The Zipser Germans (German: Zipser/Zipsern/Zipser Deutsche/Zipser Sachsen) are an important historical German-speaking minority in Central and Eastern Europe, which has been living since the High Middle Ages in present-day north-eastern Slovakia and northern Romania. The Zipser Germans gained their name from the medieval Hungarian komitat/county where the initially settled, more specifically Szepes (known in standard…
The highly popular Gothic horror character created by Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel entitled ‘Dracula’ might have actually been inspired from an Irish folk legend instead of the historical prince of Wallachia Vlad III Dracul (Vlad III the Dragon) who reigned during the late Middle Ages. While the most popular theory regarding Dracula’s origin…
Since the High Middle Ages, a German-speaking population known as the Transylvania Saxons has been continuously living in southern and north-eastern Transylvania, present-day Romania. One of their greatest historical achievements is represented by a series of fortified churches, compactly spread in the proximity of the Carpathian mountain range. These peasant citadels (as opposed to their fortified cities)…
Conrad Haas was a Transylvanian Saxon engineer of Austrian origin (born in Dornbach, near Vienna) who lived in the city of Hermannstadt (Romanian: Sibiu) from the Principality of Transylvania at some point in the Late Middle Ages/Renaissance period. Prior to his arrival in Transylvania, present-day Romania, Conrad Haas was in charge of the arsenal of…
Repser Burg or Reps (also known in the Transylvanian Saxon dialect as Räppes, in Romanian as Rupea, and in Hungarian as Kőhalom) is a Transylvanian Saxon citadel located in Brașov county (German: Kreis Kronstadt), south-eastern Transylvania, Romania. In late Antiquity, on the site on which the citadel was subsequently built by the German colonists during…
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