The commune and village of Biertan

The commune and village of Biertan
The commune of Biertan is located in the north of Sibiu county and it consists
of three villages: Biertan – the village harboring the commune center – Richiş and
Copşa Mare. The closest town is Dumbrăveni (l3 km away), but the local people
indicated Mediaş (25 km away) as the closest town. This is understandable, because
Dumbrăveni resemble more to a village than to a town. Furthermore, most of Biertan
people go to Mediaş to solve their problems. The closest national road is 9 km away
from Biertan, DN14, linking Mediaş with Sighişoara. The village of Richiş is 7 km
away from Biertan, on a road covered in asphalt, while the village of Copşa Mare is
only 2 km away, but the road is covered in stones.
The first impression Biertan gives you at a brief sight is that of a relatively
rich village, due to its buildings and the central park, rather well taken care of, due to
the existence of a mini-hotel properly fitted, and even due to a block at the entrance in
the village. The moment you enter the filed and ask the local people if Biertan is a
rich or poor village, the answers tilts towards “average”. The houses are old,
nevertheless, and according to some people, the outer, not taken care of, aspect is due
to the fact that people prefer to invest the few money they earn in “staples” rather than
in the looks of the house.
Fig. 1 The map of Biertan
Street covered with asphalt
Street covered with stones
Street covered with stones in poor condition
Dirt street
In the center of the village lies the Saxon fort, visited each year by some 3000
persons, half of which foreign tourists. The church bears the name of Saint Mary and
was attested for the first time in 1468. The altar of the church is the richest late
Gothic triptych altar in Romania ( it has n less than 28 paintings). The door to the
sacristy, built in 1515, was awarded a prize in Paris for its lock which moves 15
secondary locks plus four of the safety lock. The church has six towers and three
bastions, among them the Tower of Lard and the East Bastion, which was used both
to defend the fort and to keep there the people who wanted to divorce (they were
locked in there, giving them just bread and water; they only had one bed, one table,
one chair, one plate and one piece of cutlery; they were kept here until they decided to
stay together and to get along better 1 ). Biertan was attested for the first time in a
document in 1283 by the name of Berthelm, the name undergoing a lot of changes
along time in the historical documents: Burathalm, Berethalm, Virthalm, Birchalin,
Byrthalben, Bertan, Giertan, etc. In 1572, Biertan became for 300 years the medieval
residence of the Saxons living in Romania. In 1532 Biertan was a strong village with
345 households, while Mediaş only had 286. Throughout 295 years, the headquarters
of the Evangelic Bishop in Transylvania functioned here 2 .
After 1989, the village experienced a drastic social and economic reshaping,
due to the changes throughout the whole country and to the massive departure of
Saxons from the village. The cancellation of the agricultural cooperative, the division
of land, the diminishing of working places in the nearby towns where the people of
Biertan commuted and the change of the ethnic structure of the village population,
generated changes that were perceived more or less by the “Biertomeni” 3 (local
people).
We found here people characterized by a strong individualism (trait
characteristic in theory to the urban environment), a village in which the people gather
around the different interest existing at the level of the social elite. We must also
mention that the atmosphere we found there is likely to alter the data gathered both by
questionnaires and by interviews and group discussions. The fact that many people
knew of the World Bank project, created a trend of “embellishing”, “sweetening”
things, a trend to diminish the social problems, on one hand, and to stress the
economic problems, on the other hand. Also, the free circulation of Moşna report
determined a reluctance from the local authorities and other persons, who had heard
of this report. The field was generally “hostile” to gathering undistorted information,
but most of the interviews and fragments of the group discussions were out of this
unfortunate pattern, because the very methodology of the interview and focus-groups
allowed us to build a stronger relation of trust with the subjects.
We shall try subsequently to draw a portrait of the community through the aid
of statistical data and with the help of the image we formed about the village.
Local people
Structure and dynamics of the population
Both at the level of households and at the level of the population, on the whole
commune, a drop was noticed for the period 1989-1998 – the number of households
decreased from 1357 to 1188, corresponding to a 12.5% decrease, while the
population decreased from 3420 to 3175, namely 7.2% (see Fig.2).
1
This ritual is slightly different in Biertan than in other Saxon villages or Saxon forts, in which one
tower was reserved for the newly weds, who passed through the same ritual, with the role of “challenge
of fire”. It is very possible, however, that this tower had several other similar functions, the people
from another village remembering some of them, other villages remembering others, because it is very
unlikely that in Saxon villages, so close in space and culture, the rituals to be so different.
2
Data from the monograph of the village written by the Greek-Catholic priest from Biertan.
3
“Biertomean” is the term used by the village people to define themselves as dwellers of that village.
Fig. 2 Evolution of population number in Biertan commune
4000
3500
3420
3120
3175
1698
1759
3000
2500
2000
1889
1500
1000
890
813
820
500
641
609
596
0
1989
1992
Biertan
Copşa Mare
1998
Richiş
Commune
Source: Biertan town hall
The decrease of population number is not drastic despite the massive
immigration of the Saxon ethnic, because it was partially compensated for by
migration and a high natality.
Among the three villages of the commune, Biertan has the highest population,
55.4% of the total commune population, the balance living in Copşa Mare (18.8%)
and Richiş (25.8%). The variations in population concentration in these villages
during the previous years are too small to tell that a phenomenon of concentration in
one village or another occurred after 1989 (see Table 1).
Table. 1 Population concentration in Biertan commune villages
1989
1992
1998
Biertan
55,2
54,4
55,4
Copşa Mare
18,7
19,5
18,8
Richiş
26,0
26,1
25,8
Commune Total
100,0
100,0
100,0
Source: Biertan town hall
Structure and dynamics of population by ethnic group
The ethnic structure of the commune changed drastically during the past
hundred years, including the status of majority population, which passed from the
Saxons to the Romanians. If in 1880 the Saxon population represented the majority in
the village, with a proportion of 64.2%, the Romanian population is currently the
majority, with a proportion of 58%.
Fig. 3 Ethnic structure of Biertan commune, 1880 – 1998, %
60,0
61
,2
58
,0
70,0
50,0
30
,8
29
,6
40,0
30,0
1880 Census
4,
1
0,
0
6,
8
3,
9
10,0
1,
2
1998 Data
4,
4
20,0
0,0
n
ma
Ro
s
ian
xo
Sa
ns
ie s
ars
ps
rbs
gy
Gy
a
Se
M
,
s
t
oa
Cr
rs
he
Ot
Source: Data, Transylvania Census 4 , 1880, Data from Biertan town hall, 1998
According to the data supplied by the town hall, the ethnic structure of Biertan
commune was the following in 1998: 56.57% Romanians, 4.13% Saxons, 32.60%
Gypsies 5 and 6.71% Magyars. The ethnic structure as resulting from the town hall
data for 1998 differ quite a lot from the data of the 1992 census.
Fig. 4 Ethnic structure of Biertan commune (1992-1998)
Biertan Town Hall, 1998
68
,1
56
,5
7
60,00
50,00
Census, 1992
9
70,00
40,00
4,
96
16
,6
0
20,00
32
,6
10
,2
0
2
30,00
0,00
Romanians
Saxons
6,
71
4,
13
10,00
Gypsies
Census, 1992
Biertan Town Hall, 1998
Magyars
Source: Biertan town hall and the 1992 census
The difference suggested by these figures must be interpreted cautiously,
considering that the census data use self-identification, while the data supplied by the
town hall may be based on hetero-identification made by the town hall staff.
Considering thus that at the census the Gypsy have the tendency to declare as
belonging to another ethnic group (Romanian, in the case of Biertan), the increase of
the Gypsy population is not that big as the figures suggest it. We must also consider
4
Studia Censualia Transsilvanica. The 1880Census in Transylvania, Staff Publishing House, 1997
We will use the term of “Gypsy” for our paper because the gypsy ethnic living here use this term
when talking about themselves, saying that they are not Roma ethnic, because the latter have a leader
and they are rather living in tents and are good with different handicrafts (focus with the gypsy ethnic).
5
the difference existing with the Saxon population between self-identification and
hetero-identification, due to the mixed marriages.
The same trends described above by comparing census data with town hall
data, were confirmed by comparing the data for 1989, 1992 and 1998, data supplied
exclusively by the town hall. The data eliminated, to a certain extent, the errors
originating from the difference between hetero-identification – self-identification. It
may be observed that if within the ethnic groups of Romanians, Saxons and Magyars,
the tendency of the population is to decrease, the group of Gypsies display an
increasing tendency, which can be accounted for by the high natality and secondly by
migration. The group experiencing the most drastic depression is, obviously, the
group of Saxon ethnic (Fig.1, Appendix).
At the level of the commune and village of Biertan, calculating the rhythm of
increase and decrease of the ethnic populations, relating the 1998 population to the
1989 population, using for this data from the town hall, it can be easily observed that
the Gypsy population had a rate of increase of 167.2% for the commune and 145.4%
for the village, while all the other ethnic groups had rates decreasing slowly.
Table. 2 Rate of increasing and decreasing of the ethnic groups living in Biertan
commune and in the villages belonging to it, %
Romanians
Biertan
92,90
Copşa Mare
82,47
Richiş
87,70
Commune
89,49
Saxons
26,99
31,37
13,04
23,73
Gypsies
145,43
194,39
204,29
167,21
Magyars
92,31
81,48
83,53
88,02
Total population
93,12
92,98
92,13
92,84
Source: Biertan town hall
It may be observed that the rate of Gypsy population increase is far higher in
Copşa Mică and in Richiş than in Biertan. Considering that the growth of population
mirrors both an increase in the birth rate and in the migration, and assuming that the
birth rate for the Gypsy population is close in the three villages, we may conclude that
Richiş and Copşa Mică were more open (as available space) and more tolerant (as
dwelling policy) for the Gypsy migrants.
Fig. 5 Structure of population by age and ethnic group in Biertan (village), 1998
32,1
35,0
60 and over
32,3
27,2
under 14
30,0
24,2
25,0
18,5
20,0
26,9
25,7
15,0
25,0
23,1
18,7
10,0
5,0
0,0
ma
Ro
under 14
ns
nia
xo
Sa
ns
ie
ps
Gy
s
60 and over
ars
gy
Ma
ta
To
l
Source: Biertan town hall
The Romanians are the majority in Biertan village (58%), followed by the
Gypsy (30.8%), Magyars (6.8%) and Saxons (4.4%). The highest percentage of old
population throughout the ethnic groups, belongs to the Saxons (26.9% of the Saxon
population is 60 and over), while the lowest percentage belongs to the Gypsy (only
18.7% of the Gypsy population is 60 and over).
A comparison of the overall commune age structure between 1992 and 1998
shows that the population from 1998 is older than the 1992 population, a clear sign
that, on the whole, natality is low and mortality is also lower.
Fig. 6 Structure by age in Biertan commune, 1992-1998
100,0
90,0
80,0
70,0
60,0
44,1
50,0
27,0
40,0
28,9
53,3
30,0
20,0
27,1
10,0
19,6
0,0
Under 14
15 – 59
years
Total 98
Total 92
over 60
years
Total
Source: Biertan town hall (1998) and the National Commission for Statistics (1992)
Overall commune, the structure of population by age is rather balanced:
Fig. 7 Age pyramid, Biertan commune, 1998
80-84 years
Male
70-74 years
Female
60-64 years
50-54 years
40-44 years
30-34 years
20-24 years
10-14 years
Under 4
-200
-150
-100
-50
0
50
100
150
200
Source: CNS data
Fig. 8 Age pyramid, Romanian rural area, 1998
Male
80-84 years
Female
70- 74 years
60-64 years
50-54 years
40-44 years
30-34 years
20-24 years
10-14 years
Under 4
-500000
-400000
-300000
-200000
-100000
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
Source: CNS data
Comparing the structure of population by age, in Biertan commune and in the
Romanian rural area, large differences can be noticed in the shape of the pyramids at
the age categories 0-24 years and 35-69 years. For the Romanian rural area, the shape
of the pyramid between 0-24 years displays a constant decrease of natality 6 , while in
Biertan, a slight depression of natality can be noticed for the period of 1979-1983,
followed by a progressive growth during 1984-1993, and a subsequent depression
during 1994-1998. We can also observe a more pronounced “void” for the category
40-64 years in Biertan commune than in the Romanian rural area, which, cumulated
with the trend mentioned for the age category 0-24 years, suggests a younger
population in Biertan commune than in the overall Romanian rural areas. We may
conclude that the age structure is more balanced in Biertan commune than on the
overall Romanian rural areas.
Ethnic groups, inter-ethnic relations, groups with problems
The Saxons
Most of the information on the Saxon community were supplied by the
Evangelic priest and by the Guardian from Biertan. The Evangelic community counts
95 persons, 15 of which do not live in Biertan, but were born in Biertan and wanted to
remain in the Evangelic community of Biertan. In Biertan there are 5-6 more Saxon
people who do not belong to the Evangelic community 7 . Within this community, our
informer assessed that more than half of the persons come from mixed marriages and
about 40% are widowers. The town hall data recorded 37 Saxon households with 78
6
The shape of pyramids between 0-24 years can be an indicator of the increase or decrease of natality,
but is can also be influenced by the number of immigrations or migrations.
7
Approximate figures supplied by the Guardian of Biertan. The difference from the figures supplied by
the town hall is small – two persons.
Saxons living in Biertan. This population represents 5.3% of the Saxon population of
Biertan village in 1880 8 .
Last year (1998), only one confirmation took place in the Evangelic
community, and none took place this year. In 1999, the religion classes are attended
by 12 children. Another assessment of our informers is that the average age is 38;
however, as the Evangelic priest told us, there is no middle age group, around 38, but
only extreme groups – children, young people and older people. According to town
hall data there are 21 children aged 0-14, 21 old people aged 60 and over, the balance
of 32 persons being aged 15 to 59. The average age is not relevant, therefore, for the
situation of this community.
Taking a look beyond these statistics we can see we have a small community
(4.4% of the village population), with an out of balance age structure, a community
which changed from a closed into an open community 9 , marked during the recent
years by a massive exodus of its members, which gives us the image of a poorly
structured community, lacking a local leader and, paradoxically for a community in
this situation (small community, menaced by dissolution, a formerly powerful
community), lacking the forms of mutual assistance and cooperation. Besides the fact
that there is no informal local leader, there is no political power that might defend the
rights of the Saxon ethnic and thus, rally them around it, while the power and the
religious leaders do not succeed here to be a catalyst for the community. The
evangelic priest told us in this line of the poor structuring of the Saxon community:
“we (the community) have individuals now, we do not work anymore as a structure,
with a community; … we have to find a new context which to bring them together.”
“The future depends on whether a leader of the Saxon community will be born”.
The people belonging to the Saxon community of Biertam are helped by
friends and relatives from Germany, but individually (the aids do not come for the
community, but for persons, directly to the receiver). This also, can not become a
binder for the community. Furthermore, it seems that part of the problems of present
day Saxon community from Biertan originate from the fact that “here remained the
Saxons who managed less (to do things)”.
Therefore, the present day Saxon community from Biertan, lacking a leader,
with few material resources, without the traditional form of local organization – the
“nachbarschaft” and characterized by very weak forms of mutual assistance and
cooperation is rather a sum of individuals and not a community. The only thing that
might be a catalyst for this community could be the cultural heritage, namely, the
Fortress, around which this community might reconstruct spontaneously, without any
external intervention 10
8
According to the data of the 1880 census, published in Studia Censualia Transsilvanica. The 1880
Census in Transylvania, Staff Publishing House, 1997, the Saxon community from Biertan village
counted 1479 persons and the Evangelic community counted 1526 persons.
9
The terms of “closed” and “open” define the endogamous rules of marriage for the closed
communities and the exogamous rules for the open communities.
10
It might be possible for this community to mobilize for the reparation of the Fortress and then to
“supervise” the consequences of its investments (in work or cash), which might work as a catalyst for
the community.
The Gypsy
Considering that both Romanians, Magyars, Saxons and Gypsies live in the
village, we tried to find out whether there are problems in the village starting from the
ethnic group. The image promoted preponderantly, both by the authority and by most
of the simple people, is that of a “full harmony” between the ethnic groups. The
Gypsy too, are not like in other places, the authority told us, the police and simple
people included. The stereotype answer when asked about problems or arguments
with the Gypsy, was: “Any forest has dry trees”, meaning that the Gypsy steal, fight,
but not more than the others, just like the Romanians, Saxons or Magyars living there.
The fact that the crime rate is low among the Gypsy may be true, but the
problem that emerges and which is kept silenced by most of the people is the
marginalization of the Gypsy, both spatial, and caused by the behaviour of the village
people and authority towards the Gypsy. What made us suspicious and made us to
probe more deeply, were the statements of the Gypsy mainly, and some statements of
the village people in general about the behaviour of the town hall staff and about the
behaviour of the post office staff towards the Gypsy. Reality is probably, as always,
between what the Gypsy say and what the other say about their problems with the
Gypsy.
A thing a certain, the spatial location at the margin of the village: the Gypsy
are concentrated on three peripheral streets – Brazilor, Mărginaş and Crişan, streets
with no pavement (just dirt), which are almost impracticable when it rains, the only
thing “saving” them, being a trail of concrete slabs on the side. Of course, there are
Gypsy families spread throughout the village, including the main street, but they are
rather the exception to the rule. This spatial location, together with the precarious
material situation of this ethnic group are some of the factors generating social
marginalization (considering the Gypsy inferior, a “servant” 11 ).
We do not want to say with this that the situation is much different in Biertan
than in other villages throughout the country inhabited by Gypsy. Neither that there
are conflicts of the Gypsy with the other villagers, but that there are latent tensions
between the Gypsy and authorities in the village of Biertan. These tensions are kept
under control, but are also fueled by the policy of the town hall towards this ethnic
group, summarized by the remark of some of the town hall officials towards some
requests of the Gypsy: “First the house and then the stable” 12 . The policy is therefore
to leave on the last place the problems connected to the peripheral areas and this
ethnic group and to invest in the “façade”.
The problems mentioned by the Gypsy, with a very clear correspondent in the
reality of the village are: the poor quality of the peripheral streets inhabited mostly by
Gypsy, non-granting of social assistance (which is, however, a generalized problem
which does not concern the Gypsy only) and the delay in payment of the allocations.
The first two problems are easily justifiable by the lack of funds at the town hall; it is
more serious, however, that the Gypsy complain about being treated in a
discriminatory manner when the allocations and pensions are paid by the post office
officials (hostile, non-politely behaviour, even delay in payment just to some persons
or groups).
11
Someone told us in an interview that there are no problems with the Gypsy because they, by their
culture and education they received, were accustomed with the work of servants to Romanians and
Saxons, work which most of them do without feeling inferior.
12
The remark was brought to our knowledge both by some Gypsy from the peripheral areas of Biertan
and by some Romanians living in the village.
The Gypsy seem to forget all these problems which they have with the
authority and especially with the town hall, when they consider that the “Mayor gives
them bread on credit”. One of the private bakeries from the village belongs to the
wife of the Mayor and she sells bread on credit. This fact is attributed by the Gypsy to
the Mayor as a good thing which “wipes” all the other “bad” ones. An example
supporting this statement is the following: within the focus group with Gypsy, we
asked the persons attending the meeting, few minutes after it started, to give a mark to
the Mayor, just as in school. They gave us the collective and unanimous mark – 10.
At the end of the discussion, after almost two hours in which they also told us about
the problems they have with the town hall, the Mayor included (they consider that the
town hall officials do no treat them with respect, even more, they usually solve the
problems of villagers to the detriment of the Gypsy – the issue of houses, the issue of
roads not covered in asphalt, the issue of materials for repairing the state owned
houses…), we asked them again to score the Mayor and again, collectively and
unanimously, they gave the Mayor a 10, arguing that the other thing do not matter,
what matters being that the “Mayor gives bread on credit”. The practice of selling on
credit is not very expanded in Biertan, being used just in one bar in the village.
Interethnic relations
Most of the interviewed subjects sustained that there is a total harmony in the
interethnic relations, with no conflicts whatsoever. As we mentioned before, the
Gypsy support the same version, the conflicts being placed at the level of relations
with the authority.
We can not refrain from mentioning the admiration expressed by part of the
villagers, both Romanians, Magyars and Gypsy, for the relations existing with the
Saxon community when this still was a strong community.
It seems that there is currently a special sort of collaboration between the two
smaller ethnic communities from Biertan: the Magyars and the Saxons, relations
established, probably, just because of this state of minority of the two communities
living in Biertan. This type of collaboration, much less structured than the
collaboration within the “nachbarschaft”, “fills in” for a “nachbarschaft”. The last
Saxon “nachbarschaft” only exists “formally”, but not in practice. The fact that this
“nachbarschaft” ceased functioning and the fact that both communities (Saxon and
Magyar) are small communities with low resources, determined them to develop them
to develop forms of mutual assistance. This assistance is not institutionalized at the
level of the two communities but, instinctively, the members of these communities
develop individual strategies of mutual assistance.
We may, therefore, say that the interethnic relations at the level of simple
people living in Biertan are not defined by conflicts, but rather by a high tolerance.
There are of course, and the villagers mentioned them, interpersonal conflicts, but not
exclusively based on ethnic affiliation, but rather due to the intake of alcohol.
The spatial location of the different ethnic groups in the village only yields an
area with Gypsy as majority, the other areas being inhabited in a mixed manner by
Romanians as majority, with representatives of the other ethnic groups. The situation
of location is different from the one existing before 1989, when there was a clearly
defined area inhabited by Saxons, an area inhabited by Gypsy and an area inhabited
mostly by Romanians. When the Saxons left the mixed ethnic inhabiting started,
which decreased the ethnic territorial segregation in the village.
Fig. 9 Location of the ethnic groups
in Biertan before 1989
Fig. 10 Location of the ethnic groups
in Biertan after 1989
Infrastructure
The different types of roads are distributed in the following manner in the
different areas of Biertan village: covered with asphalt – the central areas (Bălcescu
and Aurel Vlaicu streets forming the axis of the village and small portions of other
streets around the Fortress. Rather wealth area), covered with stones – the medium
areas (Vladimirescu, Avram Iancu, Coşbuc, Cuza streets, starting from the axis,
leading towards the periphery, towards the dirt streets, medium wealthy area, plus
Horia street which is parallel with the axis, street covered in stones but degraded now
to the level of a dirt street – medium – poor area), dirt streets – the peripheral streets
(Brazilor, Mărginaş, Crişan, area preponderantly poor). (See the map on page 1 and
the above maps). We may therefore say that there is in general a correlation between
the degree of road modernization, the geographic localization and the level of wealth.
Out of the total 18 km length of the inner roads of the commune, 9 km come to
the central village, Biertan, 3 to Copşa Mare and 6 km to Richiş. In Biertan village,
out of the 9 km of inner roads, 3 km are covered in asphalt, 5 km are covered with
stones and 1 km is dirt road (source: Biertan town hall).
The road connecting Biertan to the closest towns (Dumbrăveni, Mediaş and
Sighişoara) is covered in asphalt. This road continues towards Richiş, so this village
too benefits of an asphalt covered connection with the three towns mentioned above.
On the other hand, the road connecting Biertan with Copşa Mare is covered in stones
(3 km), which makes it more difficult for this village to connect with the neighbouring
localities. The quality of the road and the lack of public transportation means
connecting Copşa Mare with the surrounding localities is an obstacle both for the
active population of the village and for the children attending V-VIII grades, who
have to come on foot up to Biertan to attend school.
Although many people stated that the number of buses leaving now from
Biertan is lower than before 1989, sources from the town hall declared that the
number is the same, the only difference being that the busses are much emptier now.
There are three buses on the route Richiş – Biertan – Mediaş and one bus on the route
Richiş – Biertan – Dumbrăveni.
From the point of view of road connections and transportation menas, the
village of Biertan is favoured.
The problems connected to infrastructure start with the sewage and running
water. The village does not have sewage or a source of water in the neighbourhood
which to facilitate the contrustion of a sewage network. The villagers built their own
sewage installations, those who could afford it, anyhow. Theremaining problem is the
non-existence of a decanter. Things are the same with running water too: those who
had the means built their own installations, but they have problems with the quality of
water (high iron and calcium content, with impurities) which requires a water
treatment plant.
Unfortunatelly, the people from Biertan town hall did not have available data
on the number of houses with running water, sewage, cooking gas and electricity
installations. We were informed, owever, that most houses have electricity and that
most of the houses not having cooking gas belong to Gypsy.
Dwelling
The Saxon houses whose owners immigrated are divided in three categories:
those that are now owned by the state (which rented them and according to the new
laws, can be bought by the tennants), houses sold directly by the Saxons and houses
left in custody. The town hall officials could not provide data on the number of free
houses in Biertan, but the villagers told us that there are just a few left; it seems there
also are no more free houses that can be rented or sold by the town hall, as the people
who applied for such houses told us. The number of houses in custody either, could
not be specified for each village, but only for the overall commune.
On short, the situation of the Saxon houses is as follows:
Table. 3 Situation of the former Saxon houses
Biertan
Bought directly from the owner
Sold by the state
Rented by the state
In custody
Total of Saxon houses bought directly from the
owner, from the state or rented by the state
57
34
55
n.a. 13
146
Copşa Mare
29
9
25
n.a.
63
Richiş
62
9
25
n.a.
96
Commun
e
148
52
105
40
345
Source: Town hall of Biertan
In Biertan, out of the total of 146 former Saxon houses administered by the
town hall and sold directly by the owners after 1989 (leaving aside the houses in
custody), some 39% were bought directly from the former Saxon owners, 23.3% were
bought from the state and 37.7% are rented from the state. From this lot of 146
houses, 79.5% are inhabited by Romanians (inhabited means both bought directly
from the owner and bought or rented from the state), 4.1% are inhabited by Magyars,
14.4% are inhabited by Gypsy and the balance of 2% are inhabited by Saxons.
13
No data. The number of houses in custody could be obtained by a logic calculation, subtracting the
number of houses sold directly by the Saxons (line 1) from the number of Saxon households left by
Saxons after 1989 (100 households in Biertan, 27 in Copşa Mare and 61 in Richiş). The result does not
agrees, however, with the rest of data (the result is 43 houses in custody in Biertan, more than the
overall commune number, not even taking into consideration that the result for Copşa Mare has a
negative sign in front). This lack of agreement comes from wrong recording with the town hall.
It can be noticed that within each category of occupation of a former Saxon
house (bought directly from the owner, bought or rented from the state), the
Romanian occupants took the highest share, followed at a distance by the Gypsy.
Table. 4 Proportion of inhabiting (by buying directly from the owner, buying
from the state or renting from the state) of the former Saxon houses by ethnic
group
%
Romanians
Magyars
Gypsy
Saxons
Total
Bought
directly
Bought from
the state
Rented from
the state
Total 14
75,4
3,5
21,1
0,0
100,0
97,1
0,0
0,0
2,9
100,0
72,7
7,3
16,4
3,6
100,0
79,5
4,1
14,4
2,1
100,0
The fact that the Romanians had an easier access to the former Saxon houses,
both due to financial reasons and to reasons connected, probably, to the context of the
village (town hall policy of house distribution, number of migrants by ethnic group),
can be inferred from the graph below (Fig.11). It seems that the policy of the town
hall of distribution of former Saxon houses intended to keep the local distribution by
existing ethnic group (mixed population in the center, Romanian majority, with
Gypsy population in the periphery), more precisely, it was generally avoided the sale
or renting of Saxon houses (most of them in the center of the village) to Gypsy ethnic.
Fig. 11 Distribution of houses by ethnic group in the whole village compared to
the distribution of the former Saxon houses by ethnic group, 1998 situation
79,45
80,00
70,00
60,00
50,00
62,82
40,00
30,00
14,38
20,00
4,11
2,05
24,19
10,00
6,98
0,00
Romanians
Occupied former saxon houses
6,01
Magyars
Gypsy
Total no of households
Saxon
Source: Biertan town hall
If we compare the manner in which the fund of former Saxon houses is
divided among the different ethnic groups and the distribution in general in the village
by ethnic group, we can notice that the proportion of former Saxon houses inhabited
by Romanians is higher than the proportion of village houses inhabited by Romanians
(by 16.6%), while the proportion of former Saxon houses inhabited by Gypsy is much
14
The total represents proportion from the fund of Saxon houses occupied by each ethnic group by
direct acquisition from the owner, acquisition from the state or renting from the state.
lower than the proportion of village houses inhabited by Gypsy (by 9.8%). After 1989
therefore, these former Saxon houses were more easily accessible to Romanians and
more difficult accessible to Gypsy, due to financial and contextual reasons, as we
mentioned earlier.
Considering the renovation and the construction of new houses, Biertan can
only count 4 renovations from 1989 (renovations with the approval 15 of the town hall)
and 2 new houses. As mentioned in the beginning of the paper, many of the houses
from the main road and from the other streets reflect this low number of renovations
(at the outside).
Most of the Biertan houses are made of bricks and stone, except for the about
28 houses of clay, concentrated in the poor areas of the village, inhabited exclusively
by Gypsy.
Public services
Communications
Post office
The commune of Biertan has two post offices, one in Biertan village and one
in Richiş village. The Biertan post office is characterized by part of the villagers as a
source of conflict, conflict generated by the attitude of the people working there. The
disfunctionalities were reported in many interviews with different local people:
• payment of allowances for children on the fixed day is selective for certain
categories of people.
• there are cases in which the letters sent from Biertan do not reach the
receiver, as well as cases in which the letters sent to Biertan are not
received. (Some local people told us they prefer to send the letters from
Şaroş on Târnave, Dumbrăveni or Mediaş.)
• there are persons who constantly received their letters opened.
• during the rainy periods the roads not covered in asphalt are “avoided” by
the employees of the post office.
These problems are more so serious as they are not generalized, but aim only
part of the Biertan dwellers. Unfortunately, we could not identify the criteria upon
which this differentiation is made by the employees of the post office.
Switch board
There is only one switch board, in Biertan village, served by two operators.
This is a manual switchboard, rather old, with 209 subscribers: 201 in Biertan, 2 in
Copşa Mare and 6 in Richiş. The data supplied by the Biertan post office differ from
the data supplied by the town hall, according to which only two subscribers are in
Richiş. The capacity of the switchboard is used to the full, sometimes there are two
families using the same line. From this point of view, there are dissatisfactions
connected either to the quality of the switchboard, or to the quality of the service
offered by the operators:
15
The approval for renovation is required for the Saxon houses whose owners are obliged to keep the
outer colour of the house.
•
the subscribers are dissatisfied by the quality of the phone connections
(especially during the rainy periods).
• in Richiş there are complaints from the inhabitants that they are denied the
access to the phone, claims which ended even at the Prefecture of Sibiu
county.
• in Biertan, the local people are dissatisfied with the fact that one of
operators refuses to make the connections.
Otherwise, in most interviews, both the local authority and the citizens
underlined the requirement of building a new digital switchboard which to answer the
requirement for new subscriptions and to solve these problems. The guest house, for
example, could make reservations but the lack of a proper switchboard makes it
impossible, so that in order to make a reservation, the tourist has to call at the Mediaş
office wherefrom the applications are sent to Biertan. The territory of Biertan
commune is not covered by any of the three operators of mobile phones in Romania.
Mass media
The written press only gets to Biertan as subscriptions. The data supplied by
the Post office of Biertan show that each month, 2984 publications arrive in Biertan,
of which 50 for Copşa Mare and 80 for Richiş. The principal of the Post office could
not offer us any information on the number of subscriptions, that is why we consider
these data should be considered with caution because the number of publications also
includes the publications for the local institutions (town hall, school, police, firms).
Only the radio stations of the Romanian Radiodifusion company can be
listened in Biertan.
The only TV station that can be received with a normal antenna is TVR1.
There is a cable TV company supplying a package of 7 programs : two Romanian
(TVR1 and Prima TV) and five foreign. The subscribers are discontented, however,
with the quality of the service supplied by this company, especially due to the
frequent interruptions of the broadcast. Part of the villagers have satellite dishes, with
access to several TV stations. In Biertan there are 217 persons paying TV
subscription, but this number seems to be much lower than the number of persons
owing a TV set.
Cultural services
The only local public institutions that supply cultural services to the
population are the House of Culture and the public library. Both institutions are
situated in the center of Biertan village, in the same square where are the school with
grades V-VIII, the town hall and the police office. The librarian also is the director of
the House of Culture.
Library
The public library is used mainly by the students of the two schools in Biertan
but, besides them, there are, according to the estimation of the librarian, other 30-40
constant readers. The main problem of the library is the lack of funds required to
expand the fund of books. During at least the four years, the library did not buy any
book or did not receive any book.
The House of Culture
The House of Culture is located in a building that can accommodate some six
to seven hundred persons, but it is rather under used. The building is in a rather
proper state, it does not require major reparations but just minor maintenance works
(painting, etc.). During the period following immediately 1989, the House of Culture
hosted several shows with Romanian artists: Mirabela Dauer, Nicolae Furdui Iancu,
Stela Popescu and Alexandru Arşinel, etc. Now, as the villagers told us, this is no
more possible because “the people have no more money for fun purposes”. The
entrance was with tickets, to pay the artists, and the villagers brought from home food
and drink to make a dinner for the artists after the show. The House of Culture also
has a cinema hall, but the people forgot when they saw the last picture. Currently, the
activities hosted by the House of Culture may be framed within five categories:
• Activities organized by the town hall – citizen assembly, each year
• Activities organized by the school – school celebrations, twice a year
• Activities organized by the community – village celebrations, twice a year
on Easter and Christmas
• Activities organized by villagers in their own interest – weddings,
baptizing, parties, etc.
• Other activities – discotheque mainly
For weddings, baptizing and other parties organized by the local people there
is a rent to be paid settled by the Local Council and for the discotheque there is a tax
of 10% of the turnover, the money going to the local budget.
Besides the discotheque organized in the House of Culture there are no other
places one can spend the spare time, except for the bars. Biertan has three bars, one of
which having two pool tables and electronic games (poker-type), the other just
electronic games (poker-type). Generally men go to these bars, irrespective of age or
wealth.
Cultural life
There is a cultural initiative in Biertan, initiative manifested mainly by the
celebrations taking place in the House of Culture. A second sign of this fact is the
existence until recently of a local magazine, “We do not hit with the bat”, consisting
of pamphlets whose authors were local people. Due to the lack of funds the magazine
ceased to be published.
There also are forms of voluntary association of the people from Biertan, with
cultural purposes. One of these forms of association is the former editing collective
of the magazine. Among the initiators of the magazine was the chief of the police
station in Biertan. Another form of association is the “group of actors” acting in the
plays presented in the celebrations from Biertan, also consisting of local people. The
group becomes active during the periods of rehearsal for plays, before the actual
performance. This form of association overlaps the more general form of association
of the “nachbarschaft” 16 . Although the people forming the group of actors are not the
same every year, the form of association as such remains.
16 We found one of the groups that acted this year in the play on the occasion of Easter, helping to
renovate the house of one of the actors as members of the same “nachbarschaft”. This is probably a
single case, and a situation of short duration (because the component of the group of actors changes
every year) and we do not have the knowledge about other forms of association which to overlap the
“nachbarschaft”, or even among themselves.
Also the celebration is the framework for other forms of association, the
chorus of teachers, the group of “căluşari” and more recently, the group of modern
dance.
Consequently, there is a group of people in Biertan interested in the cultural
life of the village and with resources for it. There also is the interest of the villagers
for these cultural manifestations, proof of which being the fact that the Easter
celebration organized in the Hall of the House of Culture brought about 400 people.
The only problem is that the public does not finance this kind of activities, preferring
to spend the money on something else.
Health services
Biertan has a dispensary and a private pharmacy, both serving both the
inhabitants of Biertan and the other two villages belonging to the commune. Also in
Biertan there is Home for the elderly, subordinated to the State Secretary for the
Handicapped.
The dispensary
The dispensary is located in an old building (some 100 years) which has a
problem with water in the basement. As the doctor form Biertan told us, “someone
gave us two more years and then we will find ourselves in the middle of a water
pool”. But this is not the only problem of the dispensary. Before 1989, in Biertan,
besides the general practice doctor, there also was one gynecologist and a dentist.
Currently, Biertan only has a general practice doctor who lives in the village and who
works part time at the Home for the elderly too. Until last month, there was one more
doctor for the village of Richiş, commuting from Mediaş, but he quit due to the too
long distance. So, there is just “the lady doctor” for all three villages, about who the
villagers told us she is “a very good diagnostician and this is damn well”. The
dispensary has just one nurse. During the interview, the doctor told us that both her
and the nurse may be called on emergency, at any time, as confirmed by most of the
villagers. Some of the people we interviewed told us that, in order to be treated, they
have to go “with something to lady doctor”, but they were just isolated cases.
Furthermore, such a behaviour is still within the normal boundaries of the doctorpatient relationship throughout the country.
Each week, the doctor goes to Copşa Mare and now, after the second doctor
left, she has to save a day for Richiş too. If in Richiş, one can go relatively easily, due
to the bus shuttle Biertan - Richiş, the road to Copşa Mare is particularly difficult,
especially during winter. The doctor said that it would be much easier if she had at
least a bike.
The situation of the medical staff was characterized in all interviews as one of
the major problems of Biertan. The local people are discontented that they have to go
all the way to Dumbrăveni or to Mediaş, even for the smallest tooth pain. For the
emergency cases, the doctor gives the first aid and then calls the Mediaş paramedics
who usually get there in about 30 minutes.
The dispensary received for a while, immediately after 1989, aid from the
Germans and Belgians (from the sister-villages of Biertan), consisting in equipment
and medicines, but the equipment – most times – can not be used because it is old.
The strictly needed materials are received each month from the Health Directorate of
Mediaş. From this point of view, the dispensary is poorly endowed, so that we still
“still work the way we know, by the ear and by what the patient tells us”.
Talking about the health state of the villagers, the doctor told us that she has
permanent patients, some of them having symptoms characteristic to poverty diseases.
Most of the people requiring medical care have acute diseases/infections. In March
1999, the dispensary record mentioned 15 cases of TBC, 11 cases of cancer, 18 cases
of mental illness and no AIDS case, to mention only the serious diseases.
There are patients who were prescribed a treatment but, due to the lack of
money, they could not buy the medicines and their illness aggravated. Generally, the
doctor said, the local people can only buy the medicines if they are subsidized,
otherwise they are too expensive.
The villagers are registered on the lists of the family doctor since 1994,
because Sibiu county tried the new system experimentally. The problem appeared,
however, when the commuting doctor left; the village doctor who already had 1800
patients is now forced to take over the patients of the leaving doctor and put them on
her records as well.
The pharmacy
The Biertan pharmacy is the oldest pharmacy in Transylvania, being
established in 1810. Currently, the pharmacy belongs to the commercial company
“Natura SRL”, a company recorded in Biertan. Besides the pharmacy, “Natura SRL”
also has a small laboratory producing plant-based medicines (teas, lotions, ointments
etc.). The company also owns a unit for retail sale in Bucharest. The activity of the
company is connected to the activity of the National Society of Phytotherapy.
The villagers are contented with the services provided by the pharmacy. The
pharmacist (a woman) is very appreciated, mainly because she also sells medicines on
credit.
The Home for the elderly
In 1949, the Home for orphans established previously in Biertan, was
transferred to Mediaş and the Home received old people. The Home has a capacity of
105 beds and is running full for the last two years, with a staff of 30, all local people.
The people cared in this facility are either retired people (with pension for age or
illness), or incomeless persons, or persons with handicap (blind, physical handicap,
neuro-psychical handicap). Among the persons admitted to this facility, only a few are
from Biertan, the others being from other localities of the county.
The buildings used by the Home for elderly are former houses, adapted to the
new utility, being thus rather improper to the function of Home for the elderly. There
also is a new wing where, besides some rooms, there are administrative offices. The
rooms have between two and eight beds and the persons cared in this facility are
assigned to the rooms in such a manner as to be able to assist each other. Each room
has “one or two people which to direct as much as it is possible, the others”.
The assisted persons are offered three meals a day (the director told us this is
the poorest Home), body hygiene, laundry, necessary medical assistance (the Home
has two nurses and a third one is soon to be hired).
The Home is financed from the state budget; the money is “rather little, but
not that little” enough to “provide for food, medicines, cleanness, you know,… the
basics”. The director was forced to look for sponsors in order to make maintenance
works at the Home. An yet, “the budget was the basis”. The sponsorships fall into two
categories:
• sponsorships received from the county companies (Gazmetan Mediaş,
two-three firms from Biertan). These sponsorships have a low value and
usually appear before Christmas or Easter, as food, clothing etc.
• sponsorships from Germany and The Netherlands, received as aid: a car
from Germany, kitchen ware , sewing machines, washing machines etc.
The sponsorships from outside – as the director told us – came “during that
period when Romania was fashionable”. Now it is no more. Bosnia came, then
Somalia, Algeria, others. We are no more.” The director was also contented with the
assistance from Biertan because “we had no claims, the people are just now shaping
as bosses. First they have to gather”.
Yet, the Home is very clean and the food is good. This is partly due to the
director who is a good manager. The Home has its own small pig breeding unit (with
at least 20-25 pigs), two hectares of agricultural land, a vegetables garden, greenhouse
for seedlings. All the products are used for the food of the persons cared in the
institution, so they save a lot of money that can be put to other use. These appendixes
of the Home are run with part of the staff and with part of the assisted people: those
who are apt to work and want to work. “There are people who prefer to work …
because they knew to work in their time, to do this, to do that. If you do not let them
do something, its bad”. During the interview, the director shared with us his vision
about how the Home should work: “Here you have to be just like in a household, just
like in a family. This solves it all. If the father thinks well and puts everybody in his
place, the job is done. Otherwise it does not work”.
Education
Biertan commune has three schools: one school each (grades I-IV) in Copşa
Mare and in Richiş and one school (grades I-VIII) in Biertan. The Biertan school
works in two well kept buildings: in the center of the village there is the building
where the students attending the middle school are learning, while the students
attending the elementary school learn in the building on Avram Iancu street, in a
square which, before 1989, was the center of the area inhabited by Romanians.
The principal of the school told us that the school is confronted with two big
problems: the fluctuation of teachers and the lack of materials required for a proper
teaching activity. The didactic materials are old, the school receiving too little after
1989. Unlike the school in Moşna, where the principle succeeded to establish two
additional complementary classes and bring computers into the school, Biertan seems
to have lacked both the resources and the man to do this. If in Moşna part of the
endowment for the school was offered by the Germans bringing aid, in Biertan the aid
“bypassed” the school, going mainly to the Home for the elderly and to the
kindergarten. We also said that the man who could help the school also lacked,
because the establishment of complementary classes does not require too big an
effort, these classes being more so important for Biertan as the distance to
Dumbrăveni – where there is a high school and a vocational school is larger than the
distance between Moşna and Mediaş, the access being even more difficult. We may
say thus that, if the school in Moşna is an exception and, possibly a model at the same
time, the school in Biertan is a typical example for the situation of schools in the rural
area.
The second big problem for the Biertan school is the situation of the teaching
staff. Currently the staff number is enough, as the principal told us, but they are not all
skilled. There are sic classes teaching the elementary grades (one class with the first
grade, one class with the second grade, two classes with the third grade and two
classes with the fourth grade) according to the normal system, plus a special class
teaching in German. Among the seven teachers, only two are skilled, the other five
being in the process of training. In Copşa Mare and Richiş the situation is even more
difficult, each village having only three teachers, so that the second and third grade
attend classes together.
From the ten teachers from Biertan (mean age 33), three are commuters and
only seven are skilled/trained. This situation discontented the parents of children. A
local people told us that there is a class which had four different form master in three
years, each with a different style of teaching, which only created difficulties.
Otherwise, out of the ten teachers only two are professors in ordinary. A possible
cause for this fluctuation is the lack of houses which the town hall should make
available to the teachers coming to Biertan. The teachers currently teaching in
Biertan, either commute or stay with rent.
Only half of the students graduating the eighth form continue the study, most
at the high school or vocational school in Dumbrăveni where six, respectively sixteen
students were admitted last year.
Another problem is the transportation of the students from Copşa Mare and
Richiş to Biertan. The children from Copşa Mare come to school on foot, on a 3 km
long road, not covered in asphalt. Usually, the children travel this road in some 60
minutes. The children in Richiş, seven km from Biertan, may come by bus, but they
have to buy a monthly ticket which costs 100,000 lei, quite a sum for the budget of
the local people. The school principal told us that the owner of the bus is from Moşna
and he makes the prices to his will, because there is no competitor.
The villagers are discontented with the fact that no social scholarships were
granted this year (in Biertan there are 179 students who should receive this type of
social assistance). The local authority are not to blame, however, for this situation,
because the social scholarships are granted by the county inspector. In Biertan there
are 305 students, the number of not enrolled school-age children being low: some 20
children. The principal told us that one of the main reasons the parents send the
children to school is the state allowance for children. We cold see, anyhow, further
our questionnaires, that there are families whose only source of income is the child
allowance.
The school also has other problems besides the ones pointed out by the
principal. The religion classes are kept separately according to the cult the children
belong to. This is normal due to the difference between the cults. The problem
emerged, however, when part of the teaching staff started to put pressure on the
children not to attend the Greek-Catholic group, even threatening them. The
information was not confirmed from other sources too, but it is consistent with what
we found out about the “simmering” conflict between the two cults at the level of the
leaders (priests). We can talk in this case of a certain state of religious intolerance,
fortunately, little spread among the villagers.
Each of the three villages of the commune has a kindergarten with normal
working hours. The teachers from Copşa Mare and Richiş are currently under training
to become skilled. Biertan has one more kindergarten with longer working hours, the
parents having, though, to pay a tax of 120,000 lei a month. This sum seemed too
large to us considering de rural environment, so that part of the people needing these
services can not use them because of the lack of money. This is not, however, a
source of social inequity (such as in Moşna) because there is also a kindergarten with
normal working hours.
The church
Biertan has three large cults: Christian-Orthodox, Greek-Catholic and
Evangelist, plus some other cults with lower number of parishioners: RomanCatholic, Penticostal, Adventist. The Evangelic church is the very Saxon Fort,
situated in the center of the village; the Greek-Catholic church in on Avram Iancu
street and the Orthodox church is on Horia street, in a peripheral area. Both the
Orthodox and the Greek-Catholic churches are in a good state and do not need repairs.
The Orthodox church was renovated a few years ago and is currently in a very good
state, also due to the fact that the priest forbidden to light candles inside the church.
During winter, the Evangelists hold their church services in a building near the
Evangelic Parish House because it is very cold in the Fortress.
The local people told us that there are no religious conflicts among them. After
1989, there was only one conflict. between the Orthodox church and the GreekCatholic church, the outcome of returning the Greek-Catholic Parish House. During
the period when the Greek-Catholic cult was banned, the Parish House of this cult
was transferred to the property of the Orthodox church. Having two Parish Houses,
the Orthodox church sold one and kept the Greek-Catholic one. When the GreekCatholic church was reinstates, the Orthodox church did not want to return the Parish
House to the rightful owner, which resulted in a conflict between the two churches.
The conflict did not escalate, being solved in the end. The Greek-Catholic church was
given a new Paris House. There are cases when the same family pays taxes both at the
Orthodox and Greek-Catholic church. Despite this, the conflict between the two
priests still exists. On May 9th, Biertan celebrates the Day of Heroes and last year, the
two priests were supposed to hold the church service together, at the same table.
Shortly before the beginning, however, the Orthodox priest refused to perform the
service at the same table with the Greek-Catholic priest (being strongly influenced by
his wife) and thus, the service, although performed by both priests, was done from
separate tables.
The field work took place during Easter celebrations, so we could take part in
the church services occasioned by this event. In the Orthodox church it was
interesting that there were benches so the people attending the service could stay. This
pattern is clearly taken over from the Evangelic church. Also Evangelic influence
seemed to be the position in church according to age: the young ones can participate
in the service on condition they stay in the balcony. This rule is applied only until
marriage. In the Evangelic church the teens over 14 stand behind the other
participants. These influences show the respect the local people have for the Saxon
cultural pattern and also the flexibility of the religious community.
Also at the Resurrection service, we could observe the sums of money they put
at the icon. Most of the villagers donated no more than one thousands lei, which could
be interpreted as a sign of poverty of the villagers,
Local authorities
Since 1989 until now, Biertan had six Mayors, four of which during 19891992. At the 1996 elections, there were four candidates for the chair of Mayor. The
current Mayor run in elections for PUNR and he was Mayor before 1989 too. The
vice-Mayor run for PDAR and he also was Mayor between 1992-1996, coming in
second in 1996. He is currently vice-Mayor and member of the local council.
The local council consists of 11 persons and has the following traits:
• all local counselors are Romanian ethnic
• among the eleven counselor there is only one woman
• nine counselors are from Biertan, two from Copşa Mare and there is no
counselor from Richiş
• the distribution by political parties is as follows: PUNR – 4; PDAR – 4;
PD – 1; PDSR – 1; PNŢCD – 1
• Copşa Mare has one counselor from PUNR and one from PDAR
The post-December history of the local authority knew two stages. The first
stage, from 1990 until 1992, can be characterized by a period of “search”, of
“incertitude”, which explains the large number of holders of the chair of Mayor. The
second stage, after 1992, was characterized by a certain stability, especially if we
consider the fact that the former Mayor is currently vice-Mayor.
It seems that the 1996 elections had some irregularities. If in Biertan there
were 8 votes cancelled and in Copşa Mare 9, in Richiş there were no less than 100
votes cancelled, fact interpreted by some local people as fraud in elections. The
Mayor did not win the election in Biertan, but in Copşa Mare (his home village) and
in Richiş. It is also interesting that among the eleven counselors there is no Gypsy
counselor, while 32.6% of the population of Biertan consists of Gypsy ethnic. A
Gyspy informer from the village told us that a Gypsy ethnic intended to run for the
1996 elections but he withdrew because he was put the last on the vote ballot, which
he considered to be “mockery”. Another person told us in an interview that the Mayor
had a very good policy, which gave the commune a chance to group the Gypsy in the
peripheral areas of the village, not to be “too visible”. Other discussions revealed the
answer of the town hall staff to the requests of Gypsy ethnic to repair the streets they
live on: “first the house and then the stable” (with the variant: “first the face and then
the back”). All this shows a possible policy of isolation of the Gypsy in Biertan,
which, in combination with their current precarious material situation, may generate
in time, a series of interethnic tensions.
The question “who are the most respected people in the village?” was
answered by 46 people, 22 indicating the Mayor and 6 the vice-Mayor, which shows a
high level of confidence. The trust in the Mayor seems to be influenced by two
factors: he is the only owner of bakery who sells bread on credit and second, during
the period he worked as a veterinarian he helped the people every time they needed.
The profession clearly brought him a capital of trust because “the man is strictly
connected through the animals, through his daily activity, to the cows, to the pigs.
That is his fortune. And if he didn’t go to fix them … the man would loose. So they
pleased him”. A villager told us the Mayor’s logo in the elections was: “If you are not
with me, I will no longer cure your animals”. It may be an “unofficial” logo. In the
period before 1989, when he also was a Mayor, the people told us he was an “iron
hand”, “he cut and hang”, some characterizing him as the “type of caste-man”. But
this was forgotten (or forgiven), more important to the villagers being the present
behaviour of the Mayor.
There are very many complaints of the people who did not receive the social
assistance for almost one year, considering that the Mayor is to be blamed for this
situation. The Mayor says there is no money to pay the social assistance, but the
people wonder why other neighbouring communes have the money and Biertan does
not have. An informer told us that the money for social assistance is scarce, but even
if there was money, it would not be given because the town hall did not send the files
to Sibiu. The negative aspects shown above balance, however, what the town hall of
Biertan did, because there also are pluses, not only minuses.
Last year (1998), the town hall received a computer from the county council.
So for, nobody from the town hall knows to work on the computer (there are two
persons willing to attend a training course on computer utilization), but the Mayor
considers “to draw up a contract with a specialized firm to put into the computer all
the data from the town hall as well as the agricultural records”. The town hall also has
a tractor and two trailers with which, “first we take out the household garbage from
the three villages of the commune, we transport the chemical fertilizers from the plant
to the pasture, the construction materials, or we lend the tractor to physical or
juridical persons, according to the decision of the local council and against a fee”. The
tractor is also used as “exchange instrument”. We witnessed such an arrangement: the
director of the Home for the elderly needed a tractor to transport something, while the
Mayor needed some persons to clean the center of the commune before Easter. So,
they closed a bargain: the Mayor lend the tractor to the Home for the elderly, while
the director of the Home gave some of the staff for cleaning. Such agreements are
rather frequent, not just with the Home for the elderly, but with the other institutions
as well. The Mayor even declared: “we are available, from our poverty, to help them
as we can.” This type of cooperation – a favour for a favour – is frequently used by
the town hall. It must be mentioned that the Mayor gives particular attention to the
manner in which the commune looks, especially due to the large number of foreign
visitors. To take care of the park in the center of the commune, the town hall hired a
person and because there are no funds to pay this activity, that person was given the
right to use a vegetable garden.
The Mayor mentioned some projects that have already been finalized after
1996:
• construction of a concrete bridge down stream of Biertan, bridge
connecting 4 large plots (some 500 hectares of arable land)
• cover in asphalt Coşbuc street, street going in a circle around the Fortresschurch
• arrangement of the park in the center of Biertan village
• the problem of public lightning in all the commune was solved and new
lamps were installed on the main road of Biertan village
• on Brazilor street a small bridge was built and two small bridges were
restored
• the brook running along Cloşca street, in Biertan village, was regularized
and cleaned
• in Copşa Mare, on the main road, two bridges and their drainage were
restored
• in Richiş, a pool necessary to bath the sheep as treatment against scabies,
was built
•
several bridges and small bridges in the field were restored, facilitating the
transportation of the products and the access of tractors for land works
• each year minor works of maintenance take place: paint in limestone,
maintenance and cleaning of the gutters, etc.
The vice-Mayor claims that these projects were, indeed, finalized by the
current leadership, but they were initiated by him, when he was a Mayor; he is not
glad at all that the Mayor does not recognize his contribution. These are small
misunderstandings, generated perhaps by the desire to gain votes. What matters is that
the projects were continued after the team that started them changed and that the
villagers were the ones gaining most.
The town hall has several projects for the future:
• feasibility studies for the modernization of other streets from Biertan
• connection of the commune to the long distance phone lines
• sewage system
• running water
• fitting the school with modern equipment
• cover in asphalt the roads between Biertan and Copşa Mare, between
Richiş and Hula Perişorului (DJ 141b)
• confirmation, in cooperation with ANTREC, of at least 10-15 households
that can practice rural tourism
• creation of en ecological dump site to collect the household garbage
The purpose of all these projects is to transform Biertan from commune into
tourist town. The Mayor is little confident in the chances for success of these projects,
mainly due to the lack of money from budget, which “this year seems poorer than
ever”. He considers that the new law of the local administration will hinder the
achievement of these projects: “Considering that starting this year the budget is
formed locally, the very low sources of income, the volume of works we would like to
execute – there would be many. But due to the lack of financial funds, we stay very
bad at the chapter of income. We also consider the aspect … if the source of income is
small this shows that the source of financing too, the source of income for the
inhabitants of the commune, is poor. If we would only have the money, the rest would
be OK.”
Each year, or anytime it is required, the town hall organizes the Citizens’
Meeting, where the Mayor presents the report on the economic and social state of the
commune. This meeting which is a public, open one, can be attended by any person in
the village, but most times, every family sends a representative. On this occasion, the
House of Culture is full, the villagers being interested to find out “how is it going”
with their commune. The town hall has no special program for audiences. Anybody
that has a problem with the Mayor can come at any time during the working hours.
Last year (1998), the Mayor had 376 audiences; this year he had 186 during the first
four months.
The town hall, together with the Romanian Society of Phytotherapy
(represented by Mr. R.L.) established in 1996 the Biertan 2000 Foundation, about
which R.L. told us: “The Foundation Biertan 2000 was created as a local consortium
in 1996, in September, on the occasion of the meeting of Saxon people all around. We
agreed, together with the Town hall, to establish the fundaments for a local
consortium. At that moment we did not know of the World Bank Program, but we felt
there is a possibility to make something going, to develop projects based on this
consortium. The founding members are the town hall and SFR. This is a NGO.”
Economic activities
Agriculture
“Well, only from Biertan,
downwards towards Şaroş, I
feel like crying when I see
there all that barren land …
It is a pity that so much land
remains not worked”
Biertan commune is one of the largest communes in Sibiu county, with a total
agricultural area of 9291 hectares. Out of this surface, 18% is arable land, 41% is
covered with forests, 37% with pastures and hay fields, the balance of 4% are
vineyards and orchards. This land configuration of Biertan – with less than one fifth
arable land – shows clearly that the area is much more suitable to animal breeding
than to agriculture. The graph below shows the agricultural areas owned by the
different categories of owners.
Fig. 12 Surface of agricultural area by type of owner
4000
3500
13
89
10
35
H
e 2500
c
t 2000
a
r 1500
e
16
62
3000
34
80
Private Households
Strainasi
Firms
Saxon Association
0
0
0
34
1
33
5
1
19
43
34
4
40
31
7
500
28
5
1000
0
Arable
Pastures / Hayfields
Vineyards / Orchards
Forests
Source: Biertan Town Hall
Out of the total arable land, 62% is owned by private households, 17% is
owned by străinaşi, 19% are owned by the IAS (state-owned agricultural enterprise)
and 2% is owned by the Saxon Association. Under these conditions, no less than 79%
of the arable land (the land owned by the private households and the strainasi) is
worked either at the level of the household, or given into lease. For those working
their land within the household this situation is particularly difficult. The very high
cost of mechanized works, the lack of mechanized equipment, the very low prices
obtained on the products, the lack of markets, only “push” the peasant towards a
subsistence agriculture. In most cases the land was not returned in one place only, but
in two-three plots, even more, so that most people only work the best plot, leaving
barren the other plots they own. The sale of agricultural products is a very rare
behaviour in Biertan, the people preferring to use the products in their own household,
either for self consumption, or for animal feeding.
The situation is different for the pastures and hayfields: the private households
only own 40%, the IAS own 48%, the strainasii have 10% and the Saxon Association
has the balance of 2%. The IAS has the largest area of pastures and hayfields,
explained by the presence in Biertan of an animal farm, branch of Dunbrăveni IAS.
The local people also own an important area of pastures and hayfields because when
the land was divided, the people not owing land received at least one plot of hayfield.
Most of the people that received land received 50 ari (1 ar = 5000 sq.m) arable land
and 60 ari hayfield. Using this land, the local people secure the winter fodder for
animals.
The Dumbrăveni IAS also owns a vineyard farm in Biertan, which explains
why 94% of the vineyards and orchards from Biertan belong to the IAS. The villagers
only own 9% of the forests, the balance being owned by juridical persons.
The agricultural engineer told us that only 30% of the land is good (is
considered to be the first class for that area), the balance being third category land.
Before 1989, they worked for animal evaluation and they cultivated: wheat, corn,
potatoes, feed-grade beet, sugar beet, clover, alfalfa. The overall commune has some
600 hectares, of which 150 in Biertan village, which are “very good, proper for any
crop, you have the warranty they can take grow crop at all”. Due to the climate of the
area no plant with long vegetation cycle (plants with big production) can be cultivated
because they do not reach maturity.
Land division
Up to now, 94% (954 out of a total of 1017) of the property titles have been
issued in Biertan, a rather unusual situation for the Romanian villages. Land division
took place without problems, except for minor situations: there were a few persons
who wanted to receive land exclusively in one area, which yielded some minor
argues. Most of the population in Biertan, however, is contented with the manner in
which the land was divided, as confirmed by all the persons we talked to. The
commune has 331 households not owning land, of which 157 in Biertan.
In Biertan and in Copşa Mare the land was divided according to the former
location, while in Richiş the system “first came – first served” was applied. This was
possible in Richiş because before 1989, the highest proportion of Saxon ethnic lived
here. After they left, a large area of excedentary land was available, so it was decided
to give land to everyone according to his wish, while the land that remained entered in
the reserve of the town hall. This manner of land division was more favourable
because all the people that received land, received first category land, while if they
were to receive land according to the former location, this would mean lower category
land. The town hall has a reserve of 396 hectares of land, most of which in Richiş
village. One third of this land is arable.
Land division on the former location had unpleasant consequences, the most
powerful being the strong fragmentation of the land. A villager told us during the
interview that the Biertan people might have accepted to receive land on some other
location too than they had before, but the “strainasii came to take their land they only
wanted to take them according to the old location so they fragmented the land”. The
land fragmentation, combined with the lack of equipment and with land configuration,
little suited to mechanic works, stopped the formation of agricultural associations in
Biertan.
The data supplied by the town hall show that little land was sold in Biertan.
Only two persons sold a total of 5 hectares for an average price of 1,000,000 lei by
hectare. A villager explained us: “They did not sell land, who’s going to buy it? And
it is expensive too …They would rather take it (in leasing) and work it with 20-30%
from year to year.” Also from the town hall we found out that there are 31 households
who leased land. Among these, only two drew papers, the rest preferring “to agree”
with the one taking the land in lease. The ones giving the land in lease are mainly the
old people – who have no money to work the land and no work force available – and
the strainasi, but to a lower extent. For their land, they receive 20-30% of the
production. The people taking the land in lease are those not owing land or owing too
little, but have available resources to work it: either machinery, or cash, or work force.
However, there are only few people who want to take land in lease. There are two
explanations for the fact that people do not record with the town hall when they give
land in lease: they pay no tax and/or the people taking the land are trustworthy people.
The people not owning land received, upon request, (according to Law
18/1991), 50 ari arable land and 60 ari hayfield, land from the reserve of the town
hall. Unfortunately, this land is not clustered, but it is located in three different plots,
rather far from the village. This prevents the land from being used to the full.
In 1998, only 25% of Biertan households did not own land, 31% in Copşa
Mare and 30% in Richiş. On overall commune, 28% of the households did not own
land. In Biertan village no difference between ethnic groups was noticed concerning
the number of households without land:
Table. 5 Households without land by ethnic group (percentage)
Romanians
Saxons
Gypsy
Magyars
Total
Biertan village
24.8
27.1
26.8
25.5
25.4
Biertan commune
24.5
41.5
32.9
28.4
27.8
The percentage of Gypsy households not owning land is close in Biertan
village to the percentage of other ethnic groups, showing that the ethnic affiliation
was not a criterion for land division.
Asking why there are households without land, we were answered: “Now,
there would still be land, but who will go to work in other places, because the wild
boars come …” As in the case of Moşna, there is land, but it is far from the village, of
poor quality and the crops are ruined by the wild animals.
CAP – AGROMEC (SMA) – IAS
After 1989, both the CAP and the AGROMEC were cancelled. The sections,
the machinery and the animals of the CAP “were sold for almost nothing”. When the
CAP was cancelled, several production sections were still working: a section of
juices, a forge, two carpentry, a section producing a sort of pastry, solariums, etc. The
CAP only had two machinery and one tractor, most of the equipment belonging to the
AGROMEC: 12 tractors fully equipped, 5 combines (another person who had also
worked in the AGROMEC told us that before 1989 there were 25 tractors and 10
combines). The equipment was put out for auction, the former employees of the
AGROMEC having priority at buying. Thus, part of the equipment went to people in
Dumbrăveni who used to work before in Biertan. The tractors of the AGROMEC
were sold in installments to the village tractor drivers for a low price. From all the
tractors sold at auction, only one still exists in Biertan. We subsequently found out
from one of the village tractor drivers that from among the people that bought the
tractors at auction, only one or two bought them for their own use, the others bidding
for another person with money but without the right to bid because they were not
from that village. Out of the 5 combines, only two still exist, bot broken down and
impossible to repair. Thus, following the cancellation of these two units, neither the
state, nor the villagers had something to gain. On the contrary, as a villager said,
“After the CAP was cancelled, they also got cancelled, they got the land they received
and can no longer earn their living”.
In Biertan there are two sections of the Dumbrăveni IAS: an animal farm and a
wine cellar, while in Richiş there is a vineyard. The section from Richiş works in
deficit, but the two sections from Biertan work very well. Because the Biertan
sections belong to Dumbrăveni the local management can not get involved in the
manner of administration of these sections. Discussing about the situation of the
Biertan sections of IAS, we were told:
”I do not know why they keep talking about the privatization
of the IAS. The IAS were privatized at least two and a half, three
years ago. They call it state-owned because they have patrimony,
but what did the state do for them in three years? Well, if I were
your child, you should help me with things … But they kill the IAS
with the bank interests first and second, the govern, because it does
not solve something with the interests, with the money they took …
all the work they do, they do it for the interest, they work for the
banks … now they work differently, they count every liter of fuel oil,
they do not work just for the sake of working, they do not work in
deficit, they work to gain, but what they gain the bank takes away,
with the bank interests. This kills them with the bank interests. This
is the first. The second. The debts they have, when they were done,
they were taken for the whole IAS and now all the farms have to pay
in equal shares. It is not fair. And this is overall country, not only in
Biertan. It is not fair. Each should pay for his own debt. For
example, we have the animal breeding here, which is going very
well, we have the wine cellar, which is going very well. We never
worked in deficit, but they pay for the debts of others (C.I,
entrepreneur)
The Richiş vineyard “was kind of destroyed due to the lack of funds.” The
terraces made before 1989 were constructed wrong, three – four meters wide, and the
margin lines do not produce, which means a low production of grapes.
The wine cellar runs relatively well, and if before 1989, it produced 100
wagons of must, which was subsequently processed into wine, last year they only
produced 2 wagons – which means a 98% drop in the production. The wine cellar
makes a very good wine, but they do not have the technology for pasteurization. The
villagers are proud with the wine produced by their wine cellar. They say King Mihai
used to drink Biertan wine and that during the high level Romanian – Soviet
meetings, they only drank Biertan wine.
The IAS has some 50 permanent employees plus, during the summer time,
seasonal workers, most from other regions of the country. Knowing that one of the
major problems of Biertan is the lack of work places, we asked why does not the IAS
hire local people and why do they prefer outsiders. The answer was the following:
“Even I asked myself this question many, many times and I
even asked them too. They have a fix idea. They gave those people
food and a bed, because they still have the dormitories, they still
have the canteen. And the local people, they do not have such
requirements. But they have this fix idea. And this is a mistake. And
they do it only with the vineyard. With the animal farm, they are
right. They bring people from Maramureş. Well, they can’t do it with
their employees, and the Maramureş people are specialized in
producing the forages. They work like a tractor: they cut uphill and
downhill too. Those don’t know, poor dear … And they can take
advantage of the good weather, because this is how it is with the
hay, and then they bring Maramureş people, because they do not
make mistakes there, with animal breeding” (C.I.)
This policy of bringing people from other parts of the country was decided by
the IAS management at Dumbrăveni “so that we, at the level of the local
management, we can not interfere”.
Agricultural associations
In Biertan there is just one agricultural association – of the Saxon ethnic and,
as a joke, we may say that it does not feel well either. The main reason why the Saxon
Association does not work properly was revealed to us by a villager: “The
Association was badly conceived. I mean, first, it lacked management and the fish
stinks starting with the head…” The Saxon ethnic Association – grouping the Saxon
ethnic from Biertan and Richiş – is managed by a female Saxon living in Bucharest
and journalist as profession. We will let a villager to tell us something about the
association:
“When you, a journalist who only worked with papers, writing
poems, and you force that one – because they had managers here
too, there were good people among them – and she confused them,
so that he said, the one who was a good guy, he started to steal too.
Because they do not have bad lands. If they did something well it
was that they took all in one place 17 . This is what they did well. And
it is not late to fix the association, but those people just do not have
the good hand, they don’t have that hand, which must be and not to
be bothered by anybody. To let him be and only when the results
come, to take him by the ears: hey, did you do well, or…The lack the
specialist and the man of confidence and the industrious man […] I
don’t know how can she make it, to direct from Bucharest the
agriculture from Biertan and Richiş because me, I couldn’t do it”
(C.I.)
17
The land of the Association is in Richiş, where the people were returned their plots where they
wanted, not on the former locations, so that the Saxon ethnic could merge their plots.
Only the Saxon ethnic have land in the association, both the ones from Biertan
and the ones from Richiş. The land is divided in two places: they have merged the
pasture in one place and the arable land into another place at a distance. The land is
worked every year “but the production, oh dear.” From what we found out, it seems
that the things do not go well because of the chief of the association: “She established
this association and she dreamed big … to make a hotel in the field, where there is no
water, no power, no cooking gas … she is a dreamer, so …” The activity of this
woman was characterized, by the person who volunteered the information on the
association, as “she kept going like this, from mistake into mistake towards the final
victory.” (in Romanian it has a rhyme that can not be translated) These mistakes, she
does not do them from ill will, but simply because she knows nothing about
agriculture. We were even provided with an example about the fate of one of the
former managers of the association:
“There was a better one, he was crushed, poor dear, this one
knocked him down and she put another one instead, a Gypsy from
Richiş who take care…He went with other Gypsies to harvest the
corn last autumn. He brought there groups of Gypsies to harvest the
corn and he said he had finished the job in a record time compared
to the guy before him. And he said, these people worked, and he paid
them but they worked well. I stood there and I laughed because
those only harvested half the plot so they can steal the rest
afterwards. And he paid them well too, because they were
industrious. I mean, this is something…So, how can things go well”
(C.I.)
Another person told us: “She heads from Bucharest a matter that is well above
her. We are pals so, I do not want to say more, but she is kind of dupe in all this
business.”
The Association has equipment with which it might earn some money working
the land of people, but “once, there is the tractor driver that steals, because he goes
and his boss doesn’t know: he says, I was at “nenea” Ion and I ploughed 30 ari, but he
had ploughed 80 ari. He returned the money for 30 ari, but they give him a receipt for
10 ari. So he ploughed 80 ari and the association cashed the money for only 10 ari.”
So, not even an association with clustered land and with the equipment needed
to work its own land does not succeed to become a profitable association. It is
noteworthy that both in Biertan, in Moşna or in Viscri, the only associations that still
exist, are Saxon associations and none is performing. In all three cases, the
responsible is considered to be the manager of the association, because he/she did not
know how to manage it efficiently.
The Romanian ethnic have no association. The Biertan people gave us the
following reasons why the Romanians could not make an agricultural association:
fragmentation of the land, lack of equipment, lack of a person able to take such an
enterprise to an end. The agricultural engineer told us that the mistake occurred
immediately after the CAP was cancelled, when an agricultural association should
have been established. If such an association were created at that time, it would have
benefited of the facilities offered by the law and it would have been much more easier
to “make it run on its feet.”
After the CAP was cancelled the villagers tried to establish an association:
“The members of the former cooperative wanted to stay within an association. They
knew the reality of agriculture.” But the people coming from the city were opposed to
this because they wanted to take the land back. Some of them even accused the
villagers of communism when they were proposed to re-establish an agricultural
association. So that “they destroyed the land, the people who did not know the reality
of agriculture … it was the people from the town”.
The fear of the strainasi was recurrent in the speech of the local people,
accusing them of land fragmentation, of blocking the initiative of establishment of
agricultural associations. If in the beginning the strainasi were interested in the land
they owned, now most of the land is barren. The explanation a villager offered us is as
follows: “They worked with enthusiasm in the first year and they thought agriculture
is all milk and honey and then, when they saw how tough agriculture actually is, how
hard it is, they gave up. In 1992 for example, you could see cars on all hills, in bathing
suits, they thought they came here for fun.”
The villagers are little confident in the chances of establishing an agricultural
association:
• “-Do you think there is going to be established an agricultural association?
– I don’t think so. There is no one to take care of it, to establish an
association. The people feel sorry. Many feel sorry that when the CAP was
cancelled they did not make an association. An now they see they can no
longer work the land.” In order to establish a profitable association “you
need a coordinator and tractor drivers with tractors. If you have three –
four good people, you don’t need 20 and you can work the land”.
• “No association was established because they did not find any piece of
clustered land which to be … because there are a few land owners who
keep at … they have the possibility to work it by themselves with the
animals or with something else, and they don’t want to work it together,
don’t want to give it because they work the land with their animals and
they fragment you. As example, there are here some 20 hectares, four of
them don’t give it. One has a tractor, two have horse teams, they don’t
want and they break the land in four and from now on there is nothing that
fits you”.
• “I don’t know if someone would venture now to start an association. There
would be land and people who might give it, but I don’t know if there is
anybody who would take the responsibility to establish an association.”
Many of the people we talked to feel bad about not having an association in
Biertan: “Were it an association, it would have been fine … if somebody would take
care of the association, only then you could bring all that land and work it all.”
Individual households
Biertan village has a total of 471 households owning land. The graph below
shows the distribution of households according to the area of agricultural land they
own:
Fig. 13 Houses by owned area of agricultural land
1 - 3 ha
47%
3 - 5 ha
21%
0.5 - 1 ha
22%
7 - 10 ha
3%
5 - 7 ha
7%
Source: Biertan Town Hall
For the households owning land, the average area per household is 2.11
hectares, one hectare lower than the average area in Moşna. It must be reminded that
the villagers own 5 hectares tops, the people owning more than 5 hectares being
strainasi.
The data of the Agricultural Record show the following distribution of animals
among the 533 households of Biertan:
Table. 6 Animal heads – Biertan, 1998
Cattle
Sheep
Goats
Pigs
Horses
Animal heads
361
1064
84
401
98
Households
96
83
32
152
64
Proportion households
18%
16%
6%
29%
12%
Source: Biertan Town Hall
Therefore, there is a total of 361 cattle, grouped in 96 households. Among
these households, 83% have no more than 3 animals and only 5% have more than 9
animals. As the pigs are concerned, 86% of the households have no more than 3 pigs
and only 4% have more than 10 pigs. The data of the Agricultural Record only show
the situation of the people living in Biertan, it does not include the strainasi.
If we did not observe large differences between the households of the
Romanian ethnic and the Gypsy ethnic, the differences appear when we consider the
number of animals per household. According to the data supplied by the town hall,
out of the 96 households raising cows, only 4 are Gypsy households, with a total of 6
heads; out of the 152 households raising pigs, only 5 are Gypsy, with a total of 12
heads. This aggravates further the situation of Gypsies who, besides the fact that they
do not raise animals, they do not even work their land. The data is consistent with
what we found out in the interviews: most Gypsies have the children allowance as the
only source of income.
There are only three tractors, all of them owned by Romanians. Of the 46
wagons, 28 belong to Romanians, 15 to the Gypsy and 3 to Magyars.
What happens to the land owned by the private households? The local people
have several strategies. Most work just part of the land, just to live from one harvest
to the next. They could be characterized as follows: ”The farmers of the beginning of
transition in Romania are mainly peasants or farmers of self-consumption. They
produce for self-consumption, with minimal rhythms of input (fertilizers, insecticides,
herbicides, specialized services etc.) for the agricultural production. The
entrepreneurial behaviour is strange to them, they do not buy, they do not sell, they do
not invest and they do not make plans for agricultural investments” 18 .
What does agriculture means for them? First, they work how much land they
can, from the harvest they keep a part for their own consumption and with the rest
they raise animals, sell part of the animals to be able to work the land again next year
and start all over again. As a villager said, “they keep the products at home and they
take care of the pigs, cows …To sell, only those who might have more, sell. Nobody
sells wheat because it does not grow. Corn, they sell, so and so, from one to another.
But do not go to the silo because they do not pay.”
We tried to find out how do people work their land. Corn and potatoes are the
main crops. They might grow wheat but there is no combine for straw crops. We were
told in an interview:
“After the revolution there was a thing <<what do we need
agricultural engineers? We know more agriculture than the animal
breeder or than the veterinarian or than the agricultural engineer.
We do not need specialists. We do not need specialist, we are the
specialists>> Well, they started and they played by the ear and they
blew it …They don’t know at all technology. A technology …
because great grandfather did so. Now we only have one engineer
and you should see how they go to him: how much I need of this,
how much I need of that, you should see how they seek him for
technical advise. … The specialists started to take a hold in the
village and to direct a little bit. But they direct those with money
and those who come to them, because they don’t pay the engineer,
just have money and cultivate the land. And they saw that it was
wrong for them to go by the ear and they saw that if they listen to
the engineer, the deal changes.” (C.I.)
Agriculture, as it is made by most of the villagers, seems to be an agriculture
under the sign of NO: “They do not abide by the technology, they do not use quality
seeds, they do not observe the best period for seeding, they do not observe the
distance between plants and where they seed, it is either too distanced, that it will not
grow, or too close. They do not know to abide by the technology. They do not do the
work in time.” We do not know, however, to what extent the manner of doing
agriculture is determined by the lack of special knowledge or, on the contrary, by the
lack of financial resources, because even a specialist told us: “Now, even myself,
although I know this stuff (crop rotation), I got to grow the same crop of corn nine
years in a row on the same plot. We use single culture.“
A second category is formed by those who, although have land, are either too
old to work it, or do not have the means to work it so they put it out for lease. In 1998,
this was the case for just 31 households. They usually receive between 20 and 30% of
the crop obtained from the land they leased.
18
Dumitru Sandu, “Who are the entrepreneurs from the agriculture under transition?” in Romanian
Sociology, the Romanian Association of Sociology, nr.1, 1999, Bucharest, p.35.
A third category is formed by the people included among the villagers owning
land, are able to work it but have no means to pay for the works. They (according to
the opinion of the villagers, mostly Gypsy) leave the land barren and prefer to work in
the village as workers by the day. The people included in this category are in a very
difficult situation, living on the child allowance. The work by the day does not offer
them any certainty about the income. Two things seemed to be clear signs of the
situation they are in: walking through the village, I was asked three times (each time
by Gypsy ethnic) if I did not come to hire men for work in the field. One even did not
believe me when I explained him that I have other business with the people and asked
me why don’t I want to take him too. Another sign was the fact that the Gypsy ethnic
went to collect snails, even if in five hours of work they only collected about half a
kilo, for which they received 3 thousands lei.
Finally, the last category is formed of those who do not posses land or only
have very little, but they have equipment and money. They are the ones taking land in
lease. The people giving land in lease contributes with the land, the tenant works the
land and pays for all the required inputs (treated seed, herbicides etc.). The members
of this category also have many animals (which they grow on land leased from the
town hall), combining the work of land with the raise of animals to make their income
grow. We were explained that just (owning) land is not profitable, because the
products pay very bad. To have a profit you also have to raise animals.
Future of the agriculture
The discussions with the people intended not only to reveal the problems of
Biertan, but also the possible solutions for these problems. The causes leading to the
under-use of the land can be classified, from what the villagers told us, into two
categories. The first category consists of problems that can be found throughout the
entire Romanian rural environment:
• the high price of mechanized works
• the high price of inputs
• the lack of agricultural equipment
• the low selling price for the products
• lack of markets
• lack of protection of the agricultural products in the customs
The second category is formed of causes “specific” to Biertan, meaning that
they are not general for all the country, but can be found either only in Biertan, or
only in certain areas of the country:
• land fragmentation, which leads to a range of difficulties for the
mechanized work
• land configuration – Biertan is situated in a hilly area, which requires
special equipment
• the destruction caused by wild animals, wild boars especially – a problem
which existed even before 1989
• the poor state of the roads leading from the village to the different plots,
some roads being unusable even for wagons during the rainy periods
• lack of an infrastructure required by the fields (installations for irrigation,
for instance)
Which are the solutions proposed by the Biertan villagers? How do they see
the future of agriculture? The question we asked them to answer was: How do you see
a profitable business in agriculture? The answers were similar. They listed the
following characteristics of such a business:
• the land can be worked profitable only in association (either agricultural
association, or family association)
• investments are required for irrigation installations and for the roads
leading to the various plots
• the work of land must be accompanied the animal raising (which “is
saint”), mainly due to two reasons: 1. Biertan has available many pastures
and hayfields (Biertan has a very extended pasture, Fetea, where all the
animals of the village generally go) and 2. it is more profitable to use part
of the products to raise animals than to sell them.
The small industry and the commerce
Biertan was a village of craftsmen. People remember with pleasure of the old
time, when the village had 19 guilds with 21 professions. Those times there were
sausage producers, dairy producers, millers, masons, painters, carpenters, coopers,
rotaries, forgers, tinsmiths, etc. The guilds were little permeable structures, the access
into a guild being conditioned by the affiliation to the ethnic group of the Saxons, so
that most of these trades were exclusively Saxon, their exodus determining the
disappearance of the craftsmen; the villagers consider that one of the things to do
urgently is to revitalize the small craftsmen.
This was the situation before 1989. Currently, compared to other villages,
Biertan is “rather poor” in the number of companies: there are only two bakeries and
two small dairy factories (each with its own retail units). There is also an automobile
service and two bars. This seems rather “poor”, particularly if we compare it to
Moşna. The local people consider that the main obstacles in the way of developing the
economic sector in Biertan are: the lack of a railroad, the long distance to the closest
town and the lack of a large-enough river which to be used for economic activities. At
the same time, many of the people we interviewed consider that one of the conditions
that must be fulfilled by all means to make Biertan develop, is the development of the
economic sector in the village. The emergence of firms in the village would solve
several problems:
• it would provide work places for the villagers
• it would increase the incomes of the town hall, allowing the village to
develop
• it would increase the power of consumption of the villagers
We asked the people why aren’t there more entrepreneurs: “They know us,
who are already privatized and it may be enough for them. They do not have the
courage to start (a business). They all say: you were mad to start. They are afraid to
risk. Furthermore, the moment one plans to move, the taxation system comes in and
finishes him.” Besides individualism, the inhabitants of Biertan also seem to be
characterized by a kind of aversion towards the taxation system, estranging them from
the type of entrepreneur.
How could we characterize the entrepreneurs from Biertan? Although a few,
their strategies are different.
A first type of entrepreneur is shown by the owner of the two bars and of a
food store: A.N. Mr.A.N. is the youngest of all entrepreneurs from Biertan. The main
activities of his firm are trade, public food services and cargo transportation. Until
1993 he was financial administrator of the Biertan buffet, and when the unit was put
out for auction “he had the courage” to rent it. He did not take loans from the bank
and never will because of the high interests. He started the business with the money
he collected at the wedding. This was the best period for his company, because he
owned the only private bar in Biertan, he had a lot of customers and the people had
the power to buy. He worked four months in Germany and he brought some money
from there too, which he invested in the development of his firm: he rented a second
unit. The rent for this second space was very high but he considered that in two-three
years the inflation will diminish the value of the rent, which is exactly what happened.
The only investments he made were maintenance works on the spaces he rented. He
would like to make other investments too – that would increase his profit – but as long
as he can not buy the spaces he rented he will not invest anything because “it is not
known who will get the spaces once they are put out for sale.” He thinks that at least
for couple of years more his business will go as it goes now, or even worse. The most
difficult moment was this year, when he had to pay the taxes decided by Ordinance
50. He paid the taxes and now he waits to finish the fiscal year and see if he made
profit or not. If he will end the year with no profit he will give up one of the two units
he rented. The only solution he sees to develop the business is to be permitted to buy
the units and then he would have “more interest”. His activity is characterized by
minimal risk, minimal investments, focusing on the profit.
The second type of entrepreneur is represented by R.C. He owns a bakery, a
food store, a dairy unit and, as hobby, a 75 cow farm. Mr. R.C. is not from Biertan, he
is from Mediaş, but he has here part of his business. Before 1989 he had 400 beehives
in Biertan but, when the business became little profitable he sold them and he got the
money for a new business. He was the first private person to open a bakery in the
village. He worked four years in Germany and from time to time he returned home
and managed his business. The money earned in Germany were invested in the
company: he bought trucks to transport goods, he opened the dairy unit, he bought
one more bakery in Dumbrăveni. The main condition which he imposed on himself
before starting the business was “I invest, but without any bank, no money from the
bank”. Asked why did he choose to open a bakery he said: “If you have the bread, you
also have the knife. It is just this way that things are. And I do not mean it as a
hegemony or something … but bread, they eat bread, it is one of the basic foods for
the Romanians … So, the bread, it is clear, this would be the last thing that would not
sell.” this answer shows the existence of a reasonable calculation which, at that time,
maximized the profit (in Biertan there was only one bakery, state-owned) and
minimized the risks (the bread always sells). The bakery runs with no problems. He
generally buys flour from private producers and he has a distribution network (with
his own trucks) in Mediaş, Sighişoara and Dumbrăveni. The only problem concerning
the bakery “is the competition, which is natural, it is very normal to exist. … The
competition, which is not, in the end, a problem. Competition is about who is the best,
who and stays and will stay. This is a clear thing. It is a law of the capitalism.” He
subsequently invested in the dairy unit too, a normal step, because he possessed the
distribution network and his own farm (the farm is not registered on the company, it is
just a hobby) which provided the necessary milk. He produces milk, cottage cheese,
processed cheese, green ewe cheese. As he developed, he begun to buy mil from the
villagers too. He bought a pasture in Copşa Mare (about 40 hectares) where he takes
his cows during the summer. There are several problems here, the most important one
concerning the distribution. The market is full of milk and dairy products. He
currently employs 60 people (45 permanent and 15 temporary) of which only two are
outsiders of Biertan. He considers himself to be the most important investor in
Biertan. for the future he intends to buy a line for milk pasteurization and a laboratory
for product quality assessment. His aim is to “process the autochthonous milk under
western conditions, something like that. And the sale, likewise, because if we don’t
(do this) we die.” The most difficult moment he went through ever since he started the
business was when his accountant (who was his god son) left the company “and sent
the financial inspection over my head.” Here is how he solved this problem: “How did
you manage? Well, … I leave this just like this in a fish tail. Just like every body does
it. So, … as it is done here, at us.” As type of entrepreneur, he is characterized be
focusing on investments, flexibility in business, combination of several activities to
maximize the profit, acceptance of the market rules and their use towards his own
profit.
A third type of entrepreneur is Mr. C.I. Before 1989, he was the president of
Biertan CAP. In 1990 he left the CAP for a dairy unit in Richiş as chief of unit. “Since
I had the knowledge of agriculture and experience in practice I was rather good with
the milk. I worked there for three years, I did a good job because I bought books, I
learned seriously. I had some unskilled people who, nevertheless, knew their job and I
also learned from them, and this is how I started in this field.” In 1993, when the
Richiş section started to have problems “I got angry and I said I would start over at
my home.” In the beginning he had a partner (his brother in law) who gave him a
million and a half but, after a year, “he did some things, the man, he ended in debt to
the bank and claimed 30 million to get out of the firm … I gave him 30 million but I
sold everything, I got broke and I gave him the money and he left the company. I was
left alone, I started all over again from nothing.” Despite this, the early period was the
best. Milk was subsidized, people had the money to buy, the products were not sought
for their price, but for their quality and thus “I imposed the quality of my products on
the market and I took out of the market old … with tradition.” During the first two
years, during peak periods he collected 3500 liters of milk each day, from which he
made green ewe cheese, cottage cheese, processed cheese, smoked cheese and
different other specialties, to order. It is not profitable to produce fresh dairy products
(yogurt, milk) because they have a very short shelf life and the closest town is too far.
He managed alone the distribution, working very much with Bucharest and Constanţa.
In 1996 he had the best year, he ended with 170 million lei in profit and he also did
some investments. 1997, however, was harder: “In 1997, the subsidies were cut and I
started the decline. From the top I started to go downhill. The milk decreased and this
was my chance. I was fighting to collect milk, to do I don'’ know what ... how Raţiu
does now, because he is a beginner and he tries to take over my men. He doesn't know
he digs his own grave, poor dear …” He was forced to cut down the employee
number, but he ended 1997 and 1998 in loss. His answer to this challenge was to cut
down the activity of the company, hoping things will improve: “I hope that good
weather will come after the rain, I am generally optimistic and when it is the case to
push it again, I push it again, but for the time being I am so passive that everybody
wonders how, in God’s name, can you be so disinterested.” To get over this deadlock
he needs investments. With these investments he would finalize the new production
section. He has no way to obtain these investments, thought, and he would not go to
the bank due to the interests. This type of entrepreneur is characterized by focus on
investments but, at the same time, by a certain degree of rigidity towards the
challenges of market economy. If the first two entrepreneurs formed their initial
capital with funds from previous businesses or from work in Germany, Mr. Cândea
did not have such a source of financing and, most probable, he took advantage of the
position he held before 1989.
Several common traits to all three investors can be observed: the refusal to go
to the banks for financial backup, the preference for minimal risk investments (bread,
milk, public food services) and, probably, the preference of running the business by
themselves, without any partners. Only one entrepreneur has plans for development
(R.C.), the other two waiting for a stabilization of the legislation or for “a better
time.”
The Romanian Society of Phytotherapy (SFR)
One of the most “controversial” characters from Biertan is Mr. R.L., specialist
in phytotherapy, founding member of SFR (established in 1993). During 1984-1998
he worked in Biertan pharmacy, giving up this position when he was admitted in the
staff of teachers of the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy from Târgu Mureş. Since
1985, with the support of Mr. O.V., who was mayor in that period too, he succeeded
to organize international symposia of phytotherapy. He is “specialized by the
European Union in projects of local development.’
The opinions concerning Mr. R.L. are divided. Some consider him a good
specialist and a good businessman, while others consider him a “thief”, a Mafia guy”.
This situation is more so strange, as Mr. R.L. does not live in Biertan. It is clear that
such a segmentation can only be provoked by a person with strong personality and
only if there was something at stake.
Before talking to R.L. we were warned:
“I understand that the gentlemen from the World bank were
received by this guy, R.L., together with the Mayor, they took them
out to eat steaks, they went to all sorts of things, they made all look
nice. This is how it was, I’m telling you because I know someone
who was with them, an architect from Sibiu, just like in the old
times. Because this is how I think, they want the channel this money,
or these funds, to use them by themselves. … Big attention with them
(the World Bank) when they will give the money. And you will see,
probably Rosenberg will have a much wider policy, and the
discussion you will have with him, he presents them clear, because
he prepared to do this, he would need, something to look nice, so
that the money still gets through his channels.” (R.C., entrepreneur)
The history of Mr. R.L. intersects the history of Biertan in two conflict
generating points. The villagers told us about the existence of an agricultural
association, Fitofarma, which had been established by R.L. in 1991. It went well for a
period, it received agricultural equipment from the Saxon Foundation, “expressly for
Biertan”, after which the association was sold to Dinu Patriciu, equipment and all, and
so Biertan was left without tractors and combines. This is the story of Fitofarma, as
seen and understood by some of the villagers. The version of R.L. is different:
“In 1991, I started this share company. It was the first such
company in Sibiu county with only private capital. The intention of
the company was to grow crops of medicinal plants, to use the
spontaneous flora and to process, at a later stage, these vegetal raw
materials. Initially, we were over 100 share holders. We succeeded
in a rather short period, to franchise about 100 hectares of land in
this area. We managed to establish a lot of agricultural machinery,
with the assistance of the Saxon Foundation, unique in this area.
Problems were, and still are, because there were periods when we
worked with loans on very high interests. So the company could not
have profit, or at least just a symbolic profit. Practically, if you take
out the agricultural part in general, the economic results are not
extremely favourable. The, being close to Raymond Luca, I asked
him, knowing he is close to Dinu Patriciu, to take over the company.
The company was taken over in 1994, Patriciu becoming the largest
share owner, with the intention, materialized later, of buying the
Plafar from Sighişoara. But they gave up and I think they did wrong
giving up the agricultural program. And I can tell you why. Because
it was not profitable, it was just not profitable and they based on
buying vegetal raw materials from other suppliers. And then, this
unit from Biertan was actually closed down. The agricultural
machinery which, I tell you, were just like a private SMT (unit
owning machinery and tractors), they were all take back by the
Saxon Foundation. The land was returned to their owners, the
buildings are not used. In 1991, everything the CAP had better, was
taken over (storage room, mechanical shop). So Fitofarma company
exists, its headquarters in Bucharest, Dinu Patriciu is the largest
share holder and the company is priced currently at three billion lei,
it is for sale and it seems there are German investors interested to
take over the company. I was president until Dinu Patriciu took over
the company, thereafter my relations with him ceased. … If
Fitofarma was a success, this commune, would have been solved
with work places in a proportion of at least 50-60%, the agricultural
lands used, development prospects, etc.” (R.L.)
From this business R.L. lost part of the prestige he had in the village, the
people accusing him of the destruction of the agricultural machinery, even if the
equipment belonged to Fitofarma and not to the village, because it was the company
which leased them.
The second difficult moment emerged in 1998, when the local council
approved to rent free of charge for a period of 20 years the block of flats from Biertan,
to the Romanian Society of Phytotherapy. The Gypsy are discontented, who wonder
why weren’t they given the apartments from the block, the opponents of the Mayor
are discontented, considering that the Mayor had something to gain from this
business. The claim reached the Prefecture of Sibiu. Some informers even told us that
this decision was adopted by the local council under pressure, that R.L. uses to
participate in the meetings of the council and that he is the person leading the Mayor
from the behind.
The “famous” block is a block of flats, built from the funds of the town hall
before 1989, as apartments for the specialists that were supposed to work in the
village. The block is not finished, however, it is not connected to the supply of
cooking gas and water, which makes it impossible to be inhabited. If until the moment
the contract was signed, the block represented no interest to anybody, afterwards the
fate of this building aroused a particular interest. To understand exactly what is going
on, we have to tell the story of the Romanian Society of Phytotherapy.
In 1997, SFR filed a project entitled “Laboratory for the quality control of
products made from medicinal plants”, project approved and financed by the
European Union from a FIDEL / Phare program. The funds obtained from that
program were used to endow this laboratory with highly performing laboratory
equipment, so that currently, this is the “best fitted laboratory of this kind in
Transylvania”. This is the moment when it requires the town hall the access to the
block, in order to finalize the project. After the laboratory was established, contacts
were made to start other two projects: ecological production of rose oil (in
cooperation with a German company) and culture of medicinal plants under
ecological conditions (in cooperation with Piemonte region, Italy). Mr. R.L. presented
us in detail these two projects:
“What can you tell us about the project with WALA
company?
This project is particularly beautiful and, from the point of
view of the social impact, I think it is one of the most important,
because you felt, certainly, the lack of work places. This project
aims to establish an ecological crop of roses with the purpose of
obtaining volatile rose oil, which revives the modern cosmetics. The
WALA company is the world’s second largest producer in this area:
ecological rose oil. They want to start here, seeing the results we
had so far and the laboratory of research and control, a farm, a rose
culture on some 100 hectares, which means work for about 300
families, because a family, owning land, can cultivate on the
average about half hectare of roses because the crop requires a lot
of handwork, especially at harvesting. The program already started,
they brought in 11 species of roses checked for their quality
throughout the world, and they want to adapt them here at the land
and climate conditions in the area of Biertan. This autumn they will
start with 10 hectares and expand up to 100 hectares roses. Also
here, in our area, will be built a modern distillery to obtain the rose
oil, for which WALA company already says: Yes, this is it, the price
is about 6000 DM a kilo, we are interested to buy 100 kg. All the
production will be exported to Germany. The hard thing is,
according to my opinion, with the agricultural part. From half a
hectare, one can obtain an income of some two – three thousands
marks, a sure income for that producer. Which means a lot if you
compare with a crop of wheat or corn and where you see that the
people even loose, but … This project will mean for the local
tourism too, a step forward. I can see next to the superb Fortresschurch, many people would like to visit a rose crop because it looks
nice, it smells nice.
What will you do with the land?
Each family which wants to participate in this program will
participate … The land is their property, the family undertakes to
work that land and to value the final product, which is the rose
petals and according to this, it will be paid. But the land should be
checked ecologically. This means that two years from now on, no
crop with pesticides, insecticides, artificial fertilizers will be
allowed. During this period, WALA company is willing to pay the
counter value of the would-be wheat or corn crop, so that the land
can be prepared and attested ecologically. If it will be successful,
this would be the first ever ecological rose crop in Romania.
And the project with Piemonte region?
This is a cooperation, which wants to be an inter-regional
cooperation between Sibiu county and Piemonte region, supported
by the TACIT program. This program proposes the establishment of
ecological crops of medicinal plants, namely fruit bushes
(gooseberry, barberry, etc.). The intention is to produce
ecologically attested products which to be exported in Italy or
western Europe. Among the collaborators there is an Italian
agricultural association in the field of biological and bio-dynamic
products. Why do these projects connect? Because a first project
was achieved: the Phare project. This quality control laboratory
allows us to attest the quality of products obtained here.” (R.L.)
So, the achievement of the first project is a chance further, even a condition,
for the achievement of the other projects initiated by SFR. The land of Biertan is very
good for rose crops or for medicinal plant crops, because “the area is suitable to
harvests from the spontaneous flora, it is one of the areas best protected ecologically.”
Some villagers lack confidence, however, in the chances for success of these
projects. Furthermore, they consider the block given by the town hall was illegal. The
contract says the block is given into use to a non-profit organization, but the
achievement of these projects will generate profit, so that people consider that
“someone will answer for all this.”
Mr. R.L. considers that these misunderstandings are generated by the desire to
have access to the possible sources: “It is very hard to explain what struggles have
been and what struggles will com – I can already feel – when the finance from the
World Bank will come. You will feel this in all four localities.”
The projects of R.L. do no stop here. Starting this year he will organize a
summer university, like a post-university course of phytotherapy possibly attended by
graduates of medicine and pharmacy faculties all over the country. For the future, if
he projects will come true, he thinks to start a vocational school: vineyard growers,
carpenters, blacksmiths, persons able to use the medicinal plants. Both the summer
university and the vocational school will function in the block received from the town
hall.
SFR will keep on having an important role in the development of Biertan: “I
am sure that, as part of the local consortium, therefore of the Foundation Biertan
2000, next to the town hall, it will be the gate for projects, World’s Bank included …
We are already preparing several projects. They are discussed, structured and at the
moment they will get their final shape for submission, of course we will finalize
them.”
Tourism
Tourism was mentioned as a possible source of development for Biertan by all
the interviewed persons. Tourism takes place in Biertan at several levels.
The first level is focused on visiting the fortress. The existence of the fortresschurch is considered by the villagers as a great advantage of Biertan, compared to
other villages. More so, as Biertan in UNESCO center and the fortress was visited by
no less than 20,000 tourists after 1989, with some 3,000 visitors each year. During
peak periods (summer months) there are three – four buses every day bringing tourists
to visit the fortress. The Biertan chief of police told us that there are periods when
there are so many tourist busses that they have to direct them on the neighbouring
streets. The Biertan fortress is one of the most famous such fortresses in Romania,
maybe because the headquarters of the Evangelic Bishop was here. Another
advantage is the landscape, because Biertan is surrounded by hills and forests. The
visitor wanting to spend the night in Biertan may choose between: the House of
Guests, the Preacher’s House, or the private households. The House of Guests is a
mini-hotel built by the Saxon Association and given into administration to a company.
There are rooms with 2-4 beds, with bathroom. There is a dining room and a cook
who can make meals upon request. The guardian of the Evangelic church told us that
there are periods when reservations have to be made, even one year before. The
Preacher’s house is a four bedroom building, with three beds each, a kitchen and a
common bathroom.
The second level of tourism in Biertan is supplied by the Romanian Society of
Phytotherapy. The symposia organized annually by SFR are attended by persons
throughout the country and from abroad. Before the works of the symposium start, a
list is drawn up at SFR headquarters with the households willing to lodge tourists.
Since 1985, when the first symposium too place, there were never problems with
tourist accommodation.
The third category of tourists are the Saxons who left Biertan. They prefer to
live, during their visit, in the houses they left in custody, at former friends, in their
former houses which they sold upon their departure or at the House of Guests.
According to the data supplied by the town hall, in 1998 Biertan was visited by 90
Saxons who lived here before 1989. It is worthy noticing that during the same period,
1998, Moşna was visited by almost twice as many Saxons: 175. This shows that a
much tighter connection exists between Moşna and its former Saxon villagers than in
the case of Biertan. This difference suggests that the Saxons who left Biertan have a
less “clustered” community than the one of the Saxons who left from Moşna. This
seems to be a reasonable explanation, more so as the people we talked to
characterized the Biertan villagers as being extremely individualist persons.
The last level of tourism is in an incipient stage. This is a project of the town
hall, which started the negotiations with ANTREC, to confirm 14 households from
Biertan as eligible to practice the agricultural tourism. Two of these households have
completed their file and will receive the authorization from ANTREC. In order to get
an authorization, these households must fulfill some conditions and, as the Mayor
said, these were the criteria that the 14 households were selected. This project
generated discontent within the villagers, existing persons who accuse the town hall
that the date of the meeting for selection was not known and that the Mayor made the
selection according to his own preference.
These four levels represent the potential for development of Biertan tourism,
but the Mayor considers we can not talk on an actual tourism unless the infrastructure
allows an easy access between the three villages of the commune and the access to
long distance phone lines.
Social capital
Forms of association – the “nachbarschaft”
In Biertan there are currently 22 “nachbarschaft”, 11 of which in Biertan
village (6 Romanian – two of which of young people, 3 of the Gypsy, one of the
Magyars and one of the Saxons, but the latter is in a process of disintegration).
Although the name of “nachbarschaft” (vicinity) suggests an ethnic criterion for their
formation, at least the Romanian “nachbarschaft” also contain members of other
ethnic groups..
The “nachbarschaft” is a form of local organization taken over from the Saxon
ethnic, widespread in Transylvania. They have their own rules of behaviour for their
members, and rules for mutual assistance, especially at funerals, but for community
activities too, or if one of the members needs help to build or repair his house. The
“nachbarschaft” has its own hierarchy of functions, starting with the “nachbarschaft”
big father and little father (with their correspondents “nachbarschaft” big mother and
little mother), than accountant, bartender, etc, these latter functions being different
from one region to another. The “nachbarschaft” also owns plates and dishes, tables
and chairs, used both for the funerals and for the parties organized by the
“nachbarschaft”. The members of the “nachbarschaft” democratically establish the
taxes due by each member periodically, the funds entering the patrimony of the
“nachbarschaft”.
The structure of the Romanian “nachbarschaft” focuses on the assistance for
funerals, leaving in the background the function of mutual assistance for other
situations (community work, reparation or building a house) and the function of social
organization. Unlike other areas of Transylvania, (such as the villages of Cristian,
Sibiu county, Viscri, Braşov county, Moşna, Sibiu county), however, the
“nachbarschaft” from Biertan focus more on the mutual assistance for the reparation
or building of a house. This suggests that the people of Biertan are open to the idea of
cooperation and collective mobilization in order to attain a goal. A conclusive
example is the mobilization that take place either voluntarily or upon request of the
town hall, to fix the roads linking the various plots from Biertan; the people owning
land there where the roads are deteriorated, gather together and try to fix the road.
There are other particularities of the Romanian “nachbarschaft” too, which are
signs of a special type of behaviour of the Biertan villagers. For example, there is a
Romanian “nachbarschaft” with a “permanent father”. By tradition, the father
generally changes in a “nachbarschaft” every one or two years. By rotation, all the
male members of the “nachbarschaft” get to be the “nachbarschaft” father in the order
of the houses in the street (if the “nachbarschaft” includes the houses on the same
street), or in the order of a list with the members of the “nachbarschaft” after the
moment they entered the association, or according to another criterion. Irrespectively,
thus, of the structure of the “nachbarschaft” (houses on a street or houses spread
throughout the village) and irrespectively of the criterion of drawing the list of
members, the “nachbarschaft” father holds this position for a limited period of time
and all male members of the “nachbarschaft” have theoretically equal chances of
becoming “nachbarschaft” father. Because the wife of the “nachbarschaft” father
automatically becomes “nachbarschaft” mother, this equality of changes also runs for
the women of the “nachbarschaft”. We do not know what made the members of this
Romanian “nachbarschaft” from Biertan to establish the rule of a permanent
“nachbarschaft” father. This is, however, the sign that a man or a group of people
from this “nachbarschaft” had the initiative and authority to change a rule, a norm, to
personal purposes. This also is a sign of “moving off from traditionalism.”
Such signs appear in other cases in Biertan village, also connected to the
institutions of “nachbarschaft”. For example, the are more recently established
“nachbarschaft” at the initiative of a villager or of a group of villagers. Such a
“nachbarschaft” is that of the young people. Although in other villages the
“nachbarschaft” of young included the members around the age of 20, the group of
young going together to the discotheque or of those composing the formation of
"căluşari" (like in the village of Cristian), here in Biertan, the “nachbarschaft” of
young includes members around the age of 30-40. They decided to break with the
“nachbarschaft” they belonged previously and, based on friendship or mutual
interests, to gather in this “nachbarschaft”. This happened four years ago and the first
father of “nachbarschaft” (the chief of police unit from Biertan) told us how they drew
up the statute of the “nachbarschaft” so it is a “fully legal nachbarschaft”, according
to the tradition of Saxon “nachbarschaft”.
The recently set up “nachbarschaft” are under the sign of a behaviour specific
to the market economy. Examples are the tax established in dollars and its updating
according to the exchange rate, the collection of aid for funerals before the funerals in
order to have the certainty of disposing of those funds at the right time, or the
financial administration of the “nachbarschaft” through a bank or CEC unit.
Despite this, and although the aid for funerals, the assistance to repair a house,
the pay of taxes, all have an economic character, this is just secondary; the main
function of the “nachbarschaft” is to provide for mutual assistance. The current
economic situation stresses the economic character of this institution, but the
“nachbarschaft” from Biertan still keep as their main character, the mutual assistance.
Another initiative of modification of the current statute of the “nachbarschaft”
from Biertan is the proposition of the vice-mayor (as a villager and not as official) to
form a “nachbarschaft” of the houses on the same street, that is of the neighbours,
because as he rightfully explains, the neighbours will come sooner to your help than
the members of the “nachbarschaft”. The vice-mayor, in the same quality of villager
also proposed to form “nachbarschaft” with people having the land close to each
other, clustered. These proposals of organizing the “nachbarschaft” on logical criteria
bringing in front before the aid for funerals, the mutual assistance for household work,
house reparation, land working, were rejected by the villagers. It was expected to be
so because this would presume the agreement of most of the future members to get
out of an already formed “nachbarschaft”. The people targeted by this idea would
have to give up some criteria of affiliation to a “nachbarschaft”, among which the
criteria of friendship or the criteria of legacy from the parents 19 in exchange for more
“abstract” criteria such as space, house location or owned land.
These initiatives of establishing new “nachbarschaft”, of changing the rules of
function or of the criteria of affiliation to the “nachbarschaft” (even if the latter was
19
It is usual sometimes for the people not having the age to enter a “nachbarschaft”, but who want to
be admitted, to enter the “nachbarschaft” where their parents were (if it is a family, they enter the
“nachbarschaft” where the parents of the boy or girl were).
not applied), together with the fact that the function of mutual assistance of the
“nachbarschaft” is better developed than in other places shows that in Biertan there is
both an “elite of initiative” and a “mass available to cooperation.” This is a sign for
the fact that here in Biertan, the “nachbarschaft” change from traditional associations
based on kinship and location, into modern-type voluntary associations based on
criteria of socialization and friendship.
If the Romanian “nachbarschaft” from Biertan are characterized by this
dynamism, the Gypsy ones are characterized by more traditionalism (all three Gypsy
“nachbarschaft” belong, according to their description, to the pattern of the traditional
Romanian “nachbarschaft”), the Saxon “nachbarschaft”, the last one from the eleven
existing in the past (before 1989) and mentioned by the Evangelic priest, is
disorganized. We can no longer speak of a Saxon “nachbarschaft”, the priest and the
Evangelic curator told us. It was substituted by a form of noninstitutional mutual
assistance between the Saxon community and the Magyar community (both small
communities in Biertan).
Trust, interpersonal and interinstitutional relations
As we mentioned in the beginning of the paper, Biertan is a community
characterized by a rather strong individualism. This fact and the strong connections
with the outer world (Biertan is not an isolated village, neither as location, nor as
information) determined us to consider that the interpersonal trust and the trust in
institutions is not very strong in Biertan. This hypothesis was confirmed by the
interviews and focus groups. The standard explanation for the low interpersonal trust
was that “the people here are bad” and the idea, analyzed in the next chapter, that
“everyone thinks he is smart and there is nobody else smarter than him”, determining
the vote of confidence towards the self.
The hypothesis is also confirmed by the questionnaire data 20 . Only 37.2% of
the subjects say that in Biertan you can trust most people. 58.1% do not agree with
this statement and the balance of 4.7% gave non-answers. Also 58.1% said that it is
better to be cautious in the relations with the other people and only 18.6% said that it
is better to trust most people. The majority are, therefore, oriented towards not
trusting within interpersonal relations.
The institutions invested with the highest trust in Biertan are the Church and
the Army, and the least trusted institutions are the political parties, the Government
and the parliament (between 81% and 86% of the respondents said they have little or
very little confidence in these institutions). A rather large share of the population
trusts the institution of the town hall in general, the TV stations and the mutual aid
houses (between 64% and 71%) (see Table 1, Appendix 1).
When asked how much do they trust different groups of people, the subjects
manifested the highest share of confidence in Romanian and Germans (81.4% have
very much confidence in the Romanians and 79.5% have very much confidence in the
Saxons). The least trusted are the Gypsy – only 32.5% of the subjects have much or
very much confidence in the Gypsy (we do not take into account the percentage of
trust in Jews, the people telling us they have no Jews in the village). 21 The trust of
20
The database used subsequently resulted from the questionnaires we applied in April and it contains
43 cases. The subjects are all Biertan villagers, selected from the election lists of the town hall. The
selection was done at random, by a step. The sample is representative for the village of Biertan.
21
The proportion represents percent of total answers, leaving thus aside the non-answers.
Romanians in all these groups is not distributed much differently than the trust of
people in general in different groups of people. (see Tables 2 and 3, Appendix 1)
The share of trust is slightly higher for the key persons in the life of the
village. The highest rates were obtained by the priest and then by the doctor (83.7%,
respectively 79.1% much and very much confidence). Following are the Mayor and
the police (62.8%, respectively 60.5% much and very much confidence). The large
share of non-answers regarding the local counselors, teachers, entrepreneurs and the
agricultural engineer, are a sign that these characters are not very important in the life
of the village. (see Table 4, Appendix 1).
The network of inter-institutional relationships and relations community –
institutions has a main knots the community, which all these institutions serve, and
the town hall, which is the “administrative center”. The link of cooperation between
the town hall and the community of the village is the “drummer”. With his assistance
the town hall sends its messages towards the community. 22 The communication
between the town hall as institution and the village people is also done through
audiences (anybody can go in for an audience at the Mayor, at any moment of the
working hours) and through the Citizen meeting (when the villagers are presented the
situation of the village).
Most of the forms of inter-institutional cooperation are within the cooperation
for official activities (on administrative line, therefore). A special form of
cooperation, out of the patterns of administrative cooperation, was last year on the
occasion of Heroes’ Day, when the town hall together with the school and church,
organized the festivity and religious service. On this occasion the Orthodox church
and the Evangelic church cooperated to make a “common” religious service in honour
of the heroes. Besides this cooperation, it seems that the only form of cooperation
“not imposed administratively” is that between the town hall and the Home for the
elderly (see the fragment on the arrangement with the town hall tractor in the chapter
”Local authorities”)
It is worthy noting that although the cooperation rarely breaks out of the limit
of necessary official interactions 23 , generally there are no conflicts between the
institutions of the community or between the leaders of these institutions.
The “nachbarschaft”, as institution, does not have very strong relations of
cooperation with the other “official” institutions of Biertan.
Social capital
As a conclusion, we can talk of the existence of a social capital in Biertan,
with rare forms of association (except for the traditional form of the “nachbarschaft”,
which in its actual form is little relevant to the social capital itself and more to the
potential of social capital), with interpersonal relations characterized by lack of trust
and by individualism, with a poor collaboration between institutions, collaboration
22
An example of such cooperation mediated by the drummer is the activity of spreading fertilizers on
the village pasture. The drummer stops at street corners and yells so that as many as possible people
can hear the hour and place of meeting where the villagers will receive the required fertilizers and
wherefrom they will start for the pasture.
23
By necessary official interactions we understand the administrative activities such as: receipt by the
town hall of situation sheets from the school, police, Home for the elderly, dispensary, generally
bureaucratic formalities.
which does not go beyond the limit of official interactions. The high potential for the
formation of a strong social capital is signaled, as mentioned, by the institution of the
“nachbarschaft”, by the interethnic and interconfessional relations marked by
tolerance, by the sincere desire of the people to establish agricultural associations
(sign for the existing potential of association).
What can be observed subsequently to the analyze of the associative behaviour
and interpersonal and confidence relationships, suggests a slight contradiction
between the behaviour and speech. Although the village has a great potential of social
capital, especially by the existence of the “nachbarschaft”, but also by the existence of
more or less structured forms of voluntary association – for example, there are
spontaneous actions organized by the villagers to repair the roads between the plots 24
- at the level of declarations, the villagers stress on individualism and even on the fact
that the “people of Biertan can not take a job to its end” (58,1% of the interviewed
subjects declared this). According to our opinion, this contradiction between the
behaviour and speech is an apparent contradiction. The associative behaviour is
manifested mainly outside the economic sphere 25 ., around activities that do not
concern the profit, the market, but are rather connected to the tradition, while the
individualism mentioned so often by the Biertan villagers is constructed mainly
starting from the economic life. Under these circumstances, the individualist strategies
from the economic life are perceived by the villagers as strategies expanded at general
behavioural level. The cooperation and the existing potential associative behaviour,
but also the actually existing one, are extremely well developed in Biertan, even if the
villagers perceive stronger the individualism rather than the cooperation.
Social structure and social inequalities
Biertan has several criteria to differentiate people, criteria existing on several
dimensions (wealth, status, role, interests, pattern of life, geographical location), this
multitude of dimensions resulting in a very complex classification of the Biertan
people.
In the beginning everything seems simple: people are divided in rich and poor.
But the definitions given to wealth and poverty are extremely diverse in Biertan. To
some people, rich people are “those who keep themselves (up)”, local expression
meaning “those very confident in themselves (read “arrogant”, “proud”), because they
have more than others do. This something more may vary from wealth to intellectual
knowledge. To others, rich people are simple those with wealth or with many animals
or land. To others, the rich are those respected, those having prestige which brought
along the fortune in most cases. In Biertan the people with prestige are to the same
extent people with authoritarian functions or people who did well in business.
If the definition of rich people float around the notion of wealth, the
definitions of poverty are more diversified. Usually, the villagers bypass the
24
When a road to the plots becomes hard to travel, the villagers who use it (meaning those who have to
pass by those roads to get to their plots) gather voluntarily or are mobilized by the town hall to repair
the road.
25
We mentioned in the chapter concerning the “nachbarschaft” that although we may say they also
have an economic character, their main function remained in Biertan the function of mutual assistance.
Due to this reason we may say that this associative behaviour are mainly placed outside the economic
sphere.
formulation “poor people are those with no money/fortune”, meaning they avoid the
definition of poverty as opposed to wealth. To Biertan people, the poor are those
“who do not have enough to live from to until tomorrow”, those who can not keep the
money from today until tomorrow because they drink it or manage it badly. Poor are
those who do not have a place of work, those owning land but having no money to
work it, those with few animals. Poor, are the Gypsy living in the peripheral streets,
but not exclusively, because there are poor Romanians too, poor Saxons, poor
Magyars. Poor are the lone elderly, the sick. All these are definitions given to poverty.
A Biertan villager explained us: “The poor is the one who can not secure his living
from one day to the next, because a dwelling, good or bad, they have, but they can not
manage it; or they earn something but they do not have anything until tomorrow; or
they sell things from the house to buy booze” (Ş.I. villager, Romanian ethnic). These
are definitions given generally by Romanians and suppose as cause of poverty not just
the objective lack of means, but rather their poor management. The definitions
supplied by the Gypsy for poverty stress more on the economic reasons, and not on
the psychological reasons, of poverty – the lack of resources or a preferential
distribution of resources disadvantaging the people labeled as “poor”, the lack of a
job, the lack of a “roof over the head”.
Asked how would they characterize the village and villagers from the
viewpoint of poverty and wealth, most of our subjects answered that in Biertan most
people are neither poor, nor wealthy, but “mediocre” this is the very word used by the
villagers. An intuitive statistics supplied by one of Biertan authorities shows that from
the total of 50-60% Romanians, 15% are poor, while from the total of 30% Gypsy,
20% are poor. The same intuitive statistics showed that out of the overall Biertan
population, 30-35% are poor, 55-60% are mediocre, only the balance of about 10%
being those who “have everything they wish”. But the margin of percentage supplied
by the villagers regarding the poor from the total population ranged from 30% to
90%. The thing which almost all villagers agree is that the “rich people of Biertan”
did not turn rich “over night”, but through the consolidation of a business, by work in
a foreign country or by a properly managed help from people they knew, friends,
relatives abroad. The expression “rich man” is avoided, nevertheless. They rather use
the expression of “well-to-do man”, which, as the villagers explained, means less rich
than a rich man.
Besides the general differentiation poor –rich, the people that “keep
themselves (up)” and the others, there are differences emerging from the structuring
of a part of the village population into groups of interest. The groups of interest are
structured on election interests which draw other types of interests too (prestige,
power, wealth, influence, etc.). These groups of interest are structured around a
person having electoral potential, more according to friendship and kinship. Although
the most important, probably, criteria of formation of these groups are friendship and
kinship, these groups become, by the interest of the leaders, groups of interest, of
electoral interest especially. In Biertan there are, from what the people we talked to
told us, three or four groups with different interests, groups fighting against one
another. The first is structured around the Mayor (PUNR), the second around the vicemayor (PDAR) and the third around one of the private entrepreneurs of the commune
(PNŢ-CD). The struggle is animated by the “vanity of leading the commune”, by the
“wish to put the hand on various jobs” especially, on the available resources in
general. At least one of these groups, formed of PNŢCD supporters, is in open
conflict with the group formed around the Mayor. Otherwise, we were told that at the
town hall “those who are and please him, his humble servants, are well received in the
institution he leads”.
Another type of differentiation with social stake is that of the local-“alien” 26 .
The degree of tolerance in Biertan towards the aliens is very low. Asked directly, the
villagers do not admit this, but the (verbal) behaviour of the villagers and the
statements of aliens prove it 27 . Not even those who came in Biertan more than 10
years ago can not get rid of the status of alien.
In all this network of social categories and differentiation, we would have
expected to find out more than formal leaders, informal leaders of some groups of
interest, a group of leaders or an informal leader at commune level, or charismatic
informal leaders. The villagers confess that there is no such leader, except the town
hall authority (more precisely, the Mayor) – neither a “wise man of the village”, nor a
person with influence on the villagers which not to have a function with authority, not
even the priests or the old people of the village do not have this role of community
informal leaders. The reason for this situation, the villagers told us unasked, is that the
people of Biertan always considered themselves smart people who do not need the
advise or assistance of someone else.
“This category (of community informal leaders) was not allowed to
appear because people consider themselves smart” (R.L., person outside
Biertan, doing business here and working with several villagers)
“They all pretended to be too smart and none could stand someone
else to be smarter than him. [ .. ] There was never the case of one person
disregarding the others, or all regarding one. [ … ] It was a place with very
difficult people, and it still is. People are very individualistic (Ş.I. villager,
holding a function of authority in the town hall).
“If a person struck his head against a pole and another one told him:
<<What do you do, this is no good!>>, the other one continued to struck his
head to the pole just to prove that he knows what he is doing and he is doing it
right” (approximate quotation, Ş.I. villager).
The Gypsy motivate the lack of a leader – “leader of the Gypsy” by the fact
that them, the Biertan Gypsy are not Roma (to be Roma involves for them to know a
traditional profession, to be more nomad and to have a king, a leader).
The lack of such a personality in the village shows the confidence of most
villagers in their own plans of resource management and in their own resources, as
well as the lack of confidence in the others and the fact that they are not open to invest
confidence in someone else than in the village authority, or maybe the leader of s
group of interest.
26
“Alien” usually is a man who can from outside the village and settled in the village. According to the
area, the status of alien may be received by a person whose parents are from another locality that the
reference village, but also a person whose family moved into the reference village generations ago. In
Biertan, the status of alien is generally given to the persons from the first category. The status probably
does not extends on several generations because of the fact that there are very many mixed families
(local people – alien); the villagers even say this is a rule. In this case, if the status of alien would be
extended on several generations, most of the villagers would be considered aliens.
27
An example for the tolerance towards aliens is the reaction of some people, such as: “Why did you
talk to BM (alien), because he is an alien and he does not know what happens in the village?” (BM
came to Biertan 13 years ago).
The future of Biertan
Advantages – disadvantages / problems – solutions
All the discussions with the villagers focused on the present problems of
Biertan, on the possible modalities of solving them, on the development opportunities
for their village. The table below present in a schematic way their answers to these
questions. The able also shows in italics, what we considered to be an advantage,
disadvantage, problem or solution, but which were not, however, identified as such by
the local people.
Field
Advantages
Disadvantages
Problems
Geographical
position
• situated in a very beautiful
place
• easily accessible from DN14
Mediaş – Sighişoara
• the connection from Richiş
towards Agnita is difficult
during the wet periods, the road
not being modernized
• cover in asphalt DJ14b
between Richiş and Hula
Pelişorului, which would allow
an easier access to Braşov and
Sibiu.
Infrastructure
• almost all houses have
cooking gas and power
• there are 3 daily buses to
Mediaş and one to Dumbrăveni
• there is a very nice park in
the center of the village
• the access to school of the
children from Copşa Mare is
difficult
• the water from Biertan is
tough, requiring an installation
to soften it
• cover in asphalt the road
between Biertan and Copşa
Mare
Public services
• there is a very good doctor
• there is a home for the
elderly
• very far from the closest
town
• far from the railroad
network
• lack of a large river which
to help the industry
• the road between Biertan
and Copşa Mare is not
modernized
• there is no running water
and sewage
• part of Biertan streets are in
a poor state
• there are no places where
the young can spend the spare
time
• the switchboard’s capacity
is too small
• too small medical staff
• the school is endowed
poorly
Agriculture
• the land is very good for
animal breeding or for crops of
medicinal plants
• there is only one doctor for
the entire commune
• large fluctuation of the
didactical staff
• very much land, about a half
is not worked
• land working is not so
profitable
• the wild boars destroy the
crops
• the town hall should offer
houses to the specialists coming
to work in Biertan (teachers,
doctors, etc.)
• close the wild boars in a
reservation
• support animal breeding
• create crops of medicinal
plants or roses
• reparation and maintenance
of the roads towards the plots
• renewed plantation of
vineyard on the hills fitted with
terraces
• there is no agricultural
machinery
• the land is fragmented
• there are not enough
veterinary technicians
• the roads between the
village and the plots can not be
used during the rainy periods
• the products are sold very
hardly, at low prices
• there is only one
agricultural association – of the
Saxons
Solutions
Small industry
• Biertan has an old
craftsmanship tradition
Trade
Tourism
Income sources
Social capital
• the existence of the fortresschurch
• particular area due to the
landscape
• existence of the House of
Guests
• start the project between the
town hall and ANTREC
• there is the possibility of
working by the day (just during
the summer)
• there are a few companies
employing village people
• there are no interethnic
conflicts
• the “nachbarschaft” are
oriented towards economic
support
• existence of forms of
voluntary association
• strong individualism of the
villagers
• high degree of collaboration
between the state institutions
• existence of a strong
associative capital
• there are no more craftsmen
in the village
• there is no river allowing
the establishment of a factory
• the shops are well supplied
• the goods are more
expensive than in Mediaş
• lack of restaurants where
the tourists can eat
• lack of an automatic
switchboard
• the fortress needs
reparations
• the number of commuters
decreased
• the village does not have
strong economic units which to
provide jobs
• strong individualism of the
local people
• fragmentation of the
villagers around three-four
groups with different interests
• the village has few work
places in this field
• for minor reparations, the
people have to go to other
localities
• people are forced to take
supplies from Mediaş
• revitalization of the small
craftsmen
• open at least a restaurant
• set up retail units selling
things related to the fortress
• install an automatic
switchboard
• the lack of income leads to
the depression of the buying
capacity, to the impossibility of
working the land
Development opportunities
The answers to the question “What do you think are the opportunities of development
for Biertan? circled around there large subjects: tourism (including the agricultural tourism,
the rural tourism), agriculture and the small craftsmen. If the first opportunity is real, being
considered by some as the “only chance for Biertan”, the second, agriculture, may change
from opportunity to reality only with major investments. Under the conditions in which
Biertan has no more craftsmen, the third subject, the small craftsmen, is probably perceived
by the villagers as a possible source of development just because they remember the days
when the guilds still existed.
“I would say there are two. The first, and a priority, I say, the agriculture.
Because you have to have a base to start from. In industry you have no basis, for the
moment. Agriculture is the basis, you have the land. So, first, it would be the
agriculture, which could start. Second, the agricultural tourism. And not third,
because it should have been the second, revitalization of the Saxon crafts. Biertan has,
you saw the guilds in the fortress. Revitalization of the small craftsmen. Biertan was a
village of craftsmen. If these would be revitalized, but they should give some facilities:
well, you do not pay taxes so many years, open a shop, start the work, with little.”
(C.I.)
Tourism is considered the pylon around which the whole commune might develop.
One of the “dreams” of the Mayor is to transform Biertan in a small town for rural tourism,
help it gin the status it had hundreds of years ago. This is “a project of perspective for which,
irrespective of who will lead the commune, will have to mitigate to better the standard of
Biertan commune, of civilization first.” The Mayor considers that the “development of rural
tourism in the villages would be a source of income for the villagers. This is a source bringing
income and, besides the income, it forces the citizens to keep the commune clean all the time,
prosperous, so it can be visited at any time by visitors.” The people say that the surrounding
area is also particularly beautiful:
“In 1992 I had as visitor a man who left this place many years ago
and he came back with an American, from New Jersey, he had never been
here, black – everybody was looking at him like at foreign cars. In the
country, especially, they said: here, this is more Gypsy than I am. And the
guy was pleasantly impressed. He would not believe. Because he had seen
the images they showed by satellite about Romania: Romania, thieves from
Romania, Gypsies from Romania … Well he would still not believe. He
wandered, just like this, through the village, through the plots. He
wandered through the plots and he liked to stay. I took him fishing one day:
Holy Mother!, he was crazy, we could hardly take him away from the lake.
He said this was the best vacation he ever had. Well, I had the cow then,
and he said he is the happiest American because he drank milk from the
cow’ teats. I told him: hold it, I will milk it in the can and boil it … No, he
wanted from there. Then, hold it and I will milk it for you … (C. chief of
police)
There are persons who have already thought of the manner they might start a business
in tourism:
“With the agricultural tourism, I see the solution, and I tell you it’s
the best, because always everybody draws the embers towards his pot,
because everybody is the smartest – I’m the one, for example. Well, give
some money for those wanting to do agricultural tourism. Usually, the
people that travel, the tourists, they travel in groups. They want to have a
good time together in the evening, because this is why they went out in the
week-end or how do I know where did they go. I say we should start first,
with so many free houses of the Saxon parish. These should be helped and
put some administrators, good people. I can give you an example. There is
this hotel (the House of Guests), but it should not belong to the church. The
parish house should not belong to the church, give them to a man with rent
or something, so he knows: well, they are mine, at fit them and then –
given for a long period, to pay back the investment. This is needed first.
And in a small household too, two persons come to me, this is no big deal.
But there is so much free space in Richiş and in Copşa Mare and in
Biertan. This is an idea of mine I had some time ago. This would be the
best, but only so. Because this thing exists in Richiş. Crista, I don’t know
how she took the houses from Richiş and she brings during the summer, two
months of holiday, she brings children from Bucharest, so the television
(crew) came to me and I advertised for her. And this can be done in Biertan
too, in Biertan and in Copşa Mare, and they can bring children from
German schools. In grades V-VIII, or X-XII. And it would be another
possibility, even if it is late, to come here and talk in German only. Well, if
there would be some advertising too … These young people, they are not
choosy. They are not choosy to say this sofa is too hard, this table is too
big. You organize a dance between themselves, there … This would be it
first. Do something like this and the church would gain too because
everything that comes in you have to cut a receipt. And the parish council
from the church checks on me. Furthermore, if I have a tenancy, the
finance, financial guard, they all check on me … You don’t even need
people. Here, the priest could talk to his people, with the counselors and
me, for example, I would take these. Upon my word, I would take them. To
begin with, with a small investment, because I am bad with money, but
upon my word, I would take them. If, for instance, they would give it to me
– I know you will not sell my idea – I would make a wine cellar with
Biertan wine, I would make … there are many things, I would make a
museum of the village … And when the tourist comes, he would
automatically go to see that stuff too. I would make a monograph of Biertan
which many people would buy. We could talk for three hours, it has no
point … what could be done. If I could lay my hand on something like this,
because it is a treasure. This was my idea, long live the idiot. Then, go on
further … Then, indeed, there would be a lot of space for accommodation.
And groups could be accommodated, or just a few. I mean, where the space
is big, you can do much or little.” (C.I.)
The establishment of a small agricultural-tourist farm is also possible, on condition
that the state protects the interest of the farmers. For agriculture you need, however,
investment in machinery to work the land. Land configuration in Biertan requires special
equipment: smaller tractors, combines for slopes, etc. The only chance would be the
establishment of family agricultural associations (the others would not be profitable) and
supplementary animal breeding.
“As I see it, if someone would support us, I don’t know who, because
there is nobody in the country, I would make a family association. Me.
Owning with my family some 16 hectares of land, I would make an
association with 16 hectares. And I am sure others would join immediately.
After a year they would realize: they are doing well, lets join too. I would
cluster the neighbours.” (C.I.)
To revitalize the small craftsmen, the main problem is the small number of craftsmen
still existing in the village. Despite this, the villagers consider it possible to reestablish some
professions:
“Once the Saxons left, we feel sorry they left, the professions left
too, the craftsmen themselves. Some shops could be established in the
school, which to reestablish these traditional professions: carpentry,
tailoring, furrier, masonry. Craftsmen are left just a few. There would be
another profession that was traditional in our commune, especially in
Biertam and Richiş: viticulture, which during the past years too, especially
some one hundred years more ago, the village of Biertan developed due to
its fame for viticulture. It is a pity, though, that little by little, this
profession of commune villagers becomes extinct. There were indeed, bad
years, difficult years for viticulture, but I would say it is a pity to loose the
respective value from the commune, the tradition as such.” (O.V. Mayor)
The chief of police from Biertan was the person which “amazed us” with his vision on
the development of Biertan:
•
From the point of view of the small industry, I talk about the
restoration of the former guilds. This could be done and there are some
promises to this respect; they guild of potters could be restored, material
they have, even if they do not produce no more … This would go, it would
be one.
•
The women here, because you see, most women worked in
Dumbrăveni green house. Now they are jobless and knit, make embroidery,
stuff like this. They could start again to make goblins.
•
The pharmacy, therefore the cultivation of medicinal plants and
the production of volatile oils to manufacture medicines, which could be
done here, locally and would implicitly create jobs for the villagers, men, if
it were a small distillery. As I understand, this is what they want to do
down, at the block. And, furthermore, the people would have an occupation
on a field where he can not grow agricultural goods because of the wild
animals. They could grow there chicory, mint, because the boars do not eat
them. This would be a solution for the problem of boars, which bothers the
people. They could grow medicinal plants. I say … The treatment with
medicinal plants is not so expensive as these medicines and it is not
harmful, is it?
•
The saw mill, which, I don’t know if you have been there, it is a
pity, it is a factory, it is not a real saw mill. It is a factory. As I understand
they want to open it gain, only the cost is fantastic: 600 million, to open it
again. Implicitly you could do there … 25 people from the village could
work there. They could work there, make a small furniture shop. Wood
furniture which is sought outside too. Furniture in hard wood, not these …
agglomerated as they call them.
•
The barrels section. We have a section here, which worked and
which due to the fact that Forexib is so … has no more raw material and no
more staff. But there are people here who made barrels, so they could
restore the barrel making profession. The Biertan barrels were famous and
cheap. It was something extraordinary, it could work anytime. Only they
need raw material. Everything, all the tools are there. And the staff is in
the village.
•
A man from the village wants to build, with someone who left the
village, a micro-section for metal processing for some contracts with the
Netherlands. They want to make a section for metal processing: milling
machine, lathe, planing machine. It is very good for the people here too.
Do you realize, you need a board. Where to go? Because who works in the
factory anymore? Nobody, where can you make it?
•
Restoration of the vineyards. Give them to the local people, even
with contract, with shares, but provide them with the substances required
to treat the vineyards, because the hills would look differently.
•
Here, at the fortress. I talked to someone from Austria who told
me: you are sitting on a gold mine here, but you don’t know to use it. Some
improvements. The fortress should look well all the time, be prepared for
celebration. At the entrance in the fortress, big deal, when the tourists
come, have two persons from the staff with bugles. At the entrance a small
pot, some brandy, bread and salt, national costumes. Inside, on the gang,
some shops selling: goblins made in Biertan, embroidery made in Biertan,
small replicates of the fortress, handcrafts, it would be fantastic. And
besides these, a soft drink, a mineral water, and postcards with Biertan. –
to please the forum (the German Democrat Forum) – and books with all the
history. And then it would change radically. But these are just “sights” of
mine …They could be done and with no big effort.” (C.)
All these development opportunities were enumerated during one interview only, the
policeman being confident of himself and explaining them as if every night he would stay and
think about them. The policeman even tried once, to start a business together with an
entrepreneur from the village, in the field of tourism, business which he considers extremely
profitable. But the entrepreneur did not want to invest, not being sure of the result of the
investment and now the policeman is looking for another person available for investments.
Conclusions
These are the things Biertan revealed to us during our stay on the field. There are good
and bad things, things which helped us to understand “what is happening in Biertan”, things
which showed us that Biertan is a commune who looks for its way through the thicket of
Romanian transition, trying, at the same time, to get used with the lost of one of its “dear
sons”: the Saxons.
Biertan is confronted with several challenges which must be faced: lack of agricultural
machinery, land fragmentation, insufficient number of specialists (doctors, teachers, vets,
etc.), lack of a well- developed economic sector. A great part of these challenges are to be
found in many other Romanian villages. To these are opposed a series of advantages and local
initiatives.
On one hand, there are disadvantages coming from its geographical position, from its
history:
• a special tourist area;
• existence of a rich game;
• the Church-fortress is one of the most famous fortresses of this kind (being a
UNESCO center)
• Biertan is a village “with history”, with an old culture and tradition in handicrafts.
Apart from these, there are advantages generated by village people mentality and
behaviour:
•
•
•
•
although it is a village with a complex ethnic structure, in Biertan there are (and
did not exist) interethnic conflicts;
the neighborhoods in Biertan, apart from those in Mosna or Viscri, do not confine
themselves to working only in the cultural and symbolic life, but they also have a
stressed economic, of inter-aids function;
local institutions cooperate whenever needed, at institution or institution leader
level;
there are various forms of association, voluntary or at the request of local
authorities.
The main advantage of Biertan is, for certain inhabitants even the local people,
because “our chance was, and still is, that there exists a very good Romanian population. If
this were not so, we would look today like Sarosu ”. We believe this is true. The almost daily
contact with people from outside the village (mainly visitors of the fortress) seems to have
influenced the mentality of villagers, because we found in Biertan tolerant people, we found
very individualistic people (especially in the economic area), we found people who told us
that, if a thing is good, then it has to be tried or maintained, we found institutional traditions the neighbourhoods - who adapted themselves to the new conditions, and last but not least, we
found people who form a real “initiative elite”, a innovative environment with a strong
cohesion.
In Biertan are, indeed, some groups with different interests, but the “fight” between
them is generated, at a certain level, by the different visions they have on what is best for the
village. Such a confrontation cannot but contribute to the development of Biertan. The leaders
of these groups are not only persons who take initiative, who have various types of resources
(symbolic and financial for the mayor and vice-mayor, financial for R.C., entrepreneur), but
also persons respected in the village who can concentrate and coordinate a great share of the
action potential of the village.
We identified in the village 5 possible “action centers”, each one with his own actions
and strategies.
The first center of the action network is the Townhall, which is point of maximum
influence on the axis of cooperation between Townhall - churches - school. The Townhall
initiates the main projects in the village (of infrastructure improvement, the ANTREC
project). Also the Townhall, whenever needed, mediates the possible conflicts between
villagers (the most important conflict mediated by the Townhall was that between the
Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Church), which demonstrates that the Townhall is regarded as a
neutral, non-biased institution, as an institution you can trust.
The mayor himself plays an important role, he is a man of action, has a series of
clearly defined projects and objectives and, more, he built a network of persons to help him in
completing these projects. Many of these projects are targeted at the village infrastructure, the
possibilities for its development (in mayor’s opinion, the more visible are the projects for the
whole community, the better, because they can be transformed in capital for the elections: “in
the countryside the politics and parties do not go well. Here facts count, how is the man, how
good manager is he.”) The vice-mayor is also respected by the local people. He was indicated
as the person who, had he been given the right, could have organized a profitable agricultural
association. His attempts to form a new neighbourhoods on mutual aid criteria in the
economic field recommends himself as a person who can quickly adapt to any challenges.
The projects of the Townhall and its leaders are, mainly, very visible projects
addressed, usually, to the whole community.
Significant for the Townhall’s activity is the setting up, together with the Phytotherapy
Society in Romania, of the Biertan 2000 Foundation. At the base of setting up this foundation
(non-governmental, with no political character and non-profit) was the mayor’s and R.L.’s
prediction that Biertan will attract some funding. This local consortium was especially created
to be able to administer this funding at the moment of their receiving.
The second center of the network is formed by entrepreneurs in the commune.
Certainly, they aim, firstly, at developing and increasing the efficiency of their own
businesses, but a powerful business has strong effects also on the village (workplaces,
increasing the purchasing power of local people, etc.) These projects are: the development of
the milk processing factory (R.C.) or setting up an agricultural association (C.I.) A second
field in which village entrepreneurs are interested to invest if they are supported is tourism.
They intend to create houses for hosts, restaurants, the infrastructure needed for tourism. Part
of these projects are very well shaped, going even to knowing what investment is necessary
and how profitable the investment will be. Their projects target only at a small community
part, but if they will be realized, they will help the entire Biertan.
In the third network center are grouped some of the local people. We already saw that
the villagers associate voluntarily to solve some problems, help each other when they are in
trouble. Some of them thought of different types of businesses: butcher’s, restaurant for
visitors, computer and foreign language courses for children, etc. Money is missing for
putting them into practice.
The fourth center belongs to the Saxon community, represented by its leaders: the
Evangelic priest and the guardian. Their projects are centered on the fortress, on the buildings
belonging to the Evangelic Church. The two leaders can benefit in developing and completing
the projects by both their qualities (the priest is an ambitious young man, strongly involved in
the activity of the German Democratic Forum, the guardian is a skilled man), as well as by
their relations to Saxons who left Cincu or by relations provided by the Forum. Even if their
projects are targeted only on the fortress, eventually they also help the village, because the
whole Biertan earns form tourism, not only the fortress.
There is a fifth center, the action center: the Romanian Phytotherapy Society,
represented in Biertan by Mr. R.L. If the contracts with the WALA firm in Germany and with
the authorities of the Piemonte region in Italy will be signed, this thing will be a strong step
forward for the whole Biertan, a part of the problems it is now facing being thus solved.
Schematically, this network could be thus represented:
SCHEMATA
In this scheme, the thicker arrows point at the main beneficiaries, the thinner arrows
indicating a secondary or mediated beneficiary. The double arrows between local community
and village and fortress and village show that investment in one of these points also has
effects in the others.
The existence of this action network, our talks with the local people, in which the
readiness to take some action was showed to us, the existence of already “thought” projects,
all these make us believe that investments in Biertan will reach their purpose. Or, as a local
man puts it: “We need money, because we can take care of the rest.”