Home / Press review / Archive / Magazine / Society / Roma in Europe / Article

Only the gypsies stayed on

When the Transylvanian Saxons fled Weilau they left behind not only their farms but also their neighbours with whom they had lived in close contact for more than 200 years: their gypsies. Today it is the gypsies, of all people, who ensure that the German tradition lives on.

Now it comes back, slowly at first, then in waves: the attic, the soldiers, the keys and the church, the curator and the chicken. Maria Lengyel sinks back into her chair, grappling to find the right words, years, names. Her forehead under the threadbare headscarf wrinkles with the effort; each muscle of her face stirs a dozen wrinkles into motion – the 82 years of her life have etched so many of them into her face. Her eyes widen as she delves into the past and narrates what she finds there.

Weilau woman Maria Lengyel with her German copy of the Bible.
Photo: Espen Eichhöfer/ OSTKREUZ

"It was 1944, that's when the Saxons left us. They had to flee, yah, the war! But we gypsies, we stayed. The women hid in the forest, for the soldiers of the Red Army were looking for women. I was up in the attic. I had to stay up there for two days, not making a sound and without any food. They didn't find me. No one touched me!”

Shortly before, more than 600 Transylvanian Saxons had obeyed the orders of the German army, harnessing their horses and oxen to their carts and heading west, for Lower Austria. It wouldn't be forever, most of them had hoped as they handed over the keys to their cattle sheds, wine cellars and homes to their gypsies. Their gypsies because in those days the gypsies worked happily as farmhands on the Saxons' farms. Here they were not, as elsewhere, dismissed as an itinerant people of dubious and restless character. Here they were Weilauens, good gypsies, as people called them.

Nowadays it is the gypsies who have been living in Weilau for the longest. And it is they who carry on the German tradition after watching a ceaseless coming and going for the past sixty years. After the Saxons fled the Hungarians arrived, and then the Romanians – and finally a few Saxons who, however, soon grew weary of life in Weilau and left once more. Only the gypsies stayed on.

Weilau, Uila or Vajola

Weilau, in Romanian Uila, in Hungarian Vajola, was founded by the Transylvanian Saxons who migrated to this area in the twelfth century from the north-west of the German-speaking domain. They were called "Saxons” because in ancient Hungarian documents the Germans were referred to as "Saxones”.

In the valleys between the gently rolling hills of Transylvania, in northern Transylvania, the land beyond the forests, they baked bread and harvested fruit, made wine, kept livestock and distilled spirits. This is a place where even today hunger drives the wolves out of the forest each autumn to prey on the flocks of sheep grazing behind the village. A place where the road ends – there's nowhere else to go beyond here. In recent times this road has seen a growing number of visitors from the rich world. On their way towards the village they meet villagers in horses and carts, weaving their way past the many potholes that pepper the road. They see roofs bent down with the weight of weather-beaten shingles. They see blind windows with bleached frames and cows being skinned and boned on the roadside.

The best musician

Scattered around the centre of Weilau, with its church spire, German school and parish hall, the small timber and mud-plastered farmhouses of the Saxons have stood proudly for centuries. The gypsies – they prefer this name to others, such as Roma – lived on the village outskirts. They arrived some time around the year 1800; no one knows precisely when any more.

Nor does anyone know when, in addition to their own language Romani, they started learning the Saxon dialect, a variety of German that is practically a language in its own right, or why they were baptised as Protestants, like the Saxons, and attended church with them. Or why the men laid aside their round black hats and the women their brightly coloured skirts and settled down in the village.

The village musicians preserve tradition, while the younger generation adores German pop starlet Yvonne Catterfield.
Photo : Espen Eichhöfer/OSTKREUZ

But just because they "settled” doesn't mean to say they spent much time at home. For the gypsy men of Weilau were known far and wide as the most spectacular, the gayest, the most melancholy and certainly the best musicians in the entire region. They would travel all the way to Bukovina on the Ukrainian border with their violins, cymbals and contrabass when a call or telegram arrived in the neighbouring village of Bátos requesting a Weilau "Taraf”, or band. Sometimes they were away for weeks at a time, travelling from one festivity to the next. They couldn't read music but they certainly knew how to play by ear. Strauss' waltzes were in great demand, then there were Romanian Sârba, Hungarian Csárdás and to top it all off the old gypsy songs. They played for the Saxons of Weilau, too, but only the Saxons were allowed to dance. Certain distinctions had to be made.

Clear social distinctions

Susana Iancu, an old Saxon woman, can tell us all about those distinctions, or to be more precise, she can keep silent about them. She married a gypsy. The petite and fragile old lady tilts her head backwards when she looks straight ahead to stop her huge black spectacles with their thick lenses from sliding down her fine nose. "It was not a bad match with him”, she hurries to clarify. "He was a good man”. She had her reasons for marrying her Zoltan: "I was after the money”, she explains, and you would be disappointed if you were expecting an ironic smile to accompany this statement. After a moment she adds: "He was a good musician, too, and a good-looking man!" Then she remains silent.

About the fact, for example, that her family disowned her and that from then on the other Saxons avoided her. It was historian Joachim Krauß who supplied these details. He spent several months living in Weilau and grew very fond of the gypsies in that time. He takes a critical view of the respect with which the gypsies speak of "their” Saxons: "The servant speaks better of his master than the master does of the servant. Most of the Saxons found the whole situation with the gypsies rather embarrassing. It was at variance with their notion of an ethnic church in which only the Saxons were fully qualified members of the parish.” This is also the reason why the gypsies paid no church contributions until 1989, Wolfgang Rehner, a former pastor of the Weilau parish, recounts. "Otherwise they would have been able to take part in the election of the parish pastor and the Presbytery. That would have been too much for the Saxons”.

When the Russians came

But the Saxons and the gypsies needed each other because the work was hard and there was plenty of it. What's more, they liked each other. And that's how it stayed between the Saxons and the gypsies until the war spread from Germany across the forest and found the Saxons of Weilau, who gave their keys to the loyal gypsies for safekeeping.

And so they milked and fed the Saxons' cows, Maria Lengyel tells us. And the lively display of facial expressions begins once more. Here a look of youthful delight, there one of distress at an old recollection, the reason for which only becomes clear when she tells the story of the Russians, the parish pastor and the chicken: A gypsy once dared to slaughter a chicken, one of the Saxons' chickens, whereupon the parish pastor gave him a tremendous scolding! "Then the Russians of the Red Army came along”,Maria Lengyel recounts, putting a hand up to her cheek. "Well they were mighty hungry and didn't care who the chickens belonged to!” When the Russians moved on the gypsies went straight back to work. For if the Saxons ever returned they were to see how fortunate they were to have their gypsies.

1 . 2 . next »

Unger Andreas

Born in 1977. Grew up in Lower Bavaria. Obtained a degree in journalism from Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich. Studied international relations at Georgetown University in Washington ...
» to author index

Further articles on the subject » Migration, » Minorities, » Integration, » Romania
More from the press review on the subject » Migration, » Minorities, » Integration, » Romania