When the past is another country
By Ruxandra Hurezean
The case of the church from Țapu, brought back to life with the help of the Ambulance for Monuments.
Transylvania is studded with abandoned churches. Many of them are historical monuments, some fortified churches, others — small wooden churches, and all of them were once full of believers. But where the most important moments in the life of a village took place, the wilderness settled. In saxon villages, after the departure of ethnic Germans, the communities, stinking and impoverished by the transition, left prey to the ruins the churches that belonged to a past and a cult that was not theirs.
For several years now, however, things have begun to change. Non-governmental organizations, such as the Transylvania South Monuments Ambulance, associations of locals or Saxons in Germany, work in the summer to save and restore these places of worship with heritage value. It saves monuments and churches that belong to any cult, to any culture, without distinction.
Throughout Romania, there are over 3,000 monuments that need interventions, of which 600 need urgent interventions.
"The Village of Abbot"
We arrive in the village early in the morning. From the courtyard of the fortified church resounds an old, choir music. It's the favorite of Eloi, a French stonemason settled in Moşna. He carves the stone blocks, mixes the sand with the lime and rebuilds the collapsed buttress. It's already halfway through. Eloi is cheerful, grabs the machine and chiseled into the stone. Horst places a plank in the pulley and gives directions. Work is already underway, the team of craftsmen and volunteers is on the roof.
"Eugene is in the attic, putting pliers on the rafters, to strengthen them," Horst explains. "We are restoring the degraded roof part and replacing the destroyed and industrial tiles put along several interventions with handmade, traditional tiles," he continues.
Horst Hungarian is born in the village. When he left for Germany in '86, he was a priest in Bistrita. He left with his wife and daughter who was 3 years and a bit old. They are settled in Heilbronn. When they first returned to Bistrita, they were amazed to see that their daughter remembered the house where they had lived. He ran in front of them and told them: here, here, here we stood and showed them the entrance. Horst could not say whether it was a matter of roots or conscience, but every year he came and saw the church in the village more and more degraded he felt that something had to be done.
What needed to be done, however, surpassed Horst. Urgent intervention was needed, otherwise the roof would collapse. The main nave of the church had to be strengthened.
Since its construction, the church in Tsapu has undergone several additions and modifications. All of them are now testimonies to the evolution of this community.
When descending from the attic of the church, Eugen Vaida, architect and head of the team on the site, explains the architectural value of the edifice. Quite large for the financial strength of the village (never more than 500 souls, as Horst says), it also seems to have received help from the Abbey to which the village originally belonged. The locality was part in the 13th century of the properties of the Abbey of Igriș, which is why it was called at that time Villa Abbatis or in other words "The Village of the Abbot".
The history of the place, in a nutshell
Built of quarry-beaten stone, the church dates back to the fourteenth century, as evidenced by the stylistic forms characteristic of the late Gothic.
The interrupted walls, patched, with additions of various materials, built windows, enlarged windows, a belt of plaster left in places, near the eaves, the Gothic window, the only one left on the north wall, the choir windows, blackened by the smoke from Copșa Mică, seem from an English movie. "Bulding archeology," Eugene tells me. That's what's kind of called what should be seen in these walls with successive traces of life and culture. It was first a Romanesque, Gothic church, then a Protestant church. Pretty much everything that was lived around it was also etched on its walls, including the smoke of the communist industry and the ruin of the abandonment after the revolution. History is all tattooed in the flesh of this building.
The last service in this church was held in 2019, in the summer when the Saxons came home. Before the pandemic, around 100-120 Saxons gathered in the summer summer, usually in August, in their native village. But regular jobs haven't been held since the '90s, before almost all of them left.
Meeting with "Saving"
Horst and Eugene had known each other before, when Eugene, passionate about old objects, wanted to buy some climbs from a fair in Germany. Horst brokered his purchase. After Eugene started the work of the Ambulance for Monuments, Horst began to think of himself and his association as a solution. When he saw, on his last visit, the state of decay of the roof, he called him. It was evening. Eugene said to him, "Tomorrow at two o'clock I'm there." And so it was.
Eugene told Horst what he needed to do: to convince the community to contribute food, accommodation or money and to make sure that the authorities were there for them.
The ambulance began to document the project, contacted the authorities, made analyzes and specialized studies on the age and composition of the construction, and in the summer of 2022 they went to work.
For Horst it was the hardest. "My mission proved very difficult," he confesses, "When you tell the Saxons in Germany that we should repair the church in Romania because otherwise the roof collapses and it rains, they say: 'Well, we are no longer there, we don't use it anymore, why invest in it anymore?' And when you tell the Romanians here that the church in the village, a historical monument, should be repaired because otherwise it is lost, they say: «Well why should we fix it, that it is not ours, it is the Saxons's!» Heavy. It was very hard to convince them, but I succeeded. Now a few Saxon families have come from Germany – about six or seven who help with food and accommodation and everything else they need. Other families, romanians, help the same, prepare the meal and everything else needed. A lot of people help."
Eugene found that the authorities have become increasingly receptive, they are "converting" and joining the initiative more easily. Although two years ago, Timotei Păcurar, the mayor of Micasasa, to whom the village of Țapu belongs, wanted to make a sports field instead of a historical warehouse, he changed his mind after the intervention of the Ambulance at the mansion in the locality. Not only did he not demolish the warehouse, but the mayor restored it with his own hand and with the help of volunteers in the village and turned it into a firefighting draw.
When they told him that they wanted to repair the Saxon church, and presented him with the plan, he immediately agreed to join them. He repaired the road to the top of the hill so that he could reach the cars with materials more easily, got hold of stone, sand and what was needed. We found him in the churchyard, he had come to lend a helping hand. He says that he is in charge of enrolling the fortified church in tourism programs, this happens, with the inclusion of the locality in the Via Transilvanica route.
People
In the first few days of arriving at the church, Eugene noticed a bunch of children waving their elbows and shoving past the gates. He walked towards them, but they ran away. The next day they came again. This time they did not run away: at Eugene's urging, they went into the yard to see what was happening there. In the following days they came even more with them and put wanted to help. "They were working with pleasure, they kept asking me what they could do, it was a pleasant surprise! And in this way, I think, I can value more what we do here if they participate too!" says Eugene.
Katarina came from Germany to her native village every summer. This year came and help repair the church. She works in the kitchen, accommodates volunteers and when she has a free moment she runs up the hill to see what she can do on the construction site. "I think we, the generation between the generations, the 40-50 year olds, are indebted and we can do these things. We cannot ask either our older parents or our younger children. So we're committed to doing and we're doing," she says.
Eloi Thiollier is a stonemason craftsman, a French stonemason. She became a calf after crossing Europe in his ritual of initiation and worked in many cities until she reached here, at Moşna, in Transylvania, where she settled. How did it happen? "I knew a Romanian woman! Married to her!" he replies. He has done impressive work in France, Austria. In Avignon, in Dijon, Paris, Vienna and now he will add to his record, the church of Tsapu.
Alma is a fifth-year student at the Faculty of Architecture in Bucharest. He is at the fourth intervention in which he participates and he likes so much what he does that he hopes to specialize in this field and to work in the future, as an architect, with the Ambulance team. "I would love to do the restoration," she says, "it seems to me that there is now this possibility, because this community has been created." She was born and raised in Bucharest, and the summers spent on the construction site offer her the holidays in the countryside that she did not have. The restoration seems more interesting because, "in addition to the value given by the architecture, the edifice also has an extra value, given by its history".
It all starts with a bike
The founder of the Ambulance for Monuments in Southern Transylvania, Eugen Vaida, is an architect. He works in a team with his wife, Vera, and other colleagues, but also with relatives, cousins, grandchildren, all those who got infected from him. "By bike I was carrying the objects from where I found them, I have a museum in Alțâna, since I was 16 years old I have been saving the culture" and he laughs. Eugene now has a museum and a collection of other people from the Hârtibaciului valley. He continues to buy, to seek to discover traditional objects, and his area of recognition is expanding from year to year. As for architecture, it wasn't hard to find it. He had something from his dad — his talent for drawing and his habit of work. "I didn't have a childhood," he confesses. "From the age of 12, my father took me to the construction site with him. Whatever happened, at 7 a.m. the old man would get up and come on, to work. I had grown up and if I stayed at night for fun and came in the morning, it didn't matter: at 7, getting up! He had a saying: who is a man by night, it must also be by day! ". Then, there was the exhortation of an aunt from Sibiu who wanted to become an architect, but the times had not allowed it. The boy, Eugene, would avenge her.
In his 4th year of college, when he did the restoration, Eugene found himself in his world. That's what he wanted to do! So, now, with experience and passion, he is doing everything in his power to "save the culture" but from the scaffolding. He speaks with satisfaction about summer schools, financially supported by the Prince's Foundation (HRH Prince of Wales). The Prince of Wales has been the biggest supporter of the Ambulance since day one. About his Museum in Alțâna, about the collection of ii recovered from the Roma corturari, about the manual tile factory he has at Abbey, about the craftsmen's map, interactive, very useful for anyone, about the architecture students he converts to the "order of tiles", a kind of order of spoons invoked by Amos Oz: little by little the great fires of the world are extinguished.
Veronica Vaida is in charge of "organization". She says that now they have got to apply for volunteering at the Ambulance and 500-600 young people. They have to redirect them because they cannot accommodate and feed more than 60 to a work. But their desire to work and learn is impressive. That's why Eugene and Veronica consider that those restoration courses at the Faculty of Architecture, put only in the fourth year, come a little late: "There are students in year 1 and 2 who come here and do not know anything about the restoration. Of course, they learn on site and that's a good thing, but school should be more adapted to needs. And the need for restoration in Romania is very high."
The Ambulance for Monuments has received many awards. In 2020, the popularity one in the Europa Nostra competition. But the biggest prize is the more than 70 monuments they have saved in the six years since they have been operating and the fact that in seven other regions the project is being implemented through a franchise. These local ambulances carry on the work of safeguarding the heritage and almost half of the country is now covered by such associations.
How it works
Their work begins in the winter, when they do the documentation for the projects they are considering. So, with the spring, they can start work and do not stop until late autumn, in October, November. "There were times when we worked until it snowed. When I put on the last tile, it started to flake," Eugen recalls.
The ambulance for monuments intervenes when the monument is seriously endangered, in precolaps or collapse. They secure the edifice, repair its roof and foundation, if needed, or strengthen its position. Then, the community, the authorities or the owner can continue its restoration, in some "silence" given by the safety of the building. In more than 50% of cases, communities continued the work.
If the Ministry of Culture shared Eugene's vision of what should be done immediately, it would invest the financial resources in the safety of all the monuments in danger. "Only then can you start the restoration, after you know that none of you fall from your feet and you do not lose it irretrievably," he says.
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