Arti-factual Details – Kolozsvar & Cluj Transformed: The 1900 Baedeker Guide (Part Four)
War changes everything or so it has been said countless times. Reading Baedeker’s 1900 description of Klausenberg (present day Cluj, Romania) I could not help but be struck by how much had changed in the city since the guide was written. These changes were the products of many historical forces, most prominent among them war and revolution. They transformed many aspects of the city beyond all recognition, while others such as the historic architecture survived the tests of terror and remained largely intact despite intermittent periods of turmoil. Though most of the buildings still stand - as either originals or reconstructions), the way many of them are viewed and interpreted has also changed. One of the best ways to understand these changes is by updating Baedeker’s description of Klausenberg and its sites.
The Place Stays The Same - The City Constantly Changes
The first sentence of the description states that: “Klausenberg, a town with 34,500 inhabitants, on the Little Szamos, founded by the Saxons in 1272, is the seat of the county of Kolozs, of a Reformed and a Unitarian superintendent and of a Magyar university (since 1872).” Among the revisions now needed for this sentence include the city name, which is now officially known by its Romanian name of Cluj-Napoca, though most residents just call it Cluj. The latter half of the name was added in 1974 when Romania’s communist dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu decreed that Napoca be added to Cluj’s name. This add-on was a reference to a pre-Roman settlement in the same area as the city. Ceaucescu wanted to stoke nationalistic sentiments to distract from his utterly corrupt, venal regime. Klausenberg, the city’s German name has become a distant memory, as are the Saxons who founded or re-founded (depending upon your historical perspective) the town. According to the 2011 Romanian census there were only 544 residents of German ethnicity left in Kolozsvar.
Just as Kolozsvar officially became Cluj, so too did the county name change. Kolozs County, which was part of the Kingdom of Hungary vanished after World War I. The city then became part of Cluj County in Romania. Such name and administrative changes may seem superficial, but they are expressive of the extent to which Cluj has been transformed from a majority Hungarian to a majority Romanian city in the space of five generations. The Magyar University to which Baedeker refers was then the Hungarian Royal University and has now morphed into the Babes-Bolyai University, which provides tertiary instruction in the Romanian, Hungarian and German languages. It is today considered to be one of the top 700 universities in the world and has been an incubator for talented young professionals who have helped Cluj become one of the wealthiest cities in Romania. A welcome change from decades of internecine academic and administrative warfare to make the university’s education program exclusively taught in either the Romanian or Hungarian languages.
Darkness on the edge of Cluj - Hungarian postcard of Kolozsvar in 1940
Becoming History - Grand Balls, Lavish Lifestyles & Illicit Romances
Further into the text, Baedeker adds a bit of local color when it states that, “Being the headquarters of the numerous noblesse of Transylvania, the town is very animated in winter.” The aristocrats have now all disappeared from Cluj. The memories of their grand balls, illicit romances and lavish lifestyles of haute couture that came shimmering to life on snowy Transylvanian evenings have faded from living memory. Those who were not wiped out by land reform in the 1920’s ended up suffering an even worse fate when the communists took over in the late 1940’s. They suffered wholesale looting of their estates, exile, sentences in prison camps or even death. There are still traces in Cluj from the waning days of the aristocratic belle epoque, most prominently on the west side of Piata Unirii where the Baroque styled Banffy Palace still stands today.
Baedeker does not mention the Banffy Palace and why would they? It was still a residence for one of the most powerful families in Transylvania when the guidebook was written. Today it is a tourist attraction that houses an exquisite gallery of art, consistently rated as the best on display in Romania outside of Bucharest. The palace’s transformation only took place because the aristocracy is now history in Transylvania. Becoming part of history sounds like a fascinating exercise in pseudo-immortality, but in truth it often involves catastrophic upheaval. It took a great deal of tumult in the first half of the 20th century for the Banffy Palace to no longer play host to winter balls. Now it is full of tourists brought there by guidebooks of which Baedeker was a forerunner.
Soaring Towards Another Century - St. Michael's Church in Kolozsvar in 1898
The Matter of Facts – Discrepancies, Documentation & Details
One thing that has certainly not changed in Cluj since 1900 is “the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Michael” which is the centerpiece of what is known today as Piata Unirii. It is the propulsive heart of modern Cluj just as it was for pre-World War I Kolozsvar. In the early 1990’s this same area was known as Piata Libertaii, in 1900 its official name was Matyas Kiraly ter (Matthias Corvinus Square). Baedeker referred to it as “the market-place”. Despite the constant name changes, the church at its center has remained throughout the city’s history as an excellent example of Gothic architecture, a Saxon hall church extraordinaire. Baedeker gave the dates of its construction as 1396 to 1432. For a guidebook that prided itself on getting every detail correct, the Baedeker text on Klausenberg has several errors. The cathedral’s construction took place from 1347 to 1487.
Baedeker also incorrectly lists the date of Klausenberg’s founding by the Saxons as 1272. The best documentation found to date lists the date as 1275. It is easy to point out the errors in Baedeker, but such discrepancies are understandable. It is likely that the authors were going by the best information available to them. The research for the guidebook was done mostly on the ground or at large libraries with the best resources available at the time. Experts were enlisted to help with each section. No matter how much expertise and scrutiny were given to the text, such information as historical facts and dates can be just as riven by change as the city was during the 20th century. New information and sources have come to light that change the facts upon which Cluj’s history is based. A guidebook like Baedeker that was the single best guidebook of its day is now an artifact. It too has become part of history.