(Weisskirch/Szaszfeheregyhaza/Viscri) A double tragedy continues to
unfold in Transylvania, the northwestern chunk of Romania that has been
a haven for ethnic Germans for some eight centuries. First is the
fast disappearance of an extraordinary cultural heritage, expressed
partly by the medieval architecture that Germans (known as "Saxons",
though in fact they came from far and wide across the German-speaking
world) brought to Transylvania and preserved for centuries against
staggering odds. Second, the Germans are withdrawing from the mess
that is today's Romania. This means the villages and small towns, which
have been a mainstay of Transylvania's rural economy, are themselves
falling into ever deeper penury and degradation.

Some 250,000-strong in 1939, a good tenth of the Germans who survived
the second world war were carted off — once the communists took over
— to Russian labour camps: almost none returned. Around 180,000
Germans sat tight until the mid-1970s, when Nicolae Ceaucescu,
Romania's communist dictator, began to let a steady trickle go — at a
hefty price in D-marks. Communism's fall in 1989 prompted a huge
outward spurt. From 110,000, the number of Germans plummeted to 41,000
in less than two years. now the figure has shrivelled again — to less
than 17,000. The Saxon heritage could vanish.

What is to be done? Take a little village like Viscri (which Germans
still call Weisskirch). Once an almost entirely German hamlet of some
450 people, its population has stayed quite stable. But only 30-odd
Germans are left — and the economy, based on farming in the lovely
rolling plains around, barely exists.

The squalor is striking. The village stands seven kilometres (four
miles) from the nearest tarmac road. There is no longer a shop,
bakery, clinic or garage. Rickety horse-drawn wagons far out-number
cars. There is no modern sewage system or running water. A filthy
stream bubbles through the village's wide, rutted, muddy street. A
telephone line was fixed up two years ago, but most of the skilled
Germans (Bakers, butchers, teachers, mechanics) who once kept things
ticking over have gone. Fields of hops, once the village's main
earner, have been abandoned. Gypsies — the butt of discrimination
throughout Romania, and usually ill-educated people with scant farming
skills — now count for more than half the population. Ethnic
Romanians and a handful of Hungarians make up most of the rest.

Viscri/Weisskirchen's glory is its stunning white medieval church
(which gives the place its name) within a high-walled 12th-century
citadel which — like 100 or so other such German fortifications in
Transylvania — fended off Turks and Tatars as well as occasionally
warring locals. The villages's dynamic mayor, Caroline Fernolend, an
ethnic German, is trying to prod well-wishers outside Romania,
including in the World Bank, to dip into their pockets. Otherwise, the
village simply cannot survive — in human or architectural terms.

year number of ethnic Germans in Romania
1939 250,000
1950 180,000
1979 175,000
1989 110,000
1990 41,000
1998 17,000

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