Excerpt from the history of Sibiu: In 1438, the Turks besieged the city, but failed to take it. However, the entire surrounding area was devastated.
As a result of the threat from the Turks, the city had three rings of walls built with 39 towers and several large gates. It became the largest fortified city in the Kingdom of Hungary. Hermannstadt repeatedly resisted the sieges of the Turks, who never succeeded in capturing the city.
In 1442, the Turks were beaten at the city gates, mayor Thomas Trautenberger became a legend. Consequently, in 1445, Pope Eugenius IV described Sibiu as a wall and shield of Christianity.
However, the armies passing through and kicking and kicking in front of the city again destroyed the entire surrounding area. Only once, the Hungarian prince of Transylvania, Gabriel Bathory, succeeded in occupying the city by tric trickery, plundering and expelling all the German inhabitants from the solid walls – a bitter lesson, which led to even greater vigilance and distrust of the Germans.
By 1500, Sibiu already had about 6000 inhabitants. In the Reformation, the writings of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon came to the city in 1523. In 1543, the Protestant creed was introduced as states gave each other the freedom to decide on their faith. On March 31, 1556, during a town fire, the entire lower town and also part of the upper town burned down and about 550 buildings were destroyed.
Hermannsta was the political center of the Transylvanian Saxons and the seat of the Universitas Saxonum, a kind of Transylvanian Parliament that dealt with Transylvanian-Saxon concerns until 1878 and was a symbol of the political unity and independence of the Transylvanian Saxons.
Text source: Wikipedia
Image: Alex Blajan
