The Teutonic Knights (or the Teutonic Order) were one of the most important military-religious chivalric orders of the Late Middle Ages in Central Europe and significant large parts of Eastern and Northeastern Europe respectively. As such, the Teutonic Knights had an important territorial foothold in the area around the Baltic Sea in the contemporary Baltic…

The Transylvanian Saxon fortified church of Heldsdorf/H쒃lchiu is one of the most beautiful and picturesque of its kind in Transylvania (or Siebenb쎼rgen as the region is known in German as well as Siweberjen in the Transylvanian Saxon dialect), central Romania. It is situated in the village of H쒃lchiu (known in German as Heldsdorf and in…

The Transylvanian Saxon fortified church of Tartlau (known in Romanian as Prejmer) is one of the most well known of its kind. It was initially built by the Teutonic Knights but, after they were subsequently evicted by the Hungarian monarch Andrew II in 1225, it was subsequently taken over by the Catholic order of the…

By historical descent, the Transylvanian Saxons are a predominantly ethnic German group which has been part of the broader German minority in Romania since 1918 onwards. Their noteworthy historical and cultural legacy has survived (and, in several cases, has been well preserved through the efforts of both the natives and EU-funded reconstruction programmes) in Transylvania,…

This article will briefly describe the early settlement of the Transylvanian Saxons, an eclectic population of Western and Central European origins (stemming from present-day Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, and even parts of north-eastern France) and one of the most important historical ethnic minorities in Romania as well as, at the same time, the eldest and…