Transylvania, Guest Houses and Hiking Trails in the Fortress Landscape
The History of Transylvania
The first signs of human settlement date back to the Stone Age. During the 3rd century BC, the present-day Transylvania was inhabited by Dacians and Getae. In 107 AD it was conquered by the Romans, who ruled the region for about 170 years.
Over the next centuries, before the Hungarian conquest in the late 9th century, Transylvania was invaded by several peoples, none of whom, however, ever settled there. In order to protect the region's borders, Hungarian-speaking Székely were settled in the eastern and central parts, followed by Saxons in northern and southern Transylvania from the 12th century onwards.
After the end of the 14th century the region was repeatedly overrun and pillaged by Ottoman forces, but although the Ottomans occupied Transylvania several times, the region managed to remain relatively independent through tolls and taxes. In the 18th century, Transylvania came under Habsburg suzerainty and then became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
After the First World War, Transylvania was annexed to Romania.
From 1947 to 1989, Romania (and thus Transylvania) was run by a Stalinist dictatorship, headed for many years by Nicolae Ceauşescu, who ruled the country from 1965 to 1989. Since the fall of the Communist regime, Romania was initially slow to recover from decades of dictatorship and mismanagement, in part owing to the former Communist elites still being in power. Romania in the 1990s was marked by inflation, corruption, and unemployment, but following the political example of the democratic West, the country joined the NATO in 2004 and the European Union in 2007.
The History of the Transylvanian Saxons
From the mid-12th century onwards, German settlers from the Rhineland and the Moselle region were invited to develop the uninhabited Transylvanian forests and defend the borders against the Mongol invaders. Wooed by special privileges, the Saxons, as they were called, established quickly developing settlements on the model of German towns and villages. In view of the constant threat of invasion by the Mongols and, later, the Ottoman Turks, in the 15th century the Saxons began constructing the now characteristic fortified churches. In the mid-16th century, the Saxons decided to embrace the Lutheran Reformation.
Since the Transylvanian Saxons sided with Nazi Germany during the Second World War, many of them were sent to labour camps in the USSR after 1945. Only few of them returned to Transylvania, in part due to the living conditions in the camps, but also because many of them had decided to start a new life in West Germany.
The last years of the Communist regime were characterized by a profound economic crisis. West Germany paid a head fee for many Saxons who were willing to emigrate from Romania. The last wave of Saxon emigrants left for Germany after the fall of the Ceauşescu regime, leaving only a small remnant population of Saxons still living in Transylvania – a region which in great part had once been shaped by their ancestors.
