Viscri

OLD FRAU FERNOLEND'S HOUSE

No 163 Viscri was inhabited by Old Frau Fernolend, as she was known owing to her longevity, her stoop and fragile appearance. To all of us who loved her, and particularly to her close friend and distant kinswoman Caroline Fernolend, who lived opposite her and cared for her during the last 20 years of her life, she was an extraordinary personality. The tragic events that beset Old Frau Fernolend throughout her life never overcame her friendliness. Generous, kind, and with a special charismatic way of conversation, she would tell us stories, in the beautiful dialect of Viscri, the village of her youth, of the Landbarschaft - the ancient Saxon code - and of the Saxons' predicament during the Second World War.

Frau Fernolend's father was Johann Markel, who was born in 1879 and died shortly before the end of the Great War in 1917, leaving fatherless his two sons, Johann and Georg, and his beloved daughter Sara, aged 6. When Sara was 21 she married Georg Fernolend. But again tragedy struck. Georg joined Hitler's army. Wounded, and with a splinter of shrapnel embedded in his head, he deserted and returned to Viscri.  For several months he hid in his barn. But in 1949 he was taken to hospital in Tirgu Mures, where he died at the age of 41. Frau Fernolend had to sell a pig and a cow to pay for his body to be brought home. To the end of her days she blamed Hitler for her loss, as well as for the suicide of her daughter Frieda Katharina, who twenty years later threw herself down the well in their courtyard, leaving behind a one-year old daughter.

Caroline Fernolend was determined to help her friend to continue to live in her house as she grew older and more frail. This proved increasingly difficult. Old Frau Fernolend's family were no longer with her to take care of the property. They had departed for Germany in the feverish post-Ceausescu exodus in 1990, when the Saxons were offered citizenship by Germany's  Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher.  Over ten years of neglect, the fabric of the house deteriorated in Romania's freezing winters and hot summers. In 2000, a huge crack suddenly appeared in the right wing. Caroline, appalled, asked the Mihai Eminescu Trust to help. Their generous backers, Dr Packard of the Humanities Institute and Jeremy Amos of the Horizon Foundation, responded immediately and enabled the Trust to come to the rescue.

At this early stage in the Trust's restoration career, it was essential for the morale of the villagers that there should be tangible evidence of buildings being saved. The situation of Frau Fernolend's house was ideal. It stood at a crossroads at the entrance to the village with a bustling thoroughfare passing its doors. However, work had barely started when in April 2001 disaster struck. Through much of the harsh winter heavy snow had fallen. The timber supports that were shoring up the walls could not hold the weight and one awful night the house crashed in ruins around Old Frau Fernolend.

163 after the collapse

Courageous to the end, she insisted on staying in the surviving wing, even though she was now without a kitchen.  Every day, Caroline and her husband Walter brought her food. The task of rebuilding took on entirely different proportions, and would now be extremely expensive. But the Trust could not abandon Frau Fernolend. Heartened by the Packard and Horizon responses to their request, the Trustees devised a plan to combine teaching with rebuilding.  Frau Fernolend's house would become a show case for the Trust's work. Forgotten skills would be revived. British restoration builders - masons, plasterers and carpenters - would be brought to Viscri from Shropshire, the centre of the British conservation revival.

    
Frau Fernolend                                                  ....amid the ruins

The British workmen were inspired by their task. The Saxon villages were a microcosm of pre-industrial England - a tranquil harmony of melding landscape and houses.  Soon the legendary restorer Colin Richards arrived to supervise this pioneering programme. The Viscri village builders rose to the challenge. Taught how to restore in the traditional style, with techniques that had been all but obliterated during the Communist years, teams of builders worked for three years on this difficult and intricate project. The day-to-day work was overseen by the Romanian architect Gabriel Lambescu, who would within a year be known and admired throughout the international conservation world. His special mission, having worked on prestigious sites such as the castles of Fagaras and Cris, was to maintain the integrity of all the details of Saxon workmanship, first and foremost the floors and ceilings, closely followed by the ancient outdoor kitchen, courtyard, barn and outhouses.  The local builders' pride was boundless - they had not only re-learned their fathers' skills but had saved the oldest house in the village from being lost to posterity. Little though they knew it, their accomplishment would soon be widely quoted in European architectural journals and government circles  as a model of enlightened regeneration and sustainable development. (Tragically, Gabriel Lambescu died on Saturday 8th July 2006, see: The Guardian/Obituaries/ 01.08.2006 ).

As the work progressed, Old Frau Fernolend continued her daily work with her beloved cow, her dog and her hens, firmly believing she would outlive everyone. In gratitude, she left the house, all her clothes, including her traditional embroidered Sunday attire, her furniture, including Saxon painted drawer-beds, chests and wardrobes and her private photographs to Caroline, who in turn donated the house to the Trust in 2003.

By chance the Trust's patron HRH The Prince of Wales was looking for property to acquire in Transylvania and asked the Trust's then director Luke Douglas-Home what he could buy to help the Trust and promote its restoration philosophy. He liked the photographs and the Trustees regarded him as an ideal buyer. First, however, they had to consult with Caroline. She consented to the sale, to enable the Trust to free up funds for saving other buildings, secure in the conviction that Old Frau Fernolend would have approved.

    
HRH The Prince of Wales visiting the house after completion of MET's restoration, May 2006.

Since 2000, the Trust has been able to restore so many historic houses in Viscri, that to walk up the main street is to see everywhere the impact of its work. Many of the 19 villages where the Trust operates are documented in the booklet, THE SAXON VILLAGES OF TRANSYLVANIA, commissioned for the Trust by The Prince of Wales and written by Kim Wilkie.

Trust work completed in 2007 - 2008

Houses, courtyards, stables walls, roofs and fences repaired , painted or restored during the year are house numbers: 21, 22, 26 36, 17, 38, 43-45, 44, 47 57, 58, 59, 62, 63, 67, 76, 83, 117, 126, 129, 149 , 152, 153, and 199. One central water trough has also been rebuilt in wood as well as a monument for the Orthodox church. In the Lutheran Saxon church a small house for the organ has been rebuilt as well as a new gate and fence.
__________________________________________________________________

You are most welcome to stay in any of these remarkable houses owned for letting by Caroline and Walther Fernolend or the Trust. The most comfortable guesthouses are on the quiet, sunlit right hand side of the village - away from the busier thoroughfare lower down. Caroline's telephone number in Romania is (0040) 740145397  and the Trust's contact number in the UK for letting is Tel. 0040754212372 / guesthouses@mihaieminescutrust.org

No 63 Viscri
 
There is much to offer visitors. Caroline explains the success of Viscri's "sensitive tourism" as due to the preservation of the authenticity of the village and its local traditions. The Saxon houses retain the integrity of both their outside structure and their interior decoration. 

Interior of No 63 Viscri

Tourists can feel the pulse of a usual day in the natural life of the village. They are offered a tour of the village and the fortified church, which is on the UNESCO  heritage list, and the museum, where they can get an insight into the organisation and mores of the former Saxon community. They can watch the local craftsmen in their normal activity in their workshops or at the restoration sites financed by the MET. Also they can take a walk or go by horse and cart with a local guide on different paths around the village to admire the area's richly diverse flora and fauna.
 
 

© Mihai Eminescu Trust 2002