By Phil Smith.

Ever since the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in the late nineteenth century, the name Transylvania has, in the popular consciousness of the English-speaking world, been associated with one thing: vampires. This myth, together with other, more political factors, has obscured the truth about Transylvania. In reality, Transylvania is an area brimming with history and culture. Much of this heritage is the legacy of a once mighty but now rapidly disappearing culture: the Transylvanian Saxons.

Transylvania first entered the arena of European history around the end of the first millennium A.D., when the newly founded kingdom of Hungary began to expand beyond its adopted homeland in the Danube basin into the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. They called this region Erdély, which means “beyond the forest” (the English word Transylvania has the same meaning in Latin). To secure their new frontier, they invited ethnically German merchant-knights from Saxony to settle in the twelfth century. These were soon absorbed into the social structure of Erdély, which consisted of a Hungarian nobility and ruling class, a Saxon urban middle class, and a predominantly Romanian peasantry. The Saxons established seven towns in their new domain, which gave Transylvania its German name Siebenbürgen, and not the least important of these was Sighișoara.

Eight centuries later, the striking skyline of mediaeval Sighișoara is a testament to the wealth and glory of Transylvania’s Saxons. In 1191 they established a citadel they called Schäßburg on a rocky outcrop in a meander of the Târnava Mare river. The mediaeval walls and streets of the citadel survive to this day, surrounded by the modern Romanian town in the river valley. The center of present-day Sighișoara is the triangular Piața Hermann Oberth, from which a narrow cobbled street makes the steep climb up to the old town. At the top its entry is guarded by the Turnul cu Ceas (clock tower), one of the 11 towers which line the walls of the citadel, each of which was manned by the members of a particular guild. The tower itself dates from the fourteenth century, and the clock was installed in 1648 by the same Swiss clockmakers who built the celebrated clock in Prague town hall.

Today the clock tower serves the more modest purpose of a civic museum and gives its name to Piața Muzeului. Another notable building of this square is the 15th-century Biserica Mănăstirii (monastery church), although the aforementioned monastery is conspicuous by its absence. From a terrace on the walls behind the church is a stunning view, at rooftop level, of the Catedrala Sfânta Treime, the spiritual heart of modern Romanian Orthodox Sighișoara. Built in 1937, its lines are sharply picked out in black and white, in stark contrast to the faded browns and yellows of the citadel. Facing the church, on Piața Muzeului, is a robust-looking but well-appointed town house. A small marble plaque on one wall records its unique place in history; in this house, on an uncertain date between 1431 and 1435, Vlad Țepeș, the man most often given the dubious honor of being the basis of the Dracula myth, came into the world.

The highest point of the hill on which Sighișoara is built is crowned by the Gothic Bergkirche (church on the hill), dating from 1345, which dominates the lower town and the citadel alike. It is currently closed and undergoing restoration work, the DM 5 million tab for which has been picked up by the city of Munich. Adjacent to the church is the 14th-century schoolhouse, and linking them both with the citadel is a stairway of 172 steps, closed in by the addition of a black-painted wooden covering, which unfortunately means that it is virtually pitch black inside. It was built in 1642, but its purpose remains obscure — perhaps it was intended to deprive the town’s children of an excuse for not going to school in the event of a heavy snowfall.

Transylvania’s Saxon heritage is not confined to its towns. In the hills some 40km west of Sighișoara is the village of Biertan (Birthälm in German), which although virtually unknown outside Romania, has recently been recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The village would be pleasant but unremarkable if it were not for the church. During the late Middle Ages, when the Carpathians formed Hungary’s bastion against the nascent Ottoman Empire, frequent raids forced the people of this part of Transylvania to fortify their churches as a strongpoint against the invader. There are thirty to forty fortified churches around Sighișoara and Sibiu. Biertan’s sits on a large earth mound in the middle of the village, protected by two sets of walls and by three stone towers roofed with red tiles; a fourth tower is made of wood. Visitors are allowed to make the somewhat perilous climb up one of the towers, which affords a panoramic view of the village and the woods and fields beyond. Another wooden covered stairway links the west door of the church with the outer gatehouse. UNESCO funds have secured the future of Biertan, enabling a metalled road to be built linking it with the main highway, and permitting much-needed restoration and maintenance work to be carried out. Other places have been less fortunate; at Saschiz on the Sighișoara–Brașov road another similar fortified church bears a large and probably terminal crack up virtually the whole height of one wall.

Old stones, impressive as they may be, are pretty much all that is left of Romania’s Saxon population. Although they prospered as a privileged ethnic group in mediaeval Erdély, and later under the Habsburgs, they simply did not fit in with Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s ideal of an ethnically homogenous Romania. Along with other ethnic minorities such as the Hungarians and the Roma, they endured nearly half a century of being second-class citizens.

When restrictions on emigration were relaxed after the 1989 revolution, many of Romania’s ethnic Germans found the pull of the homeland they had never seen too strong, and left for good. Before 1989, there were 370,000 ethnic Germans in Transylvania; in 1995, there were less than 62,000. The Transylvanian Saxons, who were never assimilated into the Romanian population and retained their own language and culture throughout, are fast disappearing, and their architecture is rapidly becoming a monument to a vanished people.

Practical information: The admission fee to the clock tower is L6000, or L3000 for students. There is an unnamed campsite adjacent to, and managed by, the Dealul Garii restaurant on a wooded hillside a few kilometers out of town. Open during the summer only, this establishment offers 13 wooden cabins for L150,000 per night. Alternatively you may pitch your tent on the sports field for L45,000. However, if you are relying on public transport you may find this site inconvenient due to its distance from the town center. The Hotel Chic, opposite the railway station, has double rooms for L150,000 a night. Sighișoara is an important transport hub, lying at the junction of the DN13 and DN14 highways, which link it to Brașov (119km), Sibiu (92km) and Târgu Mureș (37km). All trains between Bucharest and the Hungarian border stop here; a journey to Bucharest takes four and a half hours and costs L33,600; to go to Cluj-Napoca takes just under 3 hours and costs L20,500. All prices are in Romanian lei (L); at early-2000 rates, US$1 or 1 euro ≈ L18,400. However, prices may be subject to rapid and drastic fluctuation due to the instability of the leu.

Source: Central Europe Review.