Bărăgan
The Bărăgan is a lowland plain in the south-eastern part of Romania (a section of the Wallachian Plain ) and includes the districts of Călărași , Ialomița and partly Brăila .
geography
The Bărăgan is divided by the Ialomița River into Bărăganul Călmățuiului in the north and the Bărăganul Ialomiței in the south. It is called the "granary of Romania" because it is a large grain-growing area because of the fertile black earth soils (which are mostly on loess ). Mainly wheat, sunflowers and maize are grown on these extensive areas. The steppe landscape is sparsely populated.
It is located in the temperate zone with a continental climate. The summers are hot and dry, the winters frosty. The Crivăț is notorious in winter ; a cold continental wind from the northeast, originating in the southern Ural Mountains , which brings permafrost and blizzards with it. In the Bărăgan, among other things, the bustard , which is under nature protection , is also known as the archbishop of the steppe ( Romanian Mitropolitul Bărăganului ).
The Romanian writer Panait Istrati describes in his novel "The Thistles of Bărăgan" the inhospitable steppe landscape of the Bărăgan:
“No tree grows on its back. And from one well to the other it's so far that you can easily die of thirst halfway through. The resident of Bărăgan always hopes that somebody will come and teach him how to live better on his Bărăgan, on this vast expanse, which only contains water in its deepest lap and on which nothing grows except thistles. In less than a week they cover the whole country. That is everything that the bărăgan tolerates on its back, except for the sheep, which lust after thistles and graze them greedily. When winter comes, the Shepherd leaves this godforsaken area to God and returns home. But the Bărăgan puts on his white fur and goes to sleep for six months. Nothing lives there anymore. That is the Bărăgan. "
Urban centers
The main cities in the Bărăgan steppe are:
- Brăila in Brăila County - 212,501 inhabitants (2009)
- Călărași in Călărași County - 73,823 inhabitants (2007)
- Slobozia in Ialomița county - 52,313 inhabitants (2007)
- Feteşti in Ialomița County - 34,311 inhabitants (2009)
The cities of Buzău , Urziceni and Oltenița border the steppe, but do not belong to its heartland.
history
The poorly forested Bărăgan was an important migration route through today's south-eastern Romania during the migration of the peoples .
The area was used by shepherds from the Carpathian Mountains and Transylvania to the north-west of it for migratory livestock farming, where the cattle are not stabled or are only stabled seasonally. In the second half of the 19th century, efforts were made large parts of the steppe to make reclaimed .
In June 1951, in the wake of the rift between Josef Stalin and Josip Broz Tito, 12,791 families from the Banat , the border region between Romania and Yugoslavia , were forcibly resettled in the Bărăgan steppe . Of the 40,320 people deported , 9,410 were Germans, 30,000 Romanians, Serbs, Bulgarians and Hungarians. The affected Banat Swabians from the Romanian part of the Banat lost most of their property, but were mostly able to return to their homeland after a few years.
See also: Deportation to the Bărăgan steppe
literature
Non-fiction books:
- Hansel, Bernhard : The steppe and the Carpathian basin in the field of tension between nomadic and sedentary life forms, in: The Carpathian basin and the Eastern European steppe. Prehistoric Archeology in Southeast Europe 12, 1998, pp. 7–18.
- Hansel, Bernhard: The steppe and the south-eastern European subcontinent. Nomadic incursions and transhumance. in: Civilization Grèque et Cultures Antiques Péripheriques - Hommage à P. Alexandrescu, Bucharest, 2000, pp. 31–43.
- Wilhelm Weber: And above us the endless blue sky. Deportation to the Baragan steppe. Landsmannschaft der Banater Schwaben, Munich, 1998, ISBN 3-00-002932-X
Fiction:
- Panait Istrate: The thistles of Bărăgan ( Romanian Ciulinii Bărăganului ), Gutenberg Book Guild , Frankfurt am Main, 1988
Web links
- banaterra.eu , Wilhelm Weber: The deportation of the Banat Swabians to the Bărăgan steppe
- flimmerkiste.bplaced.net , film adaptation of literature: The thistles of Bărăgan
Individual evidence
- ↑ uni-kassel.de ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Jutta Kehr: Geographical description of the Danube and its catchment area , section: The Romanian Lowlands (Wallachia)
- ^ Association for Bird Research and Protection of Birds, German Federation for Bird Protection : Ornithological Communications , Volumes 48–49, Institute for Biology, Environment and Protection of Life, 1996, p. 89.
