Fragment from the history of Sibiu: In 1438, the Turks besieged the city but failed to conquer it. However, the entire surrounding area was devastated.
As a result of the Turkish threat, three rings of walls with 39 towers and several large gates were built in the city. This made it the largest fortified city in the Kingdom of Hungary. Sibiu resisted several sieges by the Turks, who never managed to conquer the city.
In 1442, the Turks were defeated at the city gates, and Mayor Thomas Trautenberger became a legend. In 1445, Pope Eugene IV. Sibiu as a wall and shield of Christianity.
However, the armies passing and encamped in front of the town devastated the entire surrounding area again and again. Only once, the Hungarian prince of Transylvania, Gabriel Bathory, succeeded in occupying the town through a forgery, plundering it and expelling all the German inhabitants from the fortified walls – a bitter lesson which subsequently led to even greater vigilance and distrust on the part of the Germans.
Around 1500, Sibiu already had around 6000 inhabitants. During the Reformation, the writings of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon reached the city from 1523. In 1543, the Protestant confession of faith was introduced, as the states had left the decision of faith up to the individual. On March 31, 1556, the entire lower town and part of the upper town burned in a fire. Some 550 buildings were destroyed.
Sibiu was the political center of the Transylvanian Saxons and the seat of the Universitas Saxonum, a kind of Transylvanian parliament, which dealt with Transylvanian Saxon affairs until 1878 and was a symbol of the unity and political independence of the Transylvanian Saxons.
Text source: Wikipedia
Photo: Alex Blajan
