800 Years of the Golden Charter

It has been 800 years since the Hungarian King Andrew II confirmed the rights granted to a group of settlers from the Rhine-Moselle region in a document known as the ‘Andreanum’. It is probably the oldest known confirmation of such privileges, which contained many elements of autonomy and is also described as the first known legal framework for regional self-government.

The anniversary is being honoured with a variety of events and was also a theme at the large Saxon Day in Sibiu at the beginning of August, when thousands of Transylvanian Saxons - both those who had emigrated and those who had remained in their homeland - filled the city.

The settlement of the group of settlers later known as the Saxons in the Carpathian Arc has to be seen in the light of the German settlement of the East in the High Middle Ages. Overpopulation and failed harvests had increased the pressure on farmers and craftsmen in their original settlement area to look for a new home. The Hungarian kings in turn tried to recruit settlers who would secure the borders of their empire against raids from the east and bring modern agricultural cultivation methods into the country, and the kings were therefore prepared to grant extensive rights to those willing to emigrate.

The first settlers moved to Transylvania in the middle of the 12th century, to the land beyond the forests. These settlers had nothing to do with Saxons; the name was ascribed to them as an umbrella term for Germans. There were also some French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemings among the settlers.

The various groups of settlers who gradually moved into the land in the Carpathian Arc were initially granted very different rights, which were only standardised over the course of many decades and subsequently represented the most advantageous legal system for a foreign-language ethnic group in a state at the time.

Some of the 13 provisions in the ‘Andreanum’ are similar to today's autonomy regulations for national minorities. For example, the first paragraph describes the settlement area, a strip around 190 kilometres long and 30 to 40 kilometres wide in the Carpathian Arc, which stretched from Broos (Romanian Orăștie) in the west to Boralt (Baraolt). The Saxons were to form a single political unit and be under a single judge.

Thanks to the provisions of the Andreanum, the settlers elected their own chairmen. Only the king himself or the royal judge appointed by him was allowed to judge them, according to the customary law of the settlers and only if their own judges were unable to decide the cases. The Transylvanian Saxons elected their pastors themselves. They paid an annual tax to the king and tithed to the clergy. No part of their settlement area allocated by the king could ever be given to a landlord; the settlers were to be free for all time. The merchants enjoyed freedom from duties and customs in the Hungarian kingdom.

The settlers were not only to secure the border to the east, but were also obliged to serve in the army: If the king marched within the realm, they had to provide 500 armed men, outside the realm 100, and if the king did not go into battle himself, the Transylvanian Saxons were only required to provide 50 soldiers according to the ‘Golden Charter’.

The Saxons paid a heavy price in securing the border and their settlements, especially during the raids by the Tartars (1241/42 and 1285) and the Turks from the end of the 14th century. The Turkish invasions then led the settlers to expand their churches into fortified churches; to this day, these 150 or so unique buildings are characteristic of the former Saxon settlements in Transylvania.

Not all German settlers in Transylvania enjoyed the privileges of the Andreanum. There were also groups of settlers who had been recruited by Hungarian nobles and lived under their lordship. The provisions of the Golden Charter only applied to those who lived on the king's land.

The settlers formed their own political entity, the basis of which - the charter - they had repeatedly confirmed by the Hungarian kings. Over the centuries, a corporative constitution developed in which the Saxons, along with the Hungarian nobility and the Szekler group, a Hungarian tribe of unknown origin, formed one of the three ‘nations’ of the Transylvanian Diet. The Romanians were excluded from this system.

The privileges of the Saxons remained intact for centuries. Only the Enlightenment and absolutism, the growing nationalism of the 19th century and the Magyarisation after the Austro-Hungarian ‘Compromise’ of 1867 made deep breaches in their rights. After the First World War, with the annexation of Transylvania to Romania on the basis of the Trianon peace treaties, the last remnants of the former privileges were soon removed; Romania implemented the commitments it had made to protect the minorities only very inadequately.

The number of the first German settlers in Transylvania in the 12th century is estimated at 500 families, i.e. 2000 to 3000 people. Many other groups of settlers followed, and over the centuries the number of Transylvanian Saxons grew to 300,000 in the 1930s. Deportation for forced labour in the immediate post-war period and repression by the Romanian communist regime made many Saxons want to leave their homeland. From the 1970s onwards, tens of thousands travelled to the West - ransomed by Germany with a bounty from dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu - and after the fall of the Iron Curtain, there was mass emigration. Today, perhaps 12,000 Saxons still live in Transylvania, the majority of them elderly. However, many emigrants return to their old homeland every year for a short or longer stay - as was the case on Saxon Day in Sibiu at the beginning of August.

Note: This article gives the views of the author and does not represent the position of the European Association of Daily Newspapers in Minority and Regional Languages (MIDAS) or Eurac Research.