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History and More
The Last of the
German Village Mercydorf
by Anton Zollner
Translated by Brad
Schwebler
The heath village of Mercydorf (today known as Carani; Mercyfalza or Karán in
Hungarian), lies about 25 km north of Temeschburg (Timisoara) and was crossed by
the district road Sankt-Andres-Perjamosch. The traffic in this village is very
favorable and the above-mentioned through street which is about 4 km long
connects to the Europa highway E-671 (DN 69) and both are asphalt roads.
In addition this essentially German village has a train connection which lies on
the Temeschburg-Arad stretch. The train station for Carani has been known
around for some years as “Baile Calacea”, a health spa near Mercydorf.
Administratively Mercydorf is a village which belongs to the community of Sankt-Andre.
Until the administrative territory restructuring of the country by Ceausescus
in 1968, Mercydorf was the community seat. The village was named after the
first president of the Banat country administration, Count Florimund Mercy.
Mercydorf was established about 1733-1734 and so was one of the
first colonial villages of the Banat (after Neu-Arad, Freidorf,
Guttenbrunn, and Neu-Beschenowa). The first settlers were
Italians, who settled here to introduce silkworm breeding in the
Banat. They came with their priest Clemens Rossi who was
not only the first pastor who established the parish in 1734,
but also instructed the children in the settlement in the
Italian language, mainly in religion, which was usual at the
time. According to Dr. Erich Lammert the French also
settled in Mercydorf in 1752 and 1770, which led to language
difficulties in the village and in the church. After 1763
the village expanded with soldiers separated from service and
Germans from Lorraine, so one would have to preach in three
languages in church where the difficulties also existed for the
pastors. In time the German element was retained in the
language of the mixed population and the Italian-French
settlement transformed into a Swabian village. This
happened mainly around the turn of the century (18th-19th)
as the first German schoolmaster with educational qualifications
was signed on in the village school.
According to
Margot Limmer the population of Mercydorf consisted of 137
people in 1734. In 1769 the number climbed to 869, and a
year later it even reached the level of 1,288 people, and about
1771 it again sank to 812. According to Dr. Lammert there
were 191 homes here in 1778 and 114 school children, and in 1880
of the 2,064 inhabitants, 320 were students. In 1910 there
were 1,304 Germans living in the Swabian village, of which, it
is interesting to note, 87 percent of the population registered
were German people. Up until the census of 1977 the
percentage of Germans sank to about 35 percent; of the 1.991
inhabitants of the village only 690 people were still German.
By the census of 1992 not only did the number of Germans sink
again, but also the total population. Of the 1,695 known
inhabitants 134 people were of German descent, the rest
consisted of 1,425 Romanians, 68 Hungarians, and 68 others.
According to the Mercydorf H.O.G. in February 1996 there were
still only 52 Germans remaining in the village.
In the last two years “Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung für Rumänien
(General German Newspaper for Romania) (ADZ) as well as two
Romanian papers, “Realitatea banateana” (Banat Reality) and
“Renasterea banateana” (Banat Born Again). The ADZ reported
about some of the Germans who remained in the homeland
village. One of them was the vice-mayor of the community of
Sankt-Andres, Josef Hassil.
The
Mercydorf baker ran on the list of the Romanian Ecological
Movement, and most of his fellow Romanian citizens gave him
their trust. In this office he tried to archive the best
for his homeland village. Above all he worked on
connecting Mercydorf to the natural gas network, and after that
renovated the cultural home and provided it with a director’s
position. The vice-mayor was satisfied with the number of
work positions in the village. Some were secured at the
state mixed feed factory, at the mineral oil production firm,
and at the bakery and others in the private work sector.
This included the milk collection station, a garage, a new mill,
a hair salon, several gas stations and boutiques. At the
village edge there was a pond which the vice-mayor cleaned
himself and made into a fish pond, and this assured for him his
regular income.
One other time the ADZ reported about the still sprightly Josef
Minich, who cultivated his farmyard with his wife when he was 63
years old at the end of 1996. His backyard at the time was
full of poultry and his stables were full of cattle. Every
year he harvested a rich yield of vegetables, sugar beets, and
corn. Up to his retirement he worked for 38 years as an
auto mechanic for the Temeschburg railway management. His
two sons also lived in Mercydorf: Andreas is a mathematics and
physics teacher and Josef is the proprietor of a grocery store.
The question is, would he also like to leave his country to go
to Germany? He countered with another question: Should we
get up and leave everything to search for a new beginning in a
foreign land? But life in Mercydorf can no longer be like
that, as was the case some years ago, proven already by the fact
that not once were the most sacred places affected by burglars
or robbers which were considered too holy. Yet in February
1997 the Catholic church which was richly decorated was robbed.
The Romanian newspapers mentioned reported mainly about the new
citizens of present day “Carani” in the last two years. In one
of the report days it was reported how Lidia Vadim fled in the
direction of Mercydorf in 1945 from Bessarabia before the
Russians because she had heard that homes here were left
standing empty after Germans were deported to Siberia. At
the time she moved into the house number 422 and lived in it for
50 years after that.
Other new citizens had less luck, as for example the family
Muraru who some years ago came here from Moldavia and earned his
bread at the State Agricultural Firm (SLB = IAS). The
people from Moldavia arbitrarily occupied an apartment in house
number 290 that belonged to the SLB, until one day after they
returned from a visit in Moldavia they found all of their
possessions in front of the apartment door. Since then the
family with two children ages 3 and 9 have lived in a corner of
the entrance hall of the house, but at the same time they had a
lease for an apartment in the bag, which was wantonly occupied
by other new citizens.
But for other citizens things went very well in this former
Swabian village. They are in house number 126 belonging to
“employer” Petre Zabaria who also resides there. Beginning
in 1996 he lived according to the daily newspapers published
announcements from predictions and from the work agencies in
Austria and Germany. But there was no work contract signed
by him and he only had to pay 500 DM for an invitation to
Austria or Germany. The applicant then had to drive with a
firm’s address in his pocket at some expense in the direction of
“El Dorado” where they could get a moonlighting job at a
building site after a certain probationary period or not. For
the women he could only find work in Germany, but exclusively
for a “certain trade”. It seemed that the Romanian
authorities had nothing to fear of the Mercydorf “enterprise”
because its announcements were decoded the instructions for its
complete address were published.
Finally in 1996 the handicapped children of the community of
Knees were reported in the “Realitatea banateana” as well as the
ADZ. In 1993 Sister Georgis from the “Poor Service Maids”
from Dernbach (North Rhine-Westfalen) the building of the
Catholic parish was furnished and called “St. Mary’s” house,
which should serve as the daily place for the handicapped
children from the whole community of Knees. The eight
children, of which five were severely handicapped, were
entrusted by the administrator and governess Margareta Sabau,
the religious teacher Simona Cristian, Corduta Buzdugan, and
Mircea Sabau. The most recent who served here had a
variety of functions: he was a bookkeeper, cook, driver,
woodcutter, and building cleaner. He was also the same one
who brought the children from their place of residence in the
whole community each morning in the car to St. Mary’s house,
where the handicapped were cared for and entrusted. The
food and lodging consisted of only two mealtimes which several
lacked the money for. Because of financial difficulties
the house, which was established as a foundation, had to be
taken over by the Caritas Association of the Roman Catholic
diocese in 1995. The Romanian government contributed
absolutely nothing towards the upkeep of this place of care for
the Romanian children, but St. Mary’s house did and does receive
money exclusively from Germany, although this is always meager
and seldom. From the Romanian side only the orthodox
pastor Sorin Ghilezan provided his contribution in which he was
entrusted to the handicapped children to provide their pastoral
needs.
October 1998 Anton Zollner
See:
The End of the German Villages of
the Banat Series |
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Mercydorf has a
castle
Related links:
"The End of the German Villages of the Banat"
Series
by Anton
Zollner |
