Transylvanian Carpathian Association

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The Transylvanian Carpathian Association (SKV, Romanian : Asociația Carpatină Ardeleană a Turiștilor ) is the oldest mountaineering club in Romania . It was founded in 1880 and first popularized mountaineering in the Southern and Eastern Carpathians . Its members, mainly Transylvanian Saxons , created trail markers and built 60 shelters . In 1905, the first organized mountain rescue service in Transylvania was set up with the “Alpine Rescue Centers” . In 1945 the association was dissolved and expropriated. After the end of communist rule, the SKV was re-established in 1996 and today operates, among other things, the restituted Julius-Römer-Hütte am Schuler (Rum .: Postăvaru ), above Poiana Brașov .

history

The mountains of Transylvania have been used for agriculture since time immemorial. Romanian shepherds in particular have been moving their herds up to high mountain pastures (Rum .: poiană ) in summer to graze their animals there. Lumberjacks and haulers also moved in the mountains, but their motives were always practical. It was not until the 19th century that the inhabitants of the growing cities began to flock to nature on their days off and to explore the mountains for sport or health reasons.

The idea of ​​mountaineering originally came from England and spread to the European continent, especially the Alps, in the mid-19th century. It was there that Julius Paul Römer, a young man from Kronstadt, came into contact with alpinism. From 1866 to 1870 he studied natural sciences in Vienna , Jena and Heidelberg and brought this new fashion to Transylvania for the first time on his return. In 1873 he founded a "Transylvanian Alpine Club" in Kronstadt . But it was more a small group of friends and acquaintances interested in the mountains. At that time there were no railway lines at the foot of the mountains and these first hikers also had to find their way around the confusing network of pasture trails. So the idea arose to mark the hiking trails and mountaineering paths. For this purpose, a special marking system with differently colored triangles and rectangles was developed, which differs from the signs used in the Alpine region.

In 1879 the first connection across the Carpathian Mountains between the Hungarian Eastern Railway and the Romanian Railway in the Altreich was opened via the Predeal Pass. As a result, the townspeople were now able to get into the mountains by rail for the first time, which enormously increased interest in hiking and mountain climbing. On November 28, 1880, on the initiative of Carl Wolff , then editor of the influential Transylvanian-Deutsches Tageblatt, the first general meeting of the Transylvanian Carpathian Association, which was constituted there , took place in Sibiu . The writer Albert Amlacher was among the founding members . The aim with this organization was to support mountain tourism in the Carpathian Mountains and to build the necessary infrastructure. Sections of the SKV were established in different cities, each taking care of a section of the Carpathian Mountains. Before that, the first mountaineers had to bring all their provisions, clothing, blankets and tents with them, for which purpose they hired guides and drivers for donkeys they brought with them in the villages. The first mountain tours were therefore more like expeditions than hikes by urban summer visitors. Now marked hiking trails have been laid out, mountain shelters have been built and shelters have been built near the peaks. These ventures were financed by the contributions of the members as well as their voluntary work.

Mountaineering became popular among the urban, bourgeois population, and about ten years after the Carpathian Association was founded, the other two ethnic groups followed suit. In 1891 was in Cluj , the first Hungarian Carpathian Society "Erdelyi Carpathian Egyesulet" (EKE) founded, as well as the Romanian south side of the Carpathians "Societatea Turistilor din România" and "Hanul drumetilor" in Bucharest, the target area, the area around Sinaia , the Predeal Pass and the Butschetsch .

The Negoiu

During this time, the Transylvanian Carpathian Association built hiking trails and huts on the Schulerau (rum .: Poiana Brașov ), in the Königsstein Mountains (rum .: Piatra Craiului ), in the Fagaras Mountains on the Moldoveanu and Negoi , to Lake Bulea , and on the Hohe Rinne (Rum .: Păltiniș ), the local mountain of the Sibiu.

In 1905, on the 25th anniversary of its existence, it was decided to set up an organized mountain rescue service. Each SKV section set up so-called “Alpine rescue stations” which, in the event of an accident, would climb up, provide first aid and bring the injured into the valley. Its members were volunteers who made themselves available out of camaraderie and a sense of duty. The first ski club was founded in 1910. At that time the SKV had around 2,000 members.

During the First World War there was heavy fighting between the Austro-Hungarian Army and the troops of the Kingdom of Romania in the Carpathian Mountains in autumn 1916 . After the war, Transylvania came to Romania. However, this had little effect on the activities of the Carpathian Union. He continued to be the most important mountaineering club on the northern side of the Carpathians. Due to the social opening of the previously very upper-class association, the number of members even increased and reached a high of 6,500 in 1925. It was not until 1927 that the Romanian-speaking “Touring Clubul României” founded its first sections in Transylvania, in Kronstadt and Cluj-Napoca. But even within the German ethnic group, competition arose from new hiking associations and youth movements that also spread to Transylvania, such as the southeast German Wandervogel . In the 1930s the number of members of the SKV fell to 4,500. The sections with the largest number of members consisted of Sibiu and Kronstadt.

There are three memorial sites from the interwar period that still exist today. One below the Fideles peak in the Fagaras Mountains, reminiscent of an avalanche accident on March 11, 1928, in which the two ski hikers Franz Hentes and Gerhard Krauss were killed. On the ridge between the Arpașul Mic and Arpașul Mare, a stone commemorates the crash of Richard Nerlinger and Herta Ruzicska on June 30, 1934. On January 20, 1940, a fatal avalanche accident occurred in the Sâmbăta valley , which was halfway there to commemorate "Large window" a wooden cross was placed. This is often incorrectly referred to in today's hiking guides as the “shepherd's cross” (Rum .: crucea ciobanului ).

After the Second World War , in July 1945, all German associations and organizations were forcibly dissolved, including the Transylvanian Carpathian Association. The 65-year history of the SKV ended abruptly. As a result, all the mountain huts were expropriated and fell to the Romanian state.

Under communist rule

Sign of the Salvamont State Mountain Rescue Service , Victoria City Section

After the dissolution and expropriation of the SKV, there was no mountain rescue in the first years of communist rule in Romania, as the Carpathian Association had previously performed this function alone. For the government, however, this was not an immediate disadvantage, as mountain and hiking sports were initially not desired anyway. On the one hand, he was considered bourgeois, on the other hand, the working people should devote their energy to the reconstruction of the country. There were also security policy reasons. In the Carpathian Mountains there were dispersed groups of armed anti-communist partisans in the late 1940s and early 1950s. For this reason, large areas of the Fagaras Mountains were temporarily restricted areas, which could only be entered by the military and the secret police . It wasn't until the late 1950s, when these armed rebels had largely been arrested or eliminated, that mountain hiking came back into fashion. In 1969 a state mountain rescue service was finally founded under the name "Salvamont" .

The majority of the mountaineers were still members of the Transylvanian-Saxon minority or foreign tourists from the socialist brother countries, especially Czechoslovaks and East Germans . Mountaineering was less popular among Romanians.

In 1977 there was a mountain accident that was traumatic for the Transylvanian Saxons. An entire school class at the Brukenthal Lyceum in Sibiu was buried by an avalanche near Lake Bulea on April 17, 1977. 23 people died, including 16 students and 4 teachers. This accident is also in the novel Atemschaukel of Herta Müller mention.

Establishment and restitution

The first hut on Lake Bulea was built by the SKV, the current building in the same place dates from the time of communist rule
The former SKV hut on Omu

In the turmoil after the Romanian Revolution of December 1989, the German minority in Romania emigrated to West Germany on a large scale . Only a small part remained in the country, including a few courageous mountain friends who founded the SKV in 1996. The aim was on the one hand to revive tourism in the Carpathian Mountains, on the other hand to endeavor to restore the huts expropriated during communist rule. However, this was only partially successful. So far, only the mountain hut below the Schuler in Poiana Brașov has been returned, which is now operated by the SKV again under the name Julius-Römer-Hütte . The hut on Lake Bulea, which was once also built by the SKV, was not refunded because the original building burned down several times and was rebuilt and the current building was built by the Romanian state.

The huts on Vârful cu dor, on Bolboci, Romania's oldest stone hut on Omul, the hut on Curmătura under the Königsstein, and the Hotel Ruia in Poiana Brașov, which was originally built by the SKV under the name Höhenheim Schulerau and meanwhile, are also disputed owned by former star footballer Adrian Ilie .

Since 2010 the SKV has been the only Romanian hiking association to be a member of the European Hiking Association and is involved in the integration of Romania into the network of European long-distance hiking trails .

literature

  • Heinz Heltmann, Helmut Roth (ed.): The Transylvanian Carpathian Association 1880–1945. Commemorative ribbon. Word and World, 1990, ISBN 3-932413-10-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Römer Julius Paul, 1848–1926. (PDF; 162 kB). In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950.
  2. ↑ Michael Wedekind: The Transylvanian Carpathian Association (1880-1944) - A contribution to the social history of Transylvania. 2004.
  3. ↑ Reinhold Gutt: Hikers in the Fogarasch Mountains. on: karpatenwilli.com
  4. ↑ Manfred Kravatzky:  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) The Transylvanian Carpathian Association (SKV), its relationship to the DAV and its role in the mountain hiking culture in the Carpathians. (PDF). Carpathian Section of the German Alpine Club eV@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / sektion-karpaten.de
  5. ^ Siegfried Habicher: The Brukenthal School as the representative of a school system of European standing. ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 125 kB). on: revistatransilvania.ro from (PFF)
  6. ↑ April 2002 - 25 years since the avalanche accident on Bulea ( memento from July 20, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) on: brukenthal.ro
  7. ↑ Herta Müller: Breathing swing. Chapter 1: About packing your suitcase. Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-446-23391-1 .
  8. ↑ Manfred Kravatzky: Transylvanian Carpathian Association on high course. In: Siebenbürger Zeitung. September 5, 2007.
  9. ↑ Manfred Kravatzky: Transylvanian Saxons demand the return of their property in the Carpathian Mountains. In: Siebenbürger Zeitung. January 9, 2007.
  10. ↑ Ralf Sudrigian: 683 kilometers on the E3 through the West Mountains and the Banat Mountains. In: General German newspaper for Romania. December 17, 2014, accessed January 17, 2016 .