestyle and culture. All that directed by himself, the glorified leader of all Romanians. Finally he did not succeed but he destroyed a lot. Thanks to him Bucharest, the former 'Paris of the East', was mainly knocked down and rebuilt. It turned to be a grey and cold place with equally bad standards for all its inhabitants. The same happened to many other places. The destruction of German settlements was planned as well, but fortunately he could not finish. He did not succeed to destroy all signs of the long German tradition.

Anyway, the damage he harmed to this ethnic group will probably not be repairable: Germans were thrown out of the country. The German government was 'allowed' to buy back their people. About 15,000 D-Marks was the price per head.

The death of Ceausescu in December 1989 came too late to change the situation radically. Too deep were the wounds, too much of their basis has been taken away.

Proud they were to be Saxons or Swabians in Transylvania or in the Banat. Today most of the are looking westwards. The emigration to Germany as a final solution to escape?

At least according to the current legislation those are Germans, who can proof German ancestors within the last four (!) generations. The amount of people who are able to proof that and who is willing to emigrate was not declining during the last years. Just from the economic point of view it is easy understandable.

Remains the question, what the should be aim of German government in this situation? Trying to get these persons out of Romania into the land of their origin? Is there any way to convince them to stay? Is there any multi-ethnic coexistence possible in today's Romania or is there really too much destroyed forever?

It might be right that during the last 140 years much of the German culture in south-eastern Europe has been destroyed a lot. Remains the question if it does make sense to return all these ethnic Germans back to Germany. Just because there are still many living and not only in this south-eastern edge of the continent. Even more the question has to occur soon, if the current definition about being German is still up-to-date.

Only with regard to the ethnic German minority in Romania it must be raised the question if they are more German or - in the meanwhile - more Romanian. A probable answer might be that they are Romanian Germans: Romanians with an extraordinary German tradition, as such it should be not only preserved but revitalised. A background of 650 years cannot disappear that fast. Anyway, culture can only survive with - at least - a basic.

economic frame, just with the half-hearted support from the side of German government a solution will definitely never be reached.
 

Annex

A. Concordances - geographical names
 

B. Share of German population in Transylvania, 1930 and 1956
The following data are taken from: Wagner, 1976
 

C. Composition of the Transylvanian population, 1850-1965
The following data are taken from: Wagner, 1976, p. 423
 

* according to religion. Gypsies and Jews stated another mother tongue as it was not asked for their own.
 
 

Bibliography

last update: 11 JUL 2002 by Ralph