THE SAXONS: CHARACTER—EDUCATION—RELIGION.
Whoever has lived among these Transylvanian Saxons, and has taken
the trouble to study them, must have remarked that not only seven
centuries’ residence in a strange land and in the midst of antagonistic
races has made them lose none of their identity, but that they are,
so to say, _plus catholiques que le pape_—that is, more thoroughly
Teutonic than the Germans living to-day in the original father-land.
And it is just because of the adverse circumstances in which they were
placed, and of the opposition and attacks which met them on all sides,
that they have kept themselves so conservatively unchanged. Feeling
that every step in another direction was a step towards the enemy,
finding that every concession they made threatened to become the link
of a captive’s chain, no wonder they clung stubbornly, tenaciously,
blindly to each peculiarity of language, dress, and custom, in a manner
which has probably not got its parallel in history. Left on their
native soil, and surrounded by friends and countrymen, they would
undoubtedly have changed as other nations have changed. Their isolated
position and the peculiar circumstances of their surroundings have
kept them what they were. Like a faithful portrait taken in the prime
of life, the picture still goes on showing the bloom of the cheek and
the light of the eye, long after Time’s destroying hand, withering the
original, has caused it to lose all resemblance to its former self; and
it is with something of the feeling of gazing at such an old portrait
that we contemplate these German people who dress like old bass-reliefs
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and continue to hoard up
provisions within the church walls, as in the days when besieged by
Turk or Tartar. Such as these Saxons wandered forth from the far west
to seek a home in a strange land, such we find them again to-day, seven
centuries later, like a corpse frozen in a glacier which comes to light
unchanged after a long lapse of years.
From an artistic point of view these Saxons are decidedly an unlovely
race. There is a want of flowing lines and curves and a superfluity
of angles about them, most distressing to a sensitive eye. The women
may usually be described as having rather good hair, indifferent
complexions, narrow shoulders, flat busts, and gigantic feet. Their
features, of a sadly unfinished wooden appearance, irresistibly
reminded me of the figures of Noah and his family out of a sixpenny
Noah’s ark. There is something Noah’s-ark-like, too, about their
attire, which, running entirely in hard straight lines, with nothing
graceful or flowing about them, no doubt helped to produce this
Scriptural impression. The Saxon peasant is stiff without dignity, just
as he is honest without being frank. Were the whole world peopled by
this race alone, our dictionaries might have been lightened of a good
many unnecessary words, such as elegance, grace, fascination, etc.
Of course, now and then one comes across an exception to this general
rule and finds a pretty girl, like a white poppy in a field of red
ones; but such exceptions are few and far between, and I have remarked
that on an average it takes three well-populated villages to produce
two bonnie lassies.
The men are on the whole pleasanter to look at than the fair sex,
having often a certain ungainly picturesqueness of their own, reminding
one of old Flemish paintings.
Something hard and grasping, avaricious and mistrustful, characterizes
the expression of most Saxon peasants. For this, however, they are
scarcely to blame, any more than for their flat busts and large
feet—their character, and consequently their expression, being but
the natural result of circumstances, the upshot of seven centuries of
stubborn resistance and warfare with those around them. “We Saxons
have always been cheated or betrayed whenever we have had to do with
strangers,” they say; and no doubt they are right. The habit of
mistrust developed almost to an instinct cannot easily be got rid of,
even if there be no longer cause to justify it.
This defensive attitude towards strangers which pervades the Saxons’
every word and action makes it, however, difficult to feel prepossessed
in their favor. Taken in the sense of antiquities, they are no doubt
an extremely interesting people, but viewed as living men and women,
not at first sight attractive to a stranger; and while compelling our
admiration by the solid virtues and independent spirit which have kept
him what he is, the Saxon peasant often shows to disadvantage beside
his less civilized, less educated, and also less honest neighbor, the
Roumanian.
As a natural consequence of this mistrust, the spirit of speculation
is here but little developed—for speculation cannot exist without some
degree of confidence in one’s neighbor. They do not care to risk one
florin in order to gain ten, but are content to keep a firm grasp on
what they have got. There are no beggars at all to be seen in Saxon
towns, and one never hears of large fortunes gained or lost. Those who
happen to be wealthy have only become so by the simple but somewhat
tedious process of spending half their income only, during a period of
half a century; and after they have in this manner achieved wealth, it
does not seem to profit them much, for they go on living as they did
before, nourishing themselves on scanty fare, and going to bed early in
order to save the expense of lights.
The townsfolk are weaker and punier editions of the villagers,
frequently showing marks of a race degenerated from constant
intermarriage; and, stripped of their ancient Noah’s-ark costume, lose
much of their attraction.
They are essentially a _bourgeois_ nation, possessing neither titles
nor nobility of their own, although many can boast of lengthy
pedigrees. Those who happen to be _adel_ (noble) have only obtained
their _von_ in some exceptional manner in later times, and the
five-pointed crown seems somewhat of an anomaly.
Although the Saxons talk of Germany as their father-land, yet their
patriotic feeling is by no means what we are accustomed to understand
by that word. Their attachment to the old country would seem rather to
be of prosaic than romantic sort. “We attach ourselves to the German
nation and language,” they say, endeavoring to explain the complicated
nature of their patriotism, “because it offers us the greatest
advantages of civilization and culture; we should equally have attached
ourselves to any other nation which offered us equal advantages,
whether that nation had happened to be Hungarian, French, or Chinese.
If the Hungarians had happened to be more civilized than ourselves, we
should have been amalgamated with them long ago.”[5]
Such an incomprehensible sort of patriot would probably have been
condemned by Scott to go down to his grave “unwept, unhonored, and
unsung.” But I suppose that allowances must be made for their peculiar
position, and that it is difficult to realize what it feels like to be
a grafted plant.
There is one village in Transylvania which, isolated in the midst of
a Hungarian population, offers an instance of a more complex species
of nationality than any I have yet heard of. This is the village of
Szass Lona, near Klausenburg, which used to be Saxon, but where the
people have gradually forgotten their own mother-tongue and can only
speak Hungarian. There is, however, no drop of Hungarian blood in
their veins, as they marry exclusively among themselves; and they have
retained alike the German type of feature and the national Saxon dress
intact in all its characteristics. Also the family names throughout the
village are German ones—as Hindrik, Tod, Jäger, Hubert, etc.
Though none of these people can speak a word of German, and no one can
remember the time when German was spoken in the village, yet during the
revolution of 1848 these Hungarian-speaking Germans rose to a man to
fight against the Magyars.
The Saxon dialect—totally distinct from modern German—has, I am told,
most resemblance to the patois spoken by the peasants near Luxemburg.
It is harsh and unpleasant to the ear, but has in some far-off and
indefinable way a certain caricatured likeness to English. Often have
I been surprised into turning round sharply in the street to see
who could be speaking English behind me, only to discover two Saxon
peasants comparing notes as to the result of their marketing.
The language, however, differs considerably in different neighborhoods;
and a story is told of natives of two different Saxon villages, who,
being unable to understand one another, were reduced to conversing in
Roumanian.
The _Sachsengraf_ (Count), or Comes, was formerly the head of the
nation, chosen by the people, and acknowledging no other authority
but that of the King. He was at once the judge and the leader of his
people, and had alone the power of pronouncing sentence of death, in
token of which four fir-trees were planted in front of his house.
The original meaning of this I take to be, that in olden times the
malefactors were executed on the spot, and suspended on these very
trees, in full sight of the windows—a pleasant sight, truly, for the
ladies of the family.
Nowadays the Saxon Comes has shrunk to a mere shadow of his former
self; for though there is still nominally a Comes who resides at
Hermanstadt, his position is as unlike what it used to be as those four
trumpery-looking little Christmas-trees stuck before his door resemble
the portentous gallows of which they are the emblem. It is, in fact,
merely as a harmless concession to Saxon national feeling that the
title has been preserved at all—a mere meaningless appendage tacked on
to the person of the Hungarian _obergespan_, or sheriff.
The principal strength of these Saxon colonists has always lain in
their schools, whose conservation they jealously guard, supporting
them entirely from their own resources, and stubbornly refusing all
help from the Government. They do not wish to accept favors, they say,
and thereby incur obligations. These schools had formerly the name of
being among the very best in Austria; and I have heard of many people
who from a distance used to send their children to study there, some
twenty to thirty years ago. That this reputation is, however, highly
overrated is an undoubted fact, as I know from sad experience with
my own children, though it is not easy to determine where the fault
exactly lies. The Saxons declare their schools to have suffered from
Hungarian interference, which limits their programme in some respects,
while insisting on the Hungarian language being taught in every class;
but many people consider the Saxons themselves quite as much to blame
for the bad results of their teaching. Doubtless, in this as in other
respects, it is their exaggerated conservatism which is at fault; and,
keeping no account of the age we live in, what was reckoned good some
thirty years ago may be called bad to-day.
Anyhow, between the reforming Hungarians and the conservative Saxons,
unfortunate stranger boys have a very hard time of it indeed at the
Hermanstadt Gymnasium, and it is a fact beginning to be generally
acknowledged that children coming to Austria from Transylvanian schools
are thrown two classes back.
But the whole question of education in Austria is such a provoking
and unsatisfactory one that it is hardly possible to speak of it with
either patience or politeness; and by none are its evil effects more
disastrously felt than by hapless military families, who, compelled
to shift about in restless fashion from land to land, are alternately
obliged to conform their children to the most opposite requirements of
utterly different systems.
Thus the son of an officer serving in the Austrian army may be obliged
to study half a dozen different languages (in addition to Latin,
Greek, German, and French) during a hardly greater number of years. He
must learn Italian because his father is serving at Trieste, and may be
getting on fairly well with that language when he is abruptly called
upon to change it for Polish, since Cracow is henceforth the town where
he is to pursue his studies. But hardly has he got familiar with the
soft Slave tongue when, ten to one, his accent will be ruined for life
by an untimely transition to Bohemia, where the hideous Czech language
has become _de rigueur_. Slavonian and Ruthenian may very likely have
their turn at the unfortunate infant before he has attained the age
of twelve, unless the distracted father be reduced to sacrifice his
military career to the education of his son.
It is not of our own individual case that I would speak thus strongly,
for our boys, being burdened with only seven languages (to wit, Polish,
English, German, French, Greek, Latin, and Hungarian), would scarcely
be counted ill-used, as Austrian boys go, having escaped Bohemian,
Slavonian, Ruthenian, and Italian; yet assuredly to us it was a very
happy day indeed when we made a bonfire of the Magyar school-books,
and ceased quaking at sight of the formidable individual who taught
Hungarian at the Hermanstadt Gymnasium.
O happy English school-boys, you know not how much you have to be
thankful for!—your own noble language, adorned with a superficial
layer of Greek and Latin, and at most supplemented by a little
atrocious French, being sufficient to set you up for life. Think of
those others who are pining in a complicated net-work of Bohemian,
Polish, Hungarian, Slavonian, Italian, Croatian, and Ruthenian fetters;
think of them, and drop a sympathizing tear over their mournful lot!
That the Saxon school-professors are well-educated, intelligent men is
no proof in favor of the schools themselves, for here another motive is
at work, namely, no man can aspire to be pastor without passing through
the university, and then practising for several years at a public
gymnasium; and as these places are very lucrative, there is a great
run upon them. Now, as formerly, most young men are sent to complete
their studies at some German university town—Heidelberg, Göttingen,
or Jena—an undertaking which, before the days of railroads, must have
required considerable resolution to enable those concerned to encounter
the hardships of a journey which took from ten to twelve weeks to
perform. It was usually conducted in the following manner: Some
enterprising Roumanian peasant harnessed twelve to fourteen horses
to some lumbering vehicle, and, laden with a dozen or more students
thirsting for knowledge, pilgered thus to the German university town
some eight or nine hundred miles off. Returning to Transylvania some
six months later, he brought back another batch of young men who had
completed their studies.
The weight which these Saxons have always attached to education may be
gathered from the fact that in almost each of their fortified churches,
or burgs, there was a tower set apart for the inculcation of knowledge,
and to this day many such are still in existence, and known as the
_schul thurm_ (school-tower). Even when the enemy was standing outside
the walls, the course of learning was not allowed to be interrupted. It
must have been a strange sight and a worthy subject for some historical
painter to see this crowd of old-fashioned fair-haired children, all
huddled together within the dingy turret; some of the bolder or more
inquisitive flaxen heads peering out of the narrow gullet-windows at
the turbans and crescents below, while the grim-faced mentor, stick in
hand, recalls them to order, vainly endeavoring to fix their wandering
attention each time a painim arrow whizzed past the opening.
* * * * *
Why these Saxons, who have shown themselves so rigidly conservative
on all other points, should nevertheless have changed their religion,
might puzzle a stranger at first sight. The mere spirit of imitation
would not seem sufficient to account for it, and Luther’s voice could
hardly have penetrated to this out-of-the-way corner of Europe at a
time when telegraphs and telephones were yet unknown. The solution
of this riddle is, however, quite simple, and lies close at hand,
when we remember that even before the Reformation all those preparing
for the Sacerdoce went to Germany to complete their studies. These,
consequently, caught the reforming infection, and brought it back fresh
from headquarters, acting, in fact, as so many living telephones, who,
conveying the great reformer’s voice from one end of Europe to the
other, promulgated his doctrines with all the enthusiasm and fire of
youth.
Every year thus brought fresh recruits from the scene of action; no
wonder, then, that the original Catholic clerical party grew daily
smaller and weaker, and proved unable to stem this powerful new
current. The contest was necessarily an unequal one: on one side,
impassioned rhetoric and the fire of youth; on the other, the drowsy
resistance of a handful of superannuated men, grown rusty in their
theology and lax in the exercise of their duties.
In the year 1523 Luther’s teaching had already struck such firm
roots at Hermanstadt that the Archbishop of Gran, to whose diocese
Hermanstadt then belonged, obtained a royal decree authorizing the
destruction of all Lutheran books and documents as pernicious and
heretical. Accordingly an archiepiscopal commissary was despatched
to Hermanstadt, and all burghers were compelled to deliver up their
Protestant books and writings to be burned in the public market-place.
It is related that on this occasion, when the bonfire was at its
highest, the wind, seizing hold of a semi-consumed Psalter, carried
it with such force against the head of the bishop’s emissary that,
severely burned, he fainted away on the spot. The book was thrown back
into the fire where it soon burned to ashes; but on the third day after
the accident the commissary died of the wounds received.
Another anecdote relating to the Reformation is told of the village
of Schass, which, while Luther’s doctrine was being spread in
Transylvania, despatched one of its parishioners, named Strell, to
Rome in quest of a Papal indulgence for the community. More than
once already had Strell been sent to Rome on a like errand, and each
time, on returning home with the granted indulgence for his people,
he was received by a solemn procession of all the villagers, bearing
flying banners and singing sacred hymns. He was, therefore, not a
little surprised this time, on approaching the village, to see the
road deserted before him, though he had given warning of his intended
arrival. The bells were dumb, and not a soul came out to meet him; but
his astonishment reached its climax when, on nearing the church, he
perceived the images of the saints he had been wont to revere lying
in the mire outside the church walls. To his wondering question he
received the reply that in his absence the villagers had changed their
faith. Strell, however, did not imitate their example, but raising
up the holy images from their inglorious position, he gave them an
honorable place in his house, remaining Catholic to the end of his days.
Nevertheless, in spite of many such incidents, the change of religion
in Transylvania brought about fewer disturbances than in most other
places. There was little strife or bloodshed, and none of that fierce
fanaticism which has so often injured and weakened both causes. The
Saxon peasantry did this as they do everything else, calmly and
practically; and the Government permitting each party to follow its
own religion unmolested, in a comparatively short time peace and order
were re-established in the interior of the country.
Without wishing to touch on such a very serious subject as the
respective merits of the two religions, or attempting to obtrude
personal convictions, it seems to me, from a purely artistic point
of view, that the sterner and simpler Protestant religion fits these
independent and puritanical-looking Saxon folk far better than the
ancient faith can have done; while the more graceful forms of the
Oriental Church, its mystic ceremonies and arbitrary doctrines, are
unquestionably better adapted to an ardent, ignorant, and superstitious
race like the Roumanian one.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] This, however, may be doubted, as I do not believe that, under any
circumstances, a natural amalgamation between Germans and Magyars could
ever have come about. There is a too deeply inrooted dislike between
the two races.