Heltau

around Cisnădie

Hungarian: Nagydisznód; Latin: Helta, villa Ruetel

Heltau is situated at 45° 43' north latitude and 24° 10' east longitude, 8 km south of Hermannstadt/Sibiu, at an altitude of 452 m above sea level.

The village lies at the foot of the Southern Carpathians and is crossed by two streams, the Silberbach (Romanian: Pârâul Argintului) and the Bärenbach (Romanian: Pârâul Ursului).

Transylvania

Republic of Romania. Heltau is part of the Sibiu County.

The current coat of arms consists of a shield surmounted by a castle. It depicts, on a blue background, two rampant lions holding a shield on which a spinning wheel is depicted, surmounted by a crown.

A number of artefacts have survived from the period when the Transylvanian Saxons (late 12th century) settled in Heltau, including a medieval gravestone, a processional cross and the *Vollmissale*, a missal known as the ‘Heltauer Missale’. Similar examples can be found in the Saar-Moselle region and in the Cologne–Aachen–Liège area.

Heltau was first mentioned in documents in 1204 as ‘villa Ruetel’ and in 1323 as ‘Helta’. As the settlement is referred to as a civitas (town), it can be assumed that it was a relatively important place at that time, administratively belonging to the Province of Sibiu. Repeated border disputes between Heltau and neighbouring communities are documented for the 14th century. In 1395, the Hungarian King Sigismund (1368–1437, King of the Germans and Holy Roman Emperor) remitted part of the taxes owed by Heltau, which had been ravaged by the Ottomans. Sources from 1428 mention a school and a schoolmaster in Heltau.

In 1493, Ottoman troops once again raided and pillaged the village, taking many of its inhabitants into captivity. The repeated Ottoman incursions led to a massive expansion of the fortified church between 1430 and 1530.

A major fire destroyed a large part of the village at the end of the 16th century. During the turmoil of the ‘Long Turkish War’ between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans, troops under the command of the imperial general Basta stormed the fortified church in 1601 and laid it waste. Following a punitive expedition by a Crimean Tatar army against the Principality of Transylvania, the fortified church was besieged once again in 1658: the people of Heltau were forced to pay a ransom, and jewellery, chalices and other valuables were also handed over to the Tatars.

In 1 705, Heltau was occupied by the Hungarian Kurucs, who were fighting against the new Habsburg rule in Transylvania and Hungary. Heltau, however, was able to buy its freedom with 1,500 guilders and provisions. After the Kurucs withdrew, the town was plundered by imperial troops. In the same year, Heltau had to buy its freedom from the Kurucs once more, this time for 4,000 guilders. It was only with the establishment of Habsburg rule in Hungary and Transylvania from 1711 onwards, and the subsequent prolonged period of peace, that a new economic upswing took hold in Heltau during the 18th century. In 1783, the German Emperor Joseph II (1741–1790) in 1783 and by the Austrian Emperor Franz I (1768–1835) in 1817, who honoured it with their visits.

Following Romania’s declaration of war on Austria-Hungary in August 1916, the Romanian army attacked Transylvania and was halted by German and Austro-Hungarian troops near Heltau on 27 September 1916. Numerous fallen soldiers from both sides were buried in the Heltau cemetery. Following Transylvania’s annexation by Romania, Heltau experienced an economic boom, as the Romanian market could now be supplied with textiles from Heltau duty-free. After the Second World War, the Red Army established a prisoner-of-war camp in Heltau. The neo-Stalinism that took hold in Romania in the late 1950s led to numerous show trials against representatives of the Romanian-German minorities. The ‘Heltau Trial’, held in 1959, was also intended primarily to intimidate young Germans. Heltau, which had been granted town status in 1948, was able to consolidate its position as a centre of the Romanian textile industry during the communist era. Following the political upheaval of 1989, however, the textile industry collapsed, a development which was accompanied in Heltau by high unemployment and waves of emigration. The demographic structure was altered even more significantly by the resettlement of most of Heltau’s Transylvanian Saxons to the Federal Republic of Germany, which took place mainly in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. There is currently an active German-speaking Lutheran parish, as well as a local branch of the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania. The family of the current Romanian President, Klaus Johannis, originates from Heltau and has been documented there since the 16th century.

In the early modern period, population growth was hampered primarily by the numerous ‘Turkish Wars’ and plague epidemics (e.g. in 1660). As part of the Habsburg settlement policy, around 125 Protestant farmers from the Austrian hereditary lands were settled in Heltau in 1734. At the beginning of the 20th century (1910), the village had a population of 3,064, of whom 2,204 identified German as their mother tongue, 673 Romanian and 152 Hungarian. The 1930 census recorded 3,408 inhabitants, of whom 2,464 were German, 570 Romanian and 207 Hungarian. The fundamental demographic changes of the late 20th century are reflected in the 1992 census. This recorded 17,373 inhabitants in the town, of whom 16,242 identified as Romanian, 806 as German, 225 as Hungarian and 84 as Roma.^[1]

Although agriculture was the mainstay of the economy, there is evidence of several tradespeople as early as the Middle Ages (e.g. sickle smiths). From the 16th century onwards, wool weaving was the dominant craft (guild statutes from 1513). From the 14th century onwards, Heltau maintained close trade links with Wallachia. The Voivode of Wallachia, Mircea the Elder (1355–1418), granted the people of Heltau a trading privilege in 1386, which was renewed by his son Mihail I (d. 1420) in 1418. In it, the latter reaffirmed his friendship with the people of Heltau and permitted them to graze their herds on his lands. In 1500, Heltau was granted a fair privilege by the Hungarian King Vladislaus II (1456–1516). Sources from 1721 report that a large proportion of Heltau’s inhabitants were craftsmen. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, several Transylvanian Saxon wool weavers established cloth and carpet factories, turning Heltau into a centre of the Transylvanian textile industry. Before the end of the Second World War, there were 176 textile businesses in Heltau.

In ecclesiastical terms, Heltau belonged to the (Catholic) Chapter of Sibiu and, like all Transylvanian Saxons, adopted the Lutheran faith in 1550. Later, two Romanian Orthodox and twoGreek Catholic churches were built, as well as several places of worship belonging to Protestant free churches.

• Erwin Amlacher: The Defensive Function and Systematics of Transylvanian-Saxon Church Fortresses and Farm Fortresses. A Contribution to European Castle Studies. Munich 2002 (Publications of the Institute for German Culture and History in South-Eastern Europe: Academic Series 95).
• Hermann Fabini: Atlas of Transylvanian Saxon fortified churches and village churches. 2 vols. Sibiu, Heidelberg 1998, 1999 (Monumenta).
• Hermann Fabini: The Fortified Churches of the Transylvanian Saxons. Sibiu-Hermannstadt 2013 (Monumenta), pp. 130–131.
• Juliana Fabritius-Dancu: Saxon Fortified Churches of Transylvania. Sibiu 1980.
• Arne Franke: The Fortified Saxon Lands. Fortified Churches in Southern Transylvania. Potsdam 2007 (Potsdam Library: Eastern Europe. Cultural Journeys), pp. 106–112.
• Handbook of Historical Sites in Transylvania. Edited by Harald Roth. Stuttgart 2003 (Kröners Taschenausgabe Vol. 330), pp. 55–56.
• Heltau Local History Association (ed.): Heltau. History and Culture of a Transylvanian-Saxon Community. Edited by Konrad Gündisch. Heilbronn 2002.
• Walter Horwath: Transylvanian Saxon Fortified Churches. An Architectural Study and Description. 2nd revised edition. Sibiu-Hermannstadt 1940.

• https://www.siebenbuerger.de/ortschaften/heltau/ (Heltau on the website of the Association of Transylvanian Saxons in Germany)
• https://www.wernigerode.de/Stadtleben/Die-Stadt/Partnerst%C3%A4dte/Heltau-Cisnadie-Rum%C3%A4nien-/ (Heltau–Wernigerode town twinning)
• www.hog-heltau.de/ (Heltau Hometown Association)
• kirchenburgen.org/location/heltau-cisnadie/ (Heltau on the Fortified Churches Foundation website)

[1] Handbook of Historical Sites in Transylvania. Edited by Harald Roth. Stuttgart 2003 (Kröners Taschenausgabe Vol. 330), p. 56.

Hermann Fabini: Heltau/Cisnădie. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2021. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32281 (accessed 4 May 2021).