Unterwald (Transylvania)
The under forest is a historical landscape in southern Transylvania, which today is the south-eastern or south-western part of the Alba and Sibiu districts , as well as the central-eastern part of the Hunedoara district .
location
The under forest is located on the northern edge of the Southern Carpathians and extends between the cities of Hermannstadt in the east, Broos in the west and is bordered by the Mieresch river in the north .
Historically, the Unterwald forms the western border of Transylvania , the westernmost part of the Königsboden and thus also the border of the German settlement area.
Definition of terms
The name Unterwald is misleading in that it is not a wooded area or a particularly wooded area. Rather, the name refers to the location of the region at the foot of the densely wooded Carpathian slopes, closer to today's Schureanu and Cindrel mountains (referred to as "woodland" on maps from the 19th century). It is therefore to be understood in the sense that it means the land under the forest , i.e. below the wooded mountains (as it appears on various maps from the 16th and 17th centuries: "Land in front of the forest (t) ").
history
When the region was conquered by the Hungarian kings in the 10th century, they settled the support people of the Szeklers there to secure the border . Under King Géza II (1141–1162), the border was moved further east, from Mieresch to the Alt , and the border area became available. The Szekler were resettled in today's Szeklerland in the east of Transylvania. Immediately thereafter, the settlement with German colonists began (see Transylvanian Saxony ). The west of the under forest was the first area in which they settled. They founded their settlements in Rumes , Broos and the then called Terra Sebus plain on the Mieresch. The majority moved further east and reached the Sibiu area on the Zibin in 1143 .
The Broos , Mühlbach and Reussmarkt chairs - hence the area known as the Unterwald, was part of the royal soil according to the Andreanum ( golden license ) and originally inhabited primarily by Transylvanian Saxons who made the land arable. Broos is named in the Golden Charter (1224) as the westernmost place on the royal floor.
In 1241 the Mongol storm devastated the under forest and from the beginning of the 15th century the Turks invaded the country again and again. Due to the location on a trade route and the proximity to the capital Sibiu, the armies often plundered and plundered through the under forest. This led to a permanent decimation of the population (especially in the Brooser and Mühlbacher Stuhl) and an impediment to urban development.
Slowly Romanian shepherds and mountain farmers from the Carpathian valleys infiltrated the area and filled the orphaned farms with life again or founded their own villages on the Königsboden. In some cases, they were actively settled there in order to be able to pay the taxes of the chair administrations as new taxpayers, as they were no longer able to pay the required burdens and war taxes to the Transylvanian princes due to the high losses of the Saxon original population .
Between 1733 and 1776, the transmigration under Maria Theresa and Charles VI. about 3000 Austrian Protestants to Transylvania, the so-called Landler . They were settled in the depopulated communities of Großpold , Großau and Neppendorf and contributed to their upswing. A number of colonists from Baden-Durlach also came to Mühlbach . Nevertheless, the German part of the population in the Unterwald could never really recover numerically.
Like the other Transylvanian Saxons, the majority of those from the Unterwald moved to Germany by 1990 at the latest. The number of Protestant - hence German - residents in the church district of Mühlbach is now extremely low (2005: 1,811 people) .
List of historical places in the Unterwald
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literature
- Ernst Wagner: History of the Transylvanian Saxons. An overview. 6th, revised and expanded edition. Wort und Welt Verlag, Thaur near Innsbruck 1990, ISBN 3-85373-055-8 .
- Carl Göllner (Red.): History of the Germans on the territory of Romania. Volume 1: 12th century to 1848. Kriterion, Bucharest 1979.