Aurel Vlaicu (Hunedoara)
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Aurel Vlaicu Benzendorf Bencenc |
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| Basic data | |||||
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| State : |
 Romania
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| Historical region : | Transylvania | ||||
| Circle : | Hunedoara | ||||
| Municipality : | Geoagiu | ||||
| Coordinates : | 45 ° 55 ' N , 23 ° 17' E | ||||
| Time zone : | EET ( UTC +2) | ||||
| Height : | 213 m | ||||
| Residents : | 891 (2002) | ||||
| Postal code : | 335401 | ||||
| Telephone code : | (+40) 02 54 | ||||
| License plate : | HD | ||||
| Structure and administration | |||||
| Community type : | Village | ||||
Aurel Vlaicu ( German Benzenz , Benzendorf , Hungarian Bencenc , Romanian earlier: Binținți ) is a place in the Hunedoara district in Transylvania , Romania . The village is named after the Romanian aviation pioneer Aurel Vlaicu , who was born there in 1882 .
Geographical location
Aurel Vlaicu is located on the left, southern bank of the Mieresch, in the Brodfeld plain between Orăştie (German Broos) and Sebeş (German Mühlbach) . It belongs to the municipality of Geoagiu , a small town on the north bank of the river . The next larger city Orăştie is about 10 km away. The Arad – Alba Iulia railway line runs past the south-eastern outskirts of Aurel Vlaicu, along with the DN7 national road and, since 2013, the newly built A1 motorway .
history
In ancient times the area was inhabited by the Dacian tribe, in the neighboring town of Geoagiu there are remains of a Dacian fortification. After the conquest of Dacia by the Romans, they cleared the alluvial forests on the Mieresch and created several villae rusticae in the fertile plain of the Brodfeld . During the Migration Period, these agricultural areas became overgrown and the forest expanded again. After the Hungarian conquest, there was an archaeologically proven settlement in the area of Aurel Vlaicu, which is dated to the 10th and 11th centuries. The ethnicity of the inhabitants of this settlement is unknown, but it could have been Slavs, Romanians or Hungarians. In the course of the Mongol storm in 1241, in which a Mongolian army moved through the Miereschtal, this settlement probably perished.
The area was first mentioned in a document from 1263 under the name terra Sohteluk , Sothelik , Botheluk , or Bohtteluk . The Hungarian place name Bencenc (from Latin : Vincentius ) appears for the first time in 1291 in a document in which the boundaries of the meadows and forests (Hattert) belonging to the place are listed. The name is likely to be derived from a Székely land manager. However, the Szeklers were relocated to the east of Transylvania to defend the border and replaced by newly immigrated Transylvanian Saxons . The entire Brodfeld was mostly populated by Saxons from the 13th to the 16th century.
In 1479, the battle on the Brodfeld took place east of the village near the neighboring village of Unterbrodsdorf (today Șibot) , in which the royal Hungarian army, with the support of the Transylvanian Saxons and the Szeklers, won an important victory over the army of the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, the area was devastated several times by Turkish troops, which severely decimated the Saxons or fled to other regions of Transylvania. The place was then repopulated by Romanian farmers and shepherds who, coming from the mountains, ventured into the now largely depopulated plain on the Mieresch. Benzenz thus became a Romanian village, but it was owned by Hungarian nobles. In the 18th century this was the Lázár family, from which the ornithologist Kálmán Lázár, born here in 1827, also comes.
In the course of the Horea uprising in Transylvania in 1784 , in which mostly Romanian peasants and serfs rebelled against their mostly Hungarian feudal lords, there was a battle in Benzenz on November 7, 1784, in which an imperial troop under Lieutenant Colonel Kamp defeated rebellious peasants.
In 1816 the Hungarian enlightener and language reformer Ferenc Kazinczy was a guest at the Lázár family estate in Benzenz.
In the Hungarian Revolution of 1848/1849 the area was again a theater of war. After a defeat at Salzburg (Hungarian Vizakna , Rum. Ocna Sibiului ), the revolutionary army under General Józef Bem withdrew and holed up in Mühlbach (Hungarian Szászsebes, Rum. Sebeş). When they were also expelled from there by the Habsburg General Puchner , they fled further west and on their retreat set fire to the village of Benzenz, which was largely destroyed as a result.
Economically, things went up thanks to the construction of the Arad-Alba Iulia railway line, which began operating in 1868. The farmers of Benzenz could now transport their products to the sales markets more easily and use the profits to modernize their production methods. In the course of the inland colonization propagated by Carl Wolff , Lutheran Swabian settlers from the town of Crvenka in Batschka were recruited with funds from the Hermannstädter Allgemeine Sparkasse and settled in Benzenz.
In 1882 the inventor and aviation pioneer Aurel Vlaicu was born in Benzenz, who had an accident in 1913 while trying to fly over the Carpathian Mountains. When Austria-Hungary broke up after the First World War and Transylvania came to Greater Romania in 1919 , his home village was renamed in his honor. His parents' house is now a small museum.
population
- In 1785 there were 379 inhabitants in Benzenz. 84 households belonged to the Orthodox Church, nine to the Roman Catholic and eight to the Greek Catholic .
- In 1850 there were 597 inhabitants. 576 of them were Romanians and 12 Hungarians. 580 were Orthodox, 9 Protestants and 8 Roman Catholic.
- In 1900 there were 791 inhabitants. Of these, 609 were Romanians, 141 Germans and 40 Hungarians. 608 were Orthodox, 99 Lutherans and 59 Reformed .
- In 2002 there were 891 inhabitants. 875 of them were Romanians and 13 were Germans. 757 were Orthodox, 101 Pentecostals and 11 Lutherans.
photos
Evangelical Church AB in Aurel Vlaicu
Parental home of the aviation pioneer Aurel Vlaicu
Thatched farmhouse, photograph by Leopold Adler, between 1900 and 1920
local costume, photography by Leopold Adler, between 1900 and 1920
Bentcent on the map of the Josephinische Landesaufnahme , 1769–1773
Web links
- sevenbuerger.de: Localities - Benzenz
- sevenbuerger.de: How did our Vorfaren come to Benzenz? , Article by Robert Hoffmann, July 23, 2009
- Széchényi National Library : The campaigns of the Polish general Jozef Bem in Transylvania in the years 1848–1849, Desiderius von Sozanski (PDF, pp. 1–52)